More building material for the installation

Yesterday, Shauna and I went over to Harvey’s. He generously gave us materials  for the project. Though it was raining, I enjoyed working outside.

Day 3 – borders, walls, fences, guardrails

View from locks, at 5:30 am – time to come down and look for next location on the way to Griffintown

view of sunrise, from bridge

Big Bamboo/ mike + doug starn/NY Met 2010

BIG BAMBU by Doug & Mike Starn is on the roof at the Met for a limited time.  Invited by The Metropolitan Museum of Art to create a site-specific installation for The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, the twin brothers Mike and Doug Starn present their new work, Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop. The monumental bamboo structure, ultimately measuring 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 50 feet high, takes the form of a cresting wave that bridges realms of sculpture, architecture, and performance.  Set against Central Park and its urban backdrop, Big Bambú suggests the complexity and energy of an ever-changing living organism. It is the thirteenth-consecutive single-artist installation on the Roof Garden.

Big Bambú is a growing and changing sculpture―a vast network of 5,000 interlocking 30- and 40-foot-long fresh-cut bamboo poles, lashed together with 50 miles of nylon rope. It will continue to be constructed throughout the duration of the exhibition. The first phase of the structure―measuring about 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 30 feet high―was completed by opening day, April 27. The artists and rock climbers are built up the eastern portion of the sculpture to an elevation of 50 feet. By summer, the western portion of the sculpture was about 40 feet high. An internal footpath artery system grows along with the structure, facilitating its progress. The evolution of the work has been documented by the artists in photographs and videos.

Visitors are able to experience Big Bambú from the Roof Garden level, open to everyone during regular Museum hours, weather permitting, and to walk among a forest of bamboo poles that serves as the base of the sculpture. Alternatively, visitors are able to explore the artwork on brief tours led by Museum-trained guides. On the guided tours, held during regular Museum hours, weather permitting, small groups of visitors are able to walk along the elevated interior network of pathways roughly 20 to 40 feet above the Roof Garden.

http://billbarr.wordpress.com/category/going-out/

Jean Luc Vilmouth: straircase and palm tree

http://www.slash.fr/artistes/jean-luc-vilmouth/a-propos

Tadashi Kawamata’s Tree Houses in NYC Madison Square Park and Paris Beaubourg

Sketches

treehouse structures in quebec

just wanted to share some pictures of these amazing treehouse-type structures built on Jean Belisle’s land north of Montreal!

“a borrowed view”

So, from the initial research it seems that originally “a borrowed view” was used to describe the art of gardening known as shakkei in Japenese or jie jing in Chinese. Shakkei is the art of creating a garden based around a borrowed view, of treating the landscape as if it were a large painting. It also seems like the term has been reappropriated over and over again, or “borrowed.”

“…in a borrowed view, the designer uses landscape features outside the garden to create a wider panorama than the site itself could ever provide.”
( from “the nature of landscape: a personal quest,” by han lorzing pg. 145 )

“…you have to set certain parameters to design a garden or design a space. There is also a difference between the idea of a garden and the physical reality of a built garden. Historically both in the West and in Japan, gardens first represented “idealized,” ordered nature in a small, enclosed space, protected and secluded from the wilderness outside. Thus, medieval gardens were often intended to manifest God’s glory within their boundaries, directly in contrast to the chaos outside. Similarly, Japanese Zen gardens also represented a microcosm of nature, in which it was believed millions of gods dwelled. So the garden became the foreground to nature, separated and protected by a wall, yet enabling the spectators to see beyond their boundaries. This system is called a “borrowed view,” which is typical of medieval Japanese and Chinese gardens. So definitely this contrast and the importance of the boundary between inside and outside is key. On the other hand, actually building a real garden space entails practical problem-solving, dealing with issues of circulation, accessibility, functionality, and maintenance. In a real landscape, the garden exists in a constant interaction between the “inside”—your sanctuary—and the “outside,” i.e., these pragmatic issues. A garden cannot exist if there is not a world outside its boundary.”
( from a conversation with landscape architect Akiko Ono, http://www.beateguetschow.net/texts.html?&cid=57&cHash=81407f2757 )

Heaven on Earth

Leonard van Munster (Amsterdam) created a tree house on top of the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art with views of the city. Old fruit and veggie crates were used for construction of the  treehouse.

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