Visions of Sydney at Hells Gate
A case of de ja vu. Sometimes a familiar landmark isn’t quite what you think it is. And you experience a sense of disorientation…haven’t I seen this place before? It is somehow familiar yet very strangely different…
New York New York so good they named it twice
I had to look several times and then do some Googling to work out that the photo is of New York’s Hell Gate Bridge. It was designed by Sir Ralph Freeman in 1916 and lacks the majestic setting of Sydney Harbour Bridge. Note the name Sydney ‘Harbour’ Bridge: it encapsulates the all-important relationship between the structure and its context.
Thinking about the situation with landscape….It seems that unlike architecture, landscape is the ‘thing’ itself. Art and architecture position themselves within the landscape in particular ways. But landscape as a made space? I would love to know how you begin to design with a ‘landscape’ blank canvas?
When I have designed with the landscape (and designed landscapes), the topography has always been one of the first points of reference…
Would I be correct in assuming this would be your starting point?
“When we speak of ‘our street’, ‘our town’, ‘our country’, and ‘our Earth’ we are thinking of rights and duties which extend across property boundaries and transcend the generations. This requires Environmental Impact Design (EID), which may be defined as ‘the adaptation of a project design with regard to the supply of public goods (social, natural and aesthetic) and the development of multi-objective landscapes’.” (Landscape Planning and Environmental Impact Design: Ch3 Context Sensitive Design Theory – Intoduction to EID)