Ground 01 – Winter 2008 – Art + Landscape Architecture

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Art + Landscape Architecture

Landscape Architect Quarterly 12/

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Features Art + Landscape Architecture Round Table Art in Public Spaces Winter 2008

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Editorial Vision

President’s Message

Ground: Landscape Architect Quarterly is published by and for OALA members.

The OALA Council is proud to present our new magazine, Ground: Landscape Architect Quarterly, the result of tremendous efforts by the Editorial Board under the direction of Lorraine Johnson. Everyone has worked diligently to revise our magazine so that it can best reflect our association and profession, with editorial content that mirrors the diversity of our work and landscape architectural issues in Ontario.

Our goal is to • inspire, inform, surprise and challenge; • promote the profession of landscape architecture; • reflect the breadth and depth of landscape architectural practice; • point in new directions.

Upcoming theme issues include: • International Work—Spring issue, released in May • Awards—Summer issue, released in July • Reflections on the Profession—Fall/Winter issue, released in December If you have story ideas you'd like us to consider, projects to submit, or any feedback, positive or negative, please contact us at magazine@oala.ca.

The design of this magazine is the product of extensive research.

The name is thought provoking. The font was custom designed for the OALA. The template is a modular, flexible design that allows for continuing editorial refinements as the Editorial Board’s work progresses. The OALA welcomes your comments and input to Ground. Kindly submit your thoughts directly to magazine@oala.ca.

This year is indeed proving to be a very exciting one for the OALA. It is a pleasure to announce that the combined membership count of all full members, emeritus, associates, and affiliates in the OALA, has surpassed 1,000—a millenary milestone. What a moment of celebration! This is one of several accomplishments that will be recognized at our upcoming OALA 40th Anniversary Conference and AGM, which has been aptly themed “Realizing the Dream.” Registration for the 2008 conference in Waterloo, Ontario, April 17-19, is available on-line at www.oala.ca. Book now and make plans to come celebrate together.

OALA’s enthusiasm and our great spirit of participation continue to grow. We have enjoyed capacity attendance at recent Continuing Education Seminars, and now everyone can download seminar notes through our website for further information. I would like to especially thank our industry sponsors that make these educational sessions and our social ski day events possible. The OALA has also partnered with LABash 08, at the University of Guelph, an event that offers the opportunity to introduce and welcome more than 500 prospective new members to our association. Cheers to the great volunteer and student input that helped to make this event successful.

Come out and participate in the growth of your association!

Your input can make good things even better.

ARNIS BUDREVICS, OALA PRESIDENT PRESIDENT@OALA.CA

Up Front

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PLANTS

jurassic pine returns

It’s a tree steeped in history and mystery.

Known only from the fossil record and thought to have been extinct for millions of years, the Wollemi pine made headlines in the mid-1990s when an Australian hiker discovered a small grove in a remote canyon just 100 kilometres from Sydney.

Looking like a fern on steroids, its adult bark resembling bubbling chocolate, Wollemi pine is one of the world’s rarest trees, with fewer than 100 adult trees and 200 to 300 seedlings in the wild. In an effort to protect the remaining stand, researchers have been propagating Wollemi pines (collecting seed cones by helicopter) and making seedlings available to botanical gardens.

A seven-year-old specimen arrived at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington in 2007 and is now on view in an interactive exhibit, “The Tree that Time Forgot.”

Educational panels, videos and other primitive vegetation (dawn redwoods, ginkgos and ferns) bring the world of the Wollemi pine alive for visitors—the effect is close to Jurassic! (See www.rbg.ca for exhibit details.) For those interested in buying a specimen, an American distributor plans to start selling Wollemi pines this summer— see www.ancientpine.com. In the meantime, you can read the story of this prehistoric tree in a book by James Woodford, The Wollemi Pine: The remarkable discovery of a living fossil from the age of the dinosaurs.

Up Front: Information on the Ground

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FESTIVALS

art in the garden

Garden festivals are important cultural events that stimulate discussion of new ideas and contemporary thought.

Cornerstone Festival of Gardens, located in California’s Sonoma Valley, is a gallerystyle garden exhibit inspired by the International Garden Festival at Chaumont-sur-Loire in France. The concept for the festival was created by Peter Walker and includes a series of everchanging garden exhibits on the nine-acre property. Selected landscape architects and designers focus on themes and ideas to uncover new directions in garden design and art. Claude Cormier, for example, gave life to a diseased tree that was slated for removal by emphasizing its stoic form and attaching 70,000 sky-blue plastic balls to its branches. The blue tree thus became a constant marker from which to gauge the light of the ever-changing sky.

The Cornerstone Festival of Gardens celebrates the connection between art, landscape architecture, and nature. In addition to the gardens, a gallery further presents information on the process of the installations. For more information, see www.cornerstonegardens.com.

TEXT BY SHAWN GALLAUGHER

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Up Front

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related to moving firewood, for example.

(See www.cfia.ca for more information.)

When pressed, Ernst offers a personal opinion: “If you’re in southwestern Ontario near any of the affected areas that are regulated [Essex County, Municipality of Chatham-Kent, Lambton County, Elgin County, and parts of the City of London], it would not be advisable to plant ash trees.”

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EXHIBITIONS

a virtual forest

CONTACT, the world’s largest photography festival, will transform Toronto into a citywide art gallery featuring photographers from around the world on May 1-31. One of the many public installations includes renowned artist Rodney Graham’s virtual forest on the columns underneath the Gardiner Expressway using his iconic images of inverted trees. For more information about other CONTACT installations and feature exhibitions, visit www.contactphoto.com.

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Wollemi pine exhibit

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Royal Botanical Gardens Claude Cormier's contribution to the Cornerstone Festival of Gardens

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Shawn Gallaugher

What of the future for ash trees in other parts of the province, considering the inevitability of the pest slowly making its way beyond the southwest? “The insect moves very slowly,” says Ernst, “and we wouldn’t expect to see it in Thunder Bay, for example, for ten or 15 years. By that time, we hope that the research catches up and we’ll have some way to treat it.”

HORTICULTURE

ash tree threat

It has all the hallmarks of a science fiction fantasy, or, rather, nightmare. Since 2002 the emerald ash borer has been chewing its way across southwestern Ontario, leaving a trail of dead or dying trees in its wake. From Windsor to the recent discovery in Toronto, the pest has been devastating natural hardwood forests and planted stands of street trees—more than ten percent of Windsor’s boulevard trees have fallen prey to the pest, and Toronto’s estimated 450,000 ash trees are vulnerable.

There is currently no control measure for the pest, though research is well underway to develop an effective insecticide, and Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources has applied for emergency registration of one such product, azadirachtin.

In the meantime, should landscape architects avoid specifying ash trees in planting plans in the province? Crystal Ernst, a program officer in the forest pest emergency section of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, says that “CFIA does not have an official stance on what species people should be planting.” However, there are “regulated” areas where restrictions apply,

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Rodney Graham's virtual forest under the Gardiner Expressway

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CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival Emerald ash borer-infested tree

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Ken Marchant, CFIA

Up Front

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TRENDS

musical planting plan

Of all the senses engaged by the work of landscape architects, sight, smell, and touch are the most obvious, but sound can certainly be added to the mix. Micheline Clouard, OALA, CSLA, recently developed a project for HydoQuebec with an unusually evocative aural element: the planting plan along Highway 10 between St. Cesaire and Hertel is based on Eric Satie’s music. “Each side of the highway is designed to represent the pianist’s left and right hand,” says Clouard. “We have created an alignment of trees rooted within the rhythm of the landscape yet surprising in its variations.

The resulting harmony of this series of ‘bars’ adds texture to the landscape.” While the goal is to reduce the visual effect of the existing electrical towers, the effect of this highway planting may well be music to motorists’ ears.

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Micheline Clouard

Up Front

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RESEARCH

success in the park

Dufferin Grove Park is a unique park in the west end of the City of Toronto. It has been the subject of much academic research and was the winner of the Great Community Place Award in the inaugural Great Parks/Great Cities Awards program of the Urban Parks Institute at Project for Public Spaces. CELOS, a research group related to the park, recently received an Ontario Trillium Foundation grant that provides the opportunity to share ideas and programming tools developed at Dufferin Grove Park so that they can be adapted to other parks across Toronto.

We will be undertaking a research exercise with the intent of developing a body of information with respect to the success of Dufferin Grove Park as an engaging nucleus of social activity. (It is our understanding that the park has not been formally studied by landscape architectural professionals.) The study will commence in March 2008 and extend over a one-year period. The results will help to inform professional landscape architects and other designers of neighbourhood open spaces that are intended to respond to the social needs of local communities.

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The specific focus of the study will be social health related to environmental design. We will analyze how well the park is utilized and how it contributes to community health in consideration of the following:

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STORMWATER PONDS

design for wildlife

For more than a decade, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Environment Canada have recommended that stormwater management ponds be designed to discourage wildlife use, due to concerns over the build-up of contaminates and the resulting toxicity to wildlife species. However, a recent 60-page report prepared by the Aurora Environmental Advisory Committee Naturalization and Wildlife Working Group, chaired by David Tomlinson, Emeritus Member, OALA, CSLA, asserts that “Rather than trying to design stormwater ponds to repel wildlife...it is more practical to accept the fact that wildlife will inevitably be attracted to these ponds.”

• Social inclusion and social cohesion • User groups and social networks • Programming, activities, and seasonal use • Historic development • Physical qualities/design, facilities, amenities • Aesthetics • Physical and social context • Governance, management, and community associations • Accessibility and safety • Economics, funding, and employment • Creativity and art • Identity and vision If any OALA members have information or insights regarding Dufferin Grove Park that would assist us in our research, we would appreciate hearing from you. Please contact Real at real@bREAL.ca or call 416-759-7529. Information will be posted at www.bREAL.ca.

TEXT BY REAL EGUCHI, OALA, CSLA, AND PAUL YOUNG, OALA, CSLA WWW.BREAL.CA URL/

In a series of very detailed design recommendations, the report outlines the many ways that engineering and landscaping consultants can modify their designs to create urban wetland habitat that is safe for wildlife such as birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and mammals. In-depth sections on vegetation management in general, and trees, shrubs, and wildflower meadows in particular, are included, as are details on monitoring for pollutants.

The wealth of practical information in the report will be of use to anyone designing stormwater ponds, and to community groups interested in assisting with (or lobbying for) follow-up maintenance and monitoring of existing ponds.

“It is hoped that this study and these recommendations will influence the future design and management of stormwater ponds,” says David Tomlinson. For a copy of the report, titled Town of Aurora Stormwater Ponds Vegetation and Wildlife Study, see www.e-aurora.ca.

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Town of Aurora stormwater pond

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Aurora Environmental Advisory Committee

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North Design Office

Peter and Alissa North talk to Ground about their approach, current projects, and how they jump-started their young practice

INTERVIEW BY FUNG LEE, OALA, CSLA 01/02/03/04/ North Design

Office's project for Cleveland Public Art, showing summer (01/04), night (02), and winter (03) views IMAGES/

North Design Office

North Design Office is a landscape architecture, urbanism, and design firm based in Toronto. The firm was established in 2005 by partners Pete North, an Associate Member of the OALA, and Alissa North, also an Associate Member. Their work ranges in scale from site-specific art installations to architecture and urban design, with an emphasis on landscape architecture. The office is committed to the idea that well-designed urban environments and open spaces create vibrant communities and ecologies.

Pete North is an Assistant Professor in the Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Toronto. He teaches graduate design studios, site technologies, and brownfield reclamation courses. He graduated from the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Toronto in 1997 and received a Master in Landscape Architecture degree from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 2001, where he also studied contemporary sculpture in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies.

Alissa North is an Assistant Professor in the Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Toronto. She teaches graduate design studio, visual communication, and history, theory and criticism courses. She graduated with Honours from the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Toronto in 1998. She received a Master in Landscape Architecture degree with distinction from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 2003, where she was awarded the Jacob Weidenman Prize.

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Fung Lee: Your recent entries for the international competitions, Point Pleasant Park in Nova Scotia and Gateway National Park in New York State, were both runners-up—congratulations! They both involved designing the ecological strategy versus developing a solution, which is a noted shift in the current approach to developing large-scale landscapes from a previous generation of landscape architects. Why is this approach to design more accepted or attractive now than before?

Alissa North: I think that part of it is that it’s kind of a necessity in the world right now, with the way collaborations work, and environmental concerns, and budgets, and all those things. It’s not really an aesthetic approach.

Pete North: It might not be high on the list of priorities but you have to accept that the aesthetics are going to be different. I think primarily that there are smaller budgets today and for competitions there’s often not a whole lot of money. The budgets mean that you have to be strategic in terms of how you phase a project over fifteen, over twenty, or even fifty plus years, so this phased approach means that there are new ways of thinking about how to implement these strategies.

AN: It’s a recognition that maybe the way we were designing in the past was not necessarily correct or beneficial from all perspectives.

PN: The hope is that over time it’s strengthened from an economic point of view and it’s strengthened from an ecological point of view, in terms of having more time to adapt and transition into a

thriving ecology. Through grad school, we both took a course

by Neil Kirkwood and part of his focus was why landscapes fail, why too many designs are only around ten years old, and why certain projects only look good for the first photo opportunity.

We feel strongly that working with the site and working with the different energies in the site, there could be stronger and longer-lasting solutions.

AN: Yes, it’s definitely a different way of thinking, where there are layers of analysis that then inform that solution, versus where it’s mostly based typically on the programming.

PN: It’s like the site has the solution already…and the project is really just finding out what’s there, and what it wants to be.

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FL: You both had extensive training and work experience in the US as well as in Canada. Do you think Americans treat or look upon their landscapes differently from Canadians?

PN: I think it does come down to the vastness of the country, which is a huge difference between the US and Canada. In Canada there’s a feeling of something beyond, something greater, and a strong connection to the seemingly vast north…not many countries can say they have that.

FL: What are you working on now?

AN: Cleveland is a big exciting project on the horizon.

PN: The project in Cleveland is with Cleveland Public Art (CPA) and they are an amazing group of people who are using art as the mode of urban revitalization and re-energizing sites within Cleveland. This project is a two-year installation and is right smack in the downtown core. We are also working on a project that is a little more architecture based—it’s a façade improvement utilizing new materials and technologies to help reduce heating and cooling costs, as well as sound mitigation. There are a few fun residential projects as well.

AN: We also have a couple of exhibitions on the horizon: one here in Toronto at the Harbourfront Centre and one in Texas this November [2007].

PN: The exhibition in Toronto asked us to find an urban public space in Toronto that we would consider not very successful, a space that we would consider successful, and then choose a space to redesign or reinvent in some way. So it was not an exhibit where you just show your past completed work, but it was more interactive than that.

AN: The exhibition in Texas is in association with a symposium that’s looking at new strategies for New Orleans, whether it’s economic or ecological, but in the end, it looks at strategic ways of re-envisioning New Orleans.

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FL: As your practice develops, do you see yourselves continuing to pursue design competitions and temporary installation work?

AN: Yes, for sure. Part of what’s interesting for us is that it provides us with that forum for research, so we consider ourselves really fortunate that we kind of have this hybrid teaching/office practice.

We pursue work more for what interests us and less for the money, so competitions are these amazing possibilities.

Most competitions are about exploration.

FL: What is the North Design Office mantra?

PN: Don’t do it if you don’t love it or is it….

AN: Only do it if you really believe in it. If we can sustain that mantra throughout our career, I think we’ll be really satisfied.

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FUNG LEE, OALA, CSLA, IS A SENIOR LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT AND PRINCIPAL AT PMA LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS.

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Art + Landscape Architecture From Milan to Toronto 0 2/ Visioning Art 0 3/ Taking Flight 0 4/ Artists Out Front 0 1/

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From Milan to Toronto

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TEXT BY PAULINA CARBONARO

The renovated Princes’ Gates, the monumental entranceway to the Exhibition Place, were unveiled more than a year and half ago, following a $1 million improvement program. It was the creative vision and winning design scheme of Toronto-based MBTW Group and Italy’s Sering + Sistema Duemila that helped to give this historic site a sophisticated new look. Faced with issues such as new condominium developments in the area and daunting Lakeshore Boulevard traffic, what the two design firms proposed was a piazza defined by a gesture of twinning Toronto with Milan.

From Milan to Toronto

“With a large amount of informal seating elements and the Princes’ Gates itself in the background, we now have a dramatic meeting and gathering place for the local community,” says Yvonne Yeung, OALA, CSLA, of MBTW Group.

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How art, landscape design, and history revived the Princes’ Gates

Arranged in a diagonal pattern, rectangular benches made of black Italian marble and grey Canadian granite, united by a light strip, provide flexible seating. Each engraved with a name of a province and an image of its provincial tree, the benches are also works of art connecting the Toronto community to Canada and to Italy. Eight X-shaped steel and bronze light fixtures along Strachan Avenue also symbolize this twinning expression.

The palette of paving materials used in the square recalls a classic theme that highlights the importance of the monument in an Italian style. The floor is animated with contemporary LED lights inserted in Canadian granite. To allow for temporary closure to traffic during fairs and exhibitions, stainless steel bollards were put in place at each of the three borders. To help further minimize traffic around the gates, Strachan Avenue was reduced to three lanes. Trees were planted alongside the gates to help provide a traffic barrier.

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“Extending the notion of the plaza across the driving surface at the entry to the gate was very important,” notes Yeung. “The old plaza was divided by an asphalt driveway into two sections. The new scheme uses the Italian Piazza approach to tie it all together, still satisfying the City’s maintenance requirements. The plaza is done with large, weighty vehicular precast concrete pavers that are bordered with a concrete band to avoid shifting.”

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The renovated entranceway to Exhibition Place, a Toronto landmark

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MBTW Group

Phase Two of the project, which has not yet been completed, includes the installation of ten bright columns along Lakeshore Boulevard. Constructed of Eastern White Pine, each column will also represent a Canadian province. Their sequential spacing along the road takes its cue from an Italian mathematician, Leonardo Pisano (1175-1240), who is credited for the decimal system used in Europe today.

Although the landmark gates saw their share of pedestrians before, people couldn’t help but feel intimidated by the approaching cars, venturing only a few metres away from the majestic structure to snap a picture before they felt compelled to run towards its walls for safety.

But that’s not the case anymore—the gates have been reclaimed.

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PAULINA CARBONARO, MARKETING COORDINATOR AT JANET ROSENBERG + ASSOCIATES, IS A FREELANCE WRITER AND A MEMBER OF THE OALA EDITORIAL BOARD.

Visioning Art

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Visioning Art

TEXT BY LORRAINE JOHNSON

They’ve collaborated on various projects together over the past decade and clearly share a comfortable camaraderie. Projects have ranged from sculpture commissions being installed in various healing gardens/residential projects designed by Visionscapes Landscape Architects to building small gardens for friends. Hard labour (hauling rocks to build a stone wall) to creating award-winning gardens built by landscape contractors all contribute to the diversity of projects these two professionals have worked on together and as individuals.

When stone sculptor Walt Rickli and landscape architect Viriginia Burt, OALA, CSLA, principal of the firm Visionscapes Landscape Architects, tell stories of their collaborations, they quickly ease into shorthand, completing each other’s sentences—a conversational duet.

Burt sees her work as “bringing people into the present moment,” and few things focus attention better than a six-ton boulder sculpted into an arresting form. Rickli’s mission is to “blend natural stone and human spaces” with a diversity of work that ranges from outdoor water sculptures to large carved stone figures and custom interior stone sculptures. Burt and Rickli have worked on numerous projects and their collaborative methods can provide guidance to other landscape architects and artists thinking of working together.

“I give Walt—and the many other artists I work with—a concept, not a detailed drawing. I say, ‘This is what I’m dreaming of; what do you think?’ Any artist loves to be able to say, ‘oh, you want it to feel like that…’” To this, Rickli adds a cautionary note: “There are different kinds of artists. Some may be great at ideas but not at fabrication. You need to be able to recognize an artist’s strengths and limitations.” Continues Burt, picking up on Rickli’s idea: “It’s my job as landscape architect to create all the circumstances for success.”

02/ Sculptor Walt Rickli and landscape architect Virginia Burt align their intentions, the key to collaborative success

There are challenges of implementation that get tucked into the mutual knowledge bank of their collaboration, and influence future projects. Their respect for each other is clear, and both stress its importance to projects. “Our basic philosophies are in alignment,” notes Rickli. “Ego gets tossed out—we’re working for the best of all concerned. Creating something meaningful is most important.”

Burt calls this “an alignment of intention,” and sees it as the cornerstone of successful collaboration between artists and landscape architects: “When you have a clear intention of what you and your client want to achieve, always ask yourself, is that material, detail or sculpture going to align with that intention?”

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LORRAINE JOHNSON, LAY COUNCILLOR OF THE OALA AND CHAIR OF THE EDITORIAL BOARD, IS THE AUTHOR OF TEN BOOKS, THE MOST RECENT OF WHICH IS AN EDITED COLLECTION OF ESSAYS, THE NATURAL TREASURES OF CAROLINIAN CANADA: DISCOVERING THE RICH NATURAL DIVERSITY OF ONTARIO’S SOUTHWESTERN HEARTLAND.

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TO VIEW WALT RICKLI’S WORK, VISIT WWW.WALTRICKLI.COM. VIRGINIA BURT’S COMPANY VISIONSCAPES LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS CAN BE FOUND AT WWW.SPIRITHEALINGGARDENS.COM.

Visioning Art

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Installation drawing of Rickli's sculpture "Water Leaves" at a healing garden designed by Virginia Burt

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Virginia Burt Rickli's sculpture marks the entrance to a cancer centre garden in Ohio

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Walt Rickli A residential garden in Burlington, designed by Virginia Burt

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Virginia Burt "Water Leaves" graces Norma's Garden at the Gathering Place in Cleveland

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Virginia Burt

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Taking Flight

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Stone in the butterfly garden spells out the word "moth"

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Neil Fox Entry plaza and arbour at the MOTH Gardens, Downsview Memorial Parkette

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Scott Torrance Night view of the seating area

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Neil Fox

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Taking Flight

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Taking Flight TEXT BY LISA SHKUT, OALA, CSLA

Downsview Memorial Parkette is a small triangular oasis of green sandwiched between two busy urban roadways and the Downsview airport in north Toronto. Located near the corner of Keele Street and Wilson Avenue, it is also the site of a collaboration between sculptor Jeannie Thib and landscape architect Scott Torrance, OALA, CSLA, who worked together on the winning entry, MOTH Gardens, in a City of Toronto design competition. Their design takes its cues from the character of the surrounding community (predominantly Italian), aviation history (the famed Tiger Moth airplane flew in and out of the Downsview airport), and Thib’s family background (her mother was a Moth pilot). MOTH Gardens opened in June 2006.

“No matter who you work with, if it’s collaborative, people have a role to play,” says Torrance. “You have to find a way to look at each other’s strengths. You have to be a listener and not always reject ideas, but rather think about the bigger picture all the time.”

The project was led by Jeannie Thib, who approached Torrance during the final phase of the design competition. “The City really wanted this to be a collaborative effort for the park,” says Torrance. “They definitely wanted a strong artistic involvement.

So this was a little different than what typically happens in a project, where the artist’s involvement gets minimized.”

As in any project, there were surprises. Torrance, for example, hadn’t anticipated the practical side of artistry: “Artists work with their hands, so they are used to thinking about constructing things, whether it’s a painting or constructing a sculpture. That really helped the project. Helping to solve problems is ultimately what we are all doing.”

According to Torrance, he and Thib “just hit it off right away. We had a good connection. We augmented each other’s approach.”

In particular, Torrance helped Thib understand the issues involved in developing a parkette through site analysis, design principles and precedents.

Scott Torrance is maintaining the collaborative momentum, working with artists on several new projects. His latest work is with metal-artist John Dixon on the development of the Railpath Linear Park in Toronto.

Torrance also points out that he and Thib seemed to abandon the typical language of their professions and use a more basic and common style of “lay’” language with each other. This clarified the process not only to themselves, but also to the public and the politicians they dealt with. “It was definitely an advantage that we didn’t use terms like site analysis or urban design—we talked about the experience we were trying to achieve,” says Torrance.

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AN ASSOCIATE MEMBER OF THE OALA, LISA SHKUT (BLA, MLA) WORKS FOR THE TOWN OF WHITBY AND IS ALSO A MEMBER OF THE OALA EDITORIAL BOARD. PREVIOUSLY, SHE WAS IN PRIVATE PRACTICE IN NEWFOUNDLAND, MANITOBA, AND ONTARIO.

An artist and landscape architect celebrate aviation history with a soaring design

Artists Out Front

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Artists Out Front In a twist on common practice, artists Susan Schelle and Mark Gomes led the design for the Bloor-Spadina Parkette

04/ TEXT BY PATRICIA SHARPE, ASSOCIATE MEMBER

The competition for the design of the Bloor-Spadina Parkette in Toronto was unusual because artists rather than landscape architects were the lead designers on the project.

The Bloor-Spadina Parkette was the last installment of the Toronto Transit Commission’s redevelopment of Spadina Avenue.

Rina Greer, the art consultant for the TTC who was responsible for art development along Spadina Avenue, spearheaded the competition, which was won by artists Susan Schelle and Mark Gomes. When they were short listed and subsequently proclaimed the winners, Schelle and Gomes knew that it was probably the first time in Toronto that artists would be responsible for designing a park. Schelle credits the City for being brave enough to trust artists to pull it off.

To Schelle and Gomes’ credit, they understood the implications of an artist-led design project, and, after having roughed out their initial concept, they sought a landscape architecture firm to work with, engaging Ferris and Quinn (now defunct and the two partners have since established their own individual firms).

“We approached them because they had done a lot of work for the City already. To be honest, there weren’t as many landscape architecture firms at the time who were sympathetic to what we were trying to do—this was in the early nineties—and Ferris and Quinn were open to us,” explains Schelle. “There are more firms out there now that are more experimental. We designed everything that we wanted in terms of the concept, planting, pathways, and in collaboration with John Quinn [OALA, CSLA] we also worked out the organic configuration of the park.”

The driving narrative of the design is the concept of the game board, and all four corners of the intersection were originally included in the narrative. Working from the north-south orthogonal, a checkerboard spilled out across all four corners of Bloor and Spadina. Since completion, the Jewish Community Centre on the southwest corner and the banks on each of the north corners of Bloor Street have been redeveloped and none of the game board aspects were replaced. The well-known dominoes, at eighteen inches high, were intended to be used as benches right from the beginning. Schelle is explicit that she and Gomes frequently build functionality into their artworks—it is meant to be walked on and sat upon. That the dominoes are stacked randomly as if still in play is an attempt to animate the corner and prevent it from becoming a dead space.

A telltale sign of Schelle’s inexperience in landscape architecture is her remark that “there were a lot of weird things we had to consider.” Presumably these are things that landscape architects encounter on a daily basis. So for the nuts and bolts of executing the design at the heavily trafficked corner, they relied on the expertise of John Quinn. From incorporating the air vents coming from the adjacent underground streetcar tunnels, to controlling sightlines and visual obstructions to traffic at the intersection, and to selecting drought-resistant plant material, Quinn was their ultimate resource for determining what would and wouldn’t work on the site. Additionally, they collaborated with Quinn on the overall configuration of the design, and they worked together on the concrete bridge that bisects Spadina and on creating the intimate, Japanese-influenced gardens.

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01/02/03/04/ The design of Bloor-Spadina

Parkette is based on the concept of the game board, with playful elements included throughout IMAGES/

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Schelle is an advocate of artist/landscape architect collaborations and she points out that mutual respect and the checking of egos are mandatory prerequisites: “The collaboration can be mutually beneficial because landscape architects have expertise that artists don’t have and artists can make aesthetic decisions that might be slightly out of the norm.”

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PATRICIA SHARPE IS AN ASSOCIATE MEMBER WHO HAS WORKED AS AN ART CONSULTANT IN THE PAST.

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Susan Schelle

Letter from Berlin

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Cultivating the View

The Temporary Gardens have been a part of the German cultural landscape since the first installation took place in 1997. Nearly every summer, approximately twenty different and unusual installations of garden art seek to change people's perceptions and experiences of inner-city public space TEXT BY STEFANIE HENNECKE

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a vast and disused area dominated the historic centre of Berlin. The majority of citizens as well as many municipal politicians called this wasteland a blot on the cityscape. In the mid-1990s, David Sprenger, the Berlin chair of the Federation of German Landscape Architects, along with some of his colleagues, conceived of the Temporary Gardens project as a way to fill this “vacuum” in the inner city.

Their conception pursues two aims. The first is to encourage landscape architects to offer critical commentary on the municipal policy of urban development in Berlin. As an alternative to the historical reconstruction of Berlin’s inner city and the complete denial of urban development during socialist rule, the Temporary Gardens stress the hidden qualities of the existing site. This project takes the many identities and meanings of the place as a starting point for unexpected conceptions for possible future development.

In contrast to the often self-interested plans of planners and investors (groups that have rarely been attentive to the unique atmosphere and needs of the places they have developed), the designers of Temporary Gardens seek inspiration from dialogue with neighbours and everyday users, and from their individual experiences and perspectives. This new approach purposefully

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Letter from Berlin

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deals with the “material” of the space, the unpredictable, even accidental situations that such spaces nurture, as well as the possibilities of establishing new spatial and theoretical connections.

Each installation, often set up in neglected urban areas, aims at initiating a process of questioning its surrounding—its form, its usability and its meaning.

The second goal of the Temporary Gardens is the search for professional identity: how can landscape architects initiate and influence fruitful changes in the 21st-century Berlin? The Temporary Gardens of the last 10 years are an archive of questions and answers posed and offered by young landscape architects in the hopes of making vital contributions to the city and in searching out and refining their own self-image.

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"Laying Lawn" by Jens Gartelmann and Klemens Hundertmark, Temporary Gardens (2000) Yann Monel "Un jardin de yoyage – Travelling Garden" by Nicolas Pinier, Temporary Gardens (2001) Yann Monel "Subway-Plants"

by Robert Schmitz-Michels and Henning Hennenkemper, Temporary Gardens (2000) Yann Monel "Vertical SunflowerGarden--SouthSouth/East" by Jörg Rekittke, Anna Hardenberg, Philip Paar, and Christian Wilke, Temporary Gardens (1999) Yann Monel

EXPORTING AN IDEA

temporary gardens expand The first Temporary Gardens were built by landscape architects and students from Berlin. With their increasing visibility, the designers of Temporary Gardeners became ever more international and interdisciplinary, until the very idea of Temporary Gardening has itself been exported to other European countries: in 2000 and 2001, Temporary Gardens were found in Le Havre, France, and in 2005 in Tartu, Estonia. In the summer of 2008, new Temporary Gardens will be installed in Aachen, Germany.

The process of organizing and building the Temporary Gardens is essential to the whole project. The gardens provide a platform for people to work, discuss, and celebrate together. After the call for ideas, a jury of landscape architects and municipal representatives chooses the projects to be realized. The selected teams then work together as a single unit on the project. The initial ideas are refined during a workshop, and the sites for the single installations and the choreography of the whole event are laid out together.

The designers talk to visitors, invite them to “use” the installations, or give a guided tour of the project. Visitors experience this special team spirit while, for example, waiting for grilled sausages from the “Subscription-Barbecue,” taking a sunbath in a grass-deckchair on the median strip of a main road, enjoying a vertical garden created by sunflowers printed on cloth covering all satellite dishes of a 30-storey apartment-building, or admiring the “subway plants” —huge balloon-flowers growing from subway ventilation shafts.

The response to the Temporary Gardens in Berlin has been enormously positive, especially considering the project’s minimal budget. The number of residents, tourists, and design professionals visiting the Temporary Gardens runs into thousands and increases every year. The trade press sometimes criticizes the Temporary Gardens as being too “ephemeral.” However, the Temporary Gardens are not intended to be long-term redesigns of spaces but are instead aimed at transforming the perceptions of these previously suspect and neglected spaces. A few chairs and a flowerpot can be enough to transform a curb into an urban place.

A coloured leaf and petal floating by the river can attach a lasting poetic meaning to the river and banks in the course of only a few minutes. An open manhole in the pavement where one sees flowers instead of sewage can slow down the pedestrian stream and bring strangers together in modes of communication both verbal and non-verbal. Even if the Temporary Gardens are not powerful enough to influence larger trends in urban development, the project has had an important effect on participating landscape architects and individual visitors. The joyful and experimental approach to neglected urban areas has imbued these spaces with positive experiences. The impact on visitors has proved anything but temporary.

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STEFANIE HENNECKE IS A FACULTY MEMBER SPECIALIZING IN GARDEN CULTURE AND OPEN SPACE DEVELOPMENT AT THE INSTITUTE FOR HISTORY AND THEORY OF DESIGN, BERLIN UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS.

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WWW.TEMPORAEREGAERTEN.DE

Round Table

Four Perspectives on Art in Public Spaces For an examination of some of the issues around the relationship between professional artists and landscape architects and to get some perspectives on the ideal process or team role delineation that creates the best results, we selected an art consultant and three landscape architects, one of whom is also an artist, and asked them: What is the role of the landscape architect in the process of creating art in public spaces?

INTERVIEWS BY NETAMI STUART, ASSOCIATE MEMBER, AND FUNG LEE, OALA, CSLA

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David Leinster

DAVID LEINSTER, OALA, FCSLA, IS A PARTNER WITH THE PLANNING PARTNERSHIP. HE IS A PAST PRESIDENT OF THE ONTARIO ASSOCIATION OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS AND CURRENTLY SITS ON THE CITY OF TORONTO’S PUBLIC ART ADVISORY COMMITTEE.

Like the Bilbao effect in architecture, integrated art and landscape projects are capturing the public imagination as some of the best examples of urban renewal initiatives being created today. At the highest order of city building these projects are the kind of place makers that redefine a city‘s identity. At a lower order, but of no less importance, they reflect community values, enriching the neighbourhoods they grace and the everyday experience of those who visit them.

Chicago ‘s Millennium Park is probably the most notable recent example of this phenomenon. In this case, the Anish Kapoor Cloud Gate and Jaume Plensa Crown Fountain, as well as Frank Gehry’s bridge and amphitheatre, are fully integrated park elements that are themselves becoming recognized symbols for the city.

This integrated approach has been embraced by a number of enlightened landscape architects and agencies who see public art and landscape being fully integrated both in terms of process and product. At Don River Park, Michael Van Valkenberg is working with New York artist Meg Webster to create a focal point at the highest point in the park. Greg Smallenberg is working with Vancouver artist Jill Anholt on a new park at the foot of Sherbourne on Toronto’s waterfront. In both cases an enlightened client, Waterfront Toronto, has supported the collaboration as part of a creative design-driven process. As the leading design profession of the public realm, landscape architects are proving to be leaders in this important urban renewal and identity-defining approach to city building.

Round Table

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Rina Greer

David Zimmer

Michelle Purchase

In my experience, the recurring problems that affect the public art process, including working relationships, are that

One of the things I’ve learned is that there is a distinction between public art and art in the public realm. It’s very clear that public art is art that follows the juried process whereby you would tender for artist input and go through the whole process of selecting an artist. Another aspect is art in the landscape, which is more along the lines of what we do every day as landscape architects. I think that we are in a position, because of our training and our approach to site design, that we are able to participate in both of these processes.

Public art needs a canvas and at times the canvas can be very complicated. This is where we can provide service to the artist: not only in terms of our overall vision of the site, but with the things that nobody is going to consider when looking at the finished piece. That’s the coordination that goes into our work; whether it’s dealing with structural, electrical, construction supervision, our skills really allow us to tie it all together.

Landscape architects certainly are designers, but do designers create art?

The answer depends on whether your definition of public art includes only sculptures, murals, and fountains, or whether it extends to any work that functions as a public amenity or community beautification project.

RINA GREER IS AN ART CONSULTANT WHO SPECIALIZES IN INTEGRATED ART AND ARCHITECTURE PROJECTS. SHE IS THE COFOUNDER OF STUDIOSTAMPA INC., A DESIGN AND SUPPLY COMPANY THAT CREATES PRODUCTS FOR INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR SPACES.

• the artist is often seen as a necessary requirement to win the commission but the artist and/or artwork is expendable thereafter; • landscape architects often think public art is unnecessary since they consider their designs to be “artful”; • the artist is the “outsider” incorporated into a team that has worked together before, with no means of advocating his/her role, which is minimized in the design process; • architects and landscape architects often believe they can produce the artwork themselves, as part of their scope of services; • architects and landscape architects choose artists they know for the team whereas the selection should be by art consultants, from a vastly broader base.

I think the realities that need to be considered are primarily that artists have a vital contribution to make to the collaborative process that goes beyond the merely well-designed industrial, architectural, or landscape features.

Some of the solutions in creating a better working process are, firstly, that the City should require a public art consultant on the collaborative team in the design of public park spaces when public art is a required component. Secondly, for smaller projects, like parkettes, and for projects funded by public art budgets, the team should be led by the artist, with the landscape architect as a consultant. This ensures that the art concept of the park informs the layout and landscape features.

DAVID ZIMMER, OALA, CSLA, IS A LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT IN THE DOWNTOWN AND COMMUNITY RENEWAL DIVISION AT THE CITY OF HAMILTON. HE HAS BEEN INVOLVED IN THE PREPARATION OF THE CITY'S PUBLIC ART MASTER PLAN.

We recently opened a parkette in Hamilton’s Ottawa Street BIA and part of that design incorporates both aspects of public art. Ottawa Street is known as the home-décor district so we did a lot of custom design for this project that reflects this notion, right down to the bollards looking like spools of thread, manhole covers looking like buttons, and a paving pattern to reflect a quilt—that’s art in the landscape. In addition, we incorporated a space for a piece of public art that we will commission through the public art process. As a landscape architect, I created the vision, and in conjunction with others set the groundwork for the inclusion of a juried piece of public art. It is a huge win-win for everybody.

MICHELLE PURCHASE, OALA, CSLA, IS A LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT, PROFESSIONAL ARTIST, AND PRINTMAKER. SHE TEACHES AT NIAGARA COLLEGE IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE AND COORDINATES THE ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION PROGRAM.

Certainly the design of the landscape is of vital importance to the experience of an artistic piece. A lone statue, situated in the centre of a stark, open plaza, could be compared to taking a photograph of a beautiful person in the act of chewing food (a situation where most people are not portrayed in their best light). Often public opinion towards sculpture is unfavourable because of its arbitrary existence and lack of context with the surrounding environment. A good landscape architect can not only remedy this problem but, through design, may even inspire the actual artistic creation in the first place.

Based on this perspective, the landscape designer is also “the artist,” as they are collaborating together.

I think that landscape architects play a vital role in the implementation of public art.

Most artists are not well acquainted with obtaining engineering approvals, permits, and general construction process.

Landscape architects also identify and create opportunities for the installation of public art. Artists need landscape designers, designers need artists, and the public benefits from both.

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NETAMI STUART, ASSOCIATE MEMBER, IS A LANDSCAPE DESIGNER AND CERTIFIED ARBORIST WITH PMA LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS.

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FUNG LEE, OALA, CSLA, IS A SENIOR LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT AND PRINCIPAL AT PMA LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS

Notes

Notes: A Miscellany of News and Events

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exhibition

volunteering

Considering all of the recent interest in Toronto’s waterfront parks and the design competitions shaping the area’s future, there’s been relatively little focus on the lake itself—its health, ecology, and longterm prognosis. But a new exhibition in Toronto turns the spotlight towards what goes on under the surface. Hidden below the waters of Lake Ontario for 18 months, a replica of Henry Moore’s 1953-4 sculpture Warrior With Shield has now emerged from its temporary aquatic home to become the centrepiece of an exhibition, “Cuttings (Supplement),” by Simon Starling, at The Power Plant gallery in Toronto.

A new project, the Toronto Balconies Bloom campaign, was recently launched by two volunteers, Gabriele Davies and Fern Mosoff, who are passionately interested in seeing more balcony gardens in Toronto.

Their intent is to green the city's balconies and to inspire increased gardening activity across income, age, and ethno-cultural groups. With a balcony garden competition planned for the summer, the group is looking for volunteers to help with the project, especially as judges. For more information, contact Fern Mosoff at magmos@sympatico.ca, or call 416-654-9472.

The zebra mussel-encrusted sculpture, “Infestation Piece (Musselled Moore),” is one of nine major works by the Turner Prize-winning artist to be included in the exhibition, which runs from March 1-May 11.

For more information, see www.thepowerplant.org.

lecture On April 8, 2008, as part of The Bulthaup Spring 2008 Lecture Series at the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, Michael Van Valkenburgh will be giving a talk entitled “Don River Park, The Portlands Estuary, and Other Recent MVVA Projects.” This presentation, by the 2007-08 Michael Hough/OALA Visiting Critic, begins at 6:30 in Room 103, 230 College Street, Toronto, and is free of charge. For more information, see www.ald.utoronto.ca or phone 416-978-5038.

school news The University of Guelph reports a surge of interest in students applying for the landscape architecture program. According to Maurice Nelischer, OALA, CSLA, Director, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, “Last year, there were 79 applications for our BLA program from high-school students in Ontario (we had a total of about 150 participants). This year, after some aggressive marketing of the profession and the program, we have received 397 applications from highschool students. We are expecting about 500 applications overall.” As Nelischer points out, “Clearly there is a strong demand to get into our green profession.”

Notes

new members

books

The Ontario Association of Landscape Architects is proud to recognize and welcome the following new full members to the association: Mark Ambtman Colin Berman * Melissa Cate Christ Micheline Clouard * Barry Day Bryan Jones Amy Roots * Janet Sperling * Yvonne Yeung * Asterisk (*) denotes a Full Member not having custody and use of the Association seal.

To help navigate through the voluminous literature on “land art” and the relationship between art and landscape architecture— this issue’s theme—Pat Eaves-Brown (MA, MLS, MFA, Academic Liaison Librarian, Landscape Architecture and Fine Art, University of Guelph) recommends the following books:

awards Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s Excellence in Education Award honours educators in Ontario who have encouraged students in the development of sustainable communities by integrating sustainable concepts and community development into their curriculum. Dr. Robert Corry, an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Guelph, won the award in 2007. To nominate an outstanding educator, go to www.cmhc.ca (keywords: Excellence in Education). The nomination deadline is May 31, 2008.

in memoriam The OALA is saddened to announce the passing of Rhonda Cleary (Maertens). A full member since 1984, Rhonda Cleary passed away in October 2007.

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General Andre, Carl. Art in the Landscape: A Symposium Hosted by the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas, on September 30 and October 1, 1995. 1st ed. Marfa, Texas: Chinati Foundation, 2000.

Beardsley, John. Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape. 4th ed. New York: Abbeville Press, 2006.

Gooding, Mel, and William Furlong. Artists Land Nature. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002.

Prigann, Herman, Heike Strelow, and Vera David. Ecological Aesthetics: Art in Environmental Design: Theory and Practice. Basel; Boston: Birkhäuser, 2004.

Reed, Peter Shedd. Groundswell: Constructing the Contemporary Landscape. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2005 Sonfist, Alan, Wolfgang Becker, and Robert Rosenblum. Nature, the End of Art: Environmental Landscapes. New York: London: D.A.P.; Thames & Hudson, 2004.

Tufnell, Ben. Land Art. London: Tate, 2006.

Weilacher, Udo. Between Landscape Architecture and Land Art. Basel: Birkhäuser, 1996.

The Landscape and Artists Baker, George, Lynne Cooke, and Karen J. Kelly. Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty: True Fictions, False Realities. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

Christo, Jeanne-Claude, Wolfgang Volz, Anne L. Strauss, and Jonathan Henery.

Gates, Central Park, New York City, 19792005. Köln; London: Taschen, 2005.

Goldsworthy, Andy. Enclosure: Andy Goldsworthy. England: Thames & Hudson, 2007.

Graziose Corrin, Lisa. Mark Dion. London: Phaidon, 1997.

Long, Richard. Richard Long: Walking the Line. London; New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002.

Miss, Mary, and Daniel M. Abramson.

Mary Miss. 1st ed. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004.

Simon, Jacques, and Femke De Lameillieure.

Articulture: Jacques Simon, Paysagiste = Jacques Simon, Landscape Architect.

Oostkamp: Stichting Kunstboek, 2006.

Torres, Ana Maria. Isamu Noguchi: A Study of Space. New York: Monacelli Press, 2000 For the full text of Pat Eaves-Brown’s “Art in the Landscape Bibliography,” visit www.oala.ca. The full bibliography includes references to journal articles, all of which can be found in the library at the University of Guelph.

For information about advertising in Ground: Landscape Architect Quarterly, please contact Heather Heagle executivedirector@oala.ca 416.231.4181

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AS TOLD TO LORRAINE JOHNSON

Neil Mills is a photo-based artist who lives in Toronto

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"Untitled" from the series Altered Landscapes

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Neil Mills

“I moved from Saskatchewan to Toronto five years ago, and one of the first places that really fascinated me was the Leslie Street Spit. It’s a nature reserve but it’s also a dumping ground, and this combination creates an almost alien-like landscape.

“I wanted to put something permanent in the landscape—something for people to ponder, enjoy, or maybe detest—and because I’ve worked as a graffiti artist, paint was just a natural. So I go with paint at night and I take photos during the day.

I’m playing visual games in the landscape, manipulating, or transforming an

industrial space, creating a new part of the landscape.

“I hope that people who stumble upon my work will first enjoy it and then look around and notice more of the environment, more about the surroundings. Maybe they’ll even say, hey, this isn’t a ‘natural’ shoreline, this is a constructed shoreline, and this is a constructed object within that shoreline. Maybe they’ll start to see the landscape in a completely different way.”

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TO SEE MORE OF NEIL MILLS' WORK, VISIT WWW.NEILMILLSIMAGING.COM