Martha Schwartz Partners was one of nine international landscape design firms to be invited to design a small garden installation on the theme of “the harmonious co-existence of nature and the city” at the 2011 International Horticulture Exhibition in Xi’An, China. The garden will be seen by up to 12 million people between April and October 2011 and may by left permanently as part of the legacy strategy for long-term development of the site. This project is commissioned by Xi’An International Horticultural Exposition Organizing Committee.
Cronocaos, OMA’s exhibition on the increasingly urgent topic of preservation in architecture and urbanism, opens today at the New Museum in New York. First shown at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, Cronocaos examines the growing “empire” of preservation and its consequences for the way we build, demolish, and remember.
Around 12 percent of the planet now falls under various regimes of natural and cultural preservation. “Through our respect for the past, heritage is becoming more and more the dominant metaphor for our lives today – a situation we call Cronocaos,” OMA founding partner Rem Koolhaas says. “We are trying to find what the future of our memory will look like.”
The International Horticultural Expo in Xian, China opened on 28th April. The Garden of 10,000 bridges by West 8 is complete along with many other display gardens.
Gardens are telling stories; they are poetry and have a narrative. Our garden represents the human life, the path of people’s lifetime. This path is a path of uncertainty and burden. Many bridges over troubled water. The garden design takes this path of life as a meandering, winding road – continuous and like a labyrinth. The path through nature takes you over 10000 bridges.
An international team led by London based artist Peter Fink (Form Associates) and lighting designer Mark Major (Speirs + Major) in association with Buro Happold in Los Angeles has been announced as the winner of the largest interactive green energy lighting project in North America. The San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge, built in 1969 in the spectacular context of the bay, has become a symbol of the San Diego area – just as the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges are symbols for San Francisco. The San Diego Bridge is characterised by its graceful 2.5 mile long curved deck supported by over 30 towers reaching a height of 200 feet over the navigation channel. The shipping channels are spanned by the world’s longest continuous three-span box girder measuring 1,880 feet.
The four finalist teams recently unveiled their visions for Minneapolis Riverfront Design Competition (MR|DC), the largest landscape and urban design competition in Minneapolis history, each crafting a multidimensional landscape and urban design proposal addressing 220 acres of parkland and surrounding neighborhoods along 11 miles of riverfront from the historic Stone Arch Bridge north to the city limits.
Ken Smith Workshop – City of the River
The river is a catalyst for renewal through new and enhanced park, infrastructure and ecological systems and a series of bold, iconic design scenarios that reflect the area’s history and spirit of place.
Stoss Landscape Urbanism – Streamlines
A longer term transformation that reclaims the river as civic space, introduces new landscapes, infrastructure and urban fabrics, and weaves the multiple new and existing systems and experiences back into the city.
TLS/KVA – RiverFirst
A set of inter related design initiatives – focused on health, mobility and green economy – that function at multiple scales and are enhanced by community outreach strategies to raise public awareness about consumer choice impacts on the river system.
Turenscape – The Resilient River
A fifty year framework for investment that focuses on: ecological renewal, social equity, new economies and a new identity for the city of the river, and includes a strategic approach to ecological infrastructure, re-orienting urbanism and phasing over time.
