The Musée du Quai Branly , a cultural centre for indigenous art from around the world, opened to much fanfare in 2006. This was the ‘Grand Projet’ of President Jacque Chirac after all- but for the design press the attention focussed on Patrick Blanc’s clothing of Jean Nouvel’s architecture with his ‘Living Wall’.

Much less remarked upon at the time was the riverside landscape that the Museum sat within. Patric Blanc’s installation is indeed great, and studying how the individual plants cohabit with it’s neighbours, in their little pockets of felt, is fascinating. But the excitement starts when you pass through the gates,  where Gilles Clement‘s landscape is reminiscent of a wildlife park. He’s let the rhinos and the lions of the plant world loose on each other. Beasts such as Miscanthus, bamboo, ferns, Euphorbia, Hedera, and Rosa canina have been given the space to battle it out for supremacy in what he calls a ‘non intervention’. The gardener merely plays the role of referee.

It’s enthralling, and I can’t wait to return to see how the course of the boundary lines evolve over time. What is essential is that the bold, tall planting is in complete scale and harmony with Jean Nouvel’s building – it will be interesting to see if this ‘non interventionalist’ style could find favour with architects in the way that the New Perennial Movement has done previously.

Parc André Citroën, Paris

Further down the Seine, in 1992 Gilles Clement contributed to Parc André Citroën, working alongside Alain Provost, who’s known in the UK for the Thames Barrier Park. Parc Andre Citroen is seen as a landmark design for public parks, but I’d also read and heard criticism from visitors and Parisians alike.

Architecture plays a role here, but as a structure for the park. It segregates gardens and creates tree canopy walkways. These hard surfaces, and their style, have started to age like a Soviet monument. And like Soviet monuments you sense there is an idealistic purpose behind every decision.

The smaller enclosed ‘serial’ gardens, reminiscent of Duisborg Nord of the same era, are a pleasant contrast to the enormous central lawn area. The six serial gardens aligned next to each other are each associated with a different colour, metal, a planet, a day of the week, a state of the water and a sense. For example the Green Garden is based around tin, Jupiter, Thursday, spring water and the sense of hearing. Some of these are incredibly experimental, others are unsatisfying, but you can engage with each of their individual personalities as you would in a private garden – a wonderful touch for such a big park in such a busy city.

The parks are down the river from each other, and offer a rare opportunity to see how the practice from this great French gardener had developed over 15 years. You can see the seeds of his ‘non-interventional’ stewardship scattered around Parc Andre Citroen and  compare it with the Musee Quai Branly, where it’s the fundamental concept and has been warmly embraced by the public. This style of planting means that it will continue to evolve and reward repeat visits. The fact that they’re both in central Paris makes this a very attractive proposition indeed.

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The Botanical Gardens of Barcelona have all the ingredients to be one of the most exciting gardens of this century. Situated at the top of Montjuic overlooking the city, and next door to the Olympic stadium, it has a Mediterranean climate that ensures plants from Australia, Chile, California and South Africa feel right at home. The council appear to have given complete artistic control over to a team of five multi-disciplinarians, including the late great Catalan landscape architect Bet Figueras, to push the boundaries of garden design, as the city has done with architects for over a century.

But it’s not.

If a botanical garden is about the plants first it definitely fails. In their defence few plants have matured enough in the 13 years since it opened to become characters in their own right. But till then the density, the spacing and playful interaction between the plants feels unconsidered. You’re not inspired to search for the plant labels, even if you could get near them.

And if pushing boundaries often refers to hard landscaping elements then it falls short too. European garden traditions are replaced with jagged, variable angles with multiple path choices, but none with enough tension to lure you to them. A positive feature is that Corten steel is used as retaining walls, which are completely fitting given that the colour of Catalan soil can be the colour of rust. Sadly, the same train of thought didn’t apply to the path material. Poured concrete has never looked like such a wasteful resource- it’s scary to think how much was actually used. This, the most dominant feature in the whole garden, needed a secondary sensorial quality to ensure that the zig-zags shapes weren’t just about being different for the sake of it.

The style and the failure reminds me of Daniel Lieberskind’s Jewish Museum of the same era in Berlin, where the architect was given license to make his architecture the destination for the tourists at the expense of the sensitive Holocaust artefacts.

It’s wonderful that the council have been so brave to trust the design team with such a radical brief. But sadly for them and us it suggests that there may have been a power struggle amongst the five multi-disciplinarians, and it wasn’t the horticulturist that came out on top.

Mies Van der Rohe’s German Pavilion

Situated a few minutes walk down from the botanical gardens, at the bottom of Montjuic, is a seminal piece of Bauhaus architecture. Experienced first hand, Mies Van der Rohe’s German Pavilion, built for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition, justifies the hype that precedes it. Its pioneering style is put into perspective by the nostalgic kitsch of a Catalan palace that directly overlooks it – it’s difficult to believe but they were actually built for the same exposition. It’s tempting to read both of them in the context of the history of both nations when they were created.

In contrast to the Botanical Gardens, the pavilion is a lesson in shaping space and considerate materials. Whilst the little planting is minimal and treated as a surface, as is the water, the wavy geological forms captured in the stone panels evoke a living, shifting planet that fills the structure with energy and awe.

The majority of the pavilion, is open space, with fluid movement flowing through inside and out, with butterflied panels of travertine, green marble and onyx shaping a few moments of tension that tease you round corners.

The influence of this ‘less-is-more’ approach on certain garden designers is obvious, and Christopher Bradley-Hole certainly comes to mind, who has not hid his admiration for the German Pavilion. In theory, it should be simple to recreate the impact that the pavilion has, but so few have managed to understand the commitment to an ideal that is needed. And probably just as well, as this is an 80 year old garden, and so to mimic this style does not make a modern garden, but a modernist style garden. The outdoor room gardens that have been fashionable and aspirational in the last 20 years that ape this modernist style are usually described as contemporary gardens by their designers or publishers. A better term I feel is what garden writer Darryl Moore prefers to call it – ‘Comfortable Modernism’.

Templeman Harrison London Garden Design

From 1973-74, 
Santa Cruz de Tenerife held an outdoor sculpture exhibition that heralded
a symbolic shift in the last years of Spain’s insular Franco regime. The
International Exhibition of Sculpture was put together by the Architecture
College of the Canary Islands. The first of it’s kind in Spain, the message
being conveyed was that the doors were open to a culturally adventurous
country. Forty artists of the calibre of Henry Moore and Joan Miro exhibited in
one of a most successfully designed city landscapes: Underneath the tree
canopies of the Ramblas, which
spanned the breadth of the city, aptly called Rambla General Franco, and the mesmerising, jungle like, Parque de Garcia Sanabria.

It’s a wonderful snapshot of modernist art of the 20th
Century. Abstract art displayed on plinths clearly reign supreme, and very few
directly respond to their surroundings.

Soon after the exhibition’s installation the Generalisimo
died, and the outside world trickling through Tenerife’s arrival lounge doors
became a flood. But they were attracted by cheap resorts in the south. Tourists
were content to ignore the cheek-by-jowl concrete towers, directing their gazes
instead at guaranteed year long sun. And so began an economic boom. A poor
population became affluent, and intensive and unchecked development followed. But
a beautiful island and it’s unique flora became scarred, and eventually so did
it’s reputation.

Today, consumers now have
considerably more exotic choice for budget luxury resorts around the world. But in addition, the consumer now demands
cultural stimulation, and
are proving it by spending their money elsewhere. The Tenerife government is only too painfully aware
of this, as the economic crisis has hit particularly hard here, and now it is also the
population bares the scars.

50 years on political shifts have seen the renaming of the Rambla General  Franco to the blandly inoffensive Rambla Santa Cruz. But power makers are once again looking towards
the urban landscape to convey the same message as in 1973.

50 years on the majority of the sculptures, are still
standing, and looking remarkably good. But the language of contemporary culture
has changed. Like many cities, they’ve concluded that landscape and urban design is
the new sculpture –and it’s the architects, no longer mere curators, who are
the artists.

Admirably ambitious redevelopments in the city centre, including
main squares, harbour fronts, dry river beds, opera houses and modern art museums
by the likes of Herzog and De Meuron and Santiago Calatrava are contextual responses to the
forms and geology of the island and sea. They’re site specific works of art
that thoughtfully envelop the population and the visitors, and appropriately reminiscent of the ethos of the Canary Island’s own master landscaper, Cesar Manrique. But these huge
investments aren’t extravagant displays of cultural wealth, they’re calculated economic risks that must pay for themselves indirectly.

For the time being, the city’s population is far more enamored with the works of 50 years ago. But that’s not their concern- more
important to them is their message being heard. Will the outside world choose
to engage in this new landscape? Rich rewards await those who do.

In the last blog I
introduced Hortweek to Hackney’s ‘Farm: Shop’. If you’re now hooked on intensive indoor farming here’s a second helping for you to delve into:

Kerfir map

Symbolically, your first
encounter at the farm is the Kerfir map in the entrance. Yeast culture grown
for creating yoghurt is a bit like making sourdough, it has a starter mix that you
keep on feeding. Also like sourdough is the fact that you can remove some and
start a new culture- and  visitors are encouraged to do
this. Their addresses are then pinned on to map of London painted on the wall, and
by doing so it informs us where the word and culture of Farm: Shop has spread
to. As little dots emerge on the map of London it becomes reminiscent of the Rhyzome Philosophy of Deleauze and Guattari.

Fish and Salad

The two fish tanks
contain around 80 fish- and it’s their waste that goes on to provide the
nutrients for the salad crops stacked high on shelves surrounding the café.

Nile Tilapia has been
chosen as they’re a species that are content to live in close proximity to each
other, are less susceptible to pest and diseases, grow quickly, but
not least of course, they’re tasty. They’re fed worms from the wormery, kitchen
scraps and soya based food 3-4 times a day.

A filter takes out
solids, which get added to the compost. The plant roots are then submersed in the resulting oxygenated, nutrient rich
water- and as a result the roots clean the water for when it’s returned to the fish tank. It’s high density growing and there’s rapid growth by salad crops,
cucumbers, courgettes and melons.

Chickens on roof.

Chickens kept on flat roofs
had been common in London during the second world war, when they provided
homeowners with fresh eggs and sometimes/eventually the bird around the
egg too.

The chickens are fed
waste from the café and the nearby Ridley road market. The chicken coop is
filled with bark from the vegetable  growing project ‘Eastern Curve’ literally across the street.
This provides the chicken with a surface that they enjoy to scratch around in but
it also absorbs the nitrate from their excretions. This bark is then sent back to
the Eastern Curve for their compost bins, who reciprocate with fresh bark.

Tea towers

These innovative,
rotating growing systems, using Leca as a growing medium, have been planted
with the cut and come again herbs used for the café’s herbal teas. They can grow 40
plants per square foot, and at the base giant freshwater prawns scavenge for algae
and waste.

Fruiting Room and  The Polytunnel

The heat produced in
their fruiting room, where they grow tomatoes and peppers under artificial
light, is channeled out of the room into the cooler growing areas. The Polytunnel
practically fills the small back garden. Whilst the growing practices here are
more conventional, the fact that is houses work spaces for laptop users and
a cinema isn’t.

 ‘Mushroom
Reef’

The experiment in the
basement is for what Andrew Merrit is calling a Mushroom Reef- a variation of
an installation he has has already exhibited. Shitake and Oyster Mushrooms will
be grown in pasteurised saw dust.

Pigs.

The Pigs will be fed with scraps from the kitchen
and Ridley Road market and, they’ll be slaughtered in the project’s sister
farm in Stevenage. Pigs were often bred to
be kept in cities, even in homes. Like the chickens, this practice again became
common during and after the second world war. The fact that they’re going to be kept at Farm: Shop resonates with a common remark about the UK’s current economy driving us back
to urban agriculture.

They’re currently ‘toying’ with the idea of tattooing the different cuts of meat on to the pig.

It’s all about education you see.

Well that future’s here.
It may not be using green walls as such, instead there are salad crops piled high on shelves, positively shining under the artificial lighting. And they’re surrounding the walls of a café and meeting rooms. And those incredibly obliging fish also end up accompanying the salad on the plate. This is Farm: Shop. 

It’s an art community project run by Something & Son, who include Sam, a sociologist, Paul an engineer and Andy an artist. They’ve taken over a terraced house as part of Hackney Council’s ‘Art in Empty Shops’ . Their aim is to educate, experiment and inspire debate about sustainably feeding the growing urban population. The project has been set up in partnership with Aquaponics, a non for profit organisation based at Stirling University- which has set up similar systems in the UK and Africa.

And it’s not just the one ‘Closed loop system’ either. They’ve set up various domestic, intensive farming techniques in the hope that others can make their own conclusions as to which is the most effective. These include WWII style pig and chicken rearing, polytunnel cinemas, yoghurt farming, fruiting rooms and even a ‘mushroom reef’. In fact, it’s by not relying on one system alone that it’s hoped that the project will become financially sustainable. And yes, this does all fit in a terraced house.

Indeed it’s so jam-packed I’ll have to leave it till next time to fill you in with the core details- you’ll be rearing boars in you living room in no time …..

They embody the manifesto hailed by post-peak oil gardener
activists. These  tiny gardens are so
perfectly adapted to the dense urban environment and to climate change that their
plentiful harvests laugh at the shade and rain shadows imposed by buildings.

Audaciously borrowing otherwise redundant council owned
land, mostly without asking it appears, these gardeners use adjacent trees or
drain pipes to support climbers and figs, or trellis canopies made of old
bedsteads for their squashes and vines, and unrecognisable spinaches and greens as dense groundcover.
Here are the multi-tiered forest gardens Mark Laurence has asked us asked to
adopt. Here are the Climate Change crops that Mark Diacono advises us to choose
over potatoes and carrots. Ingeniously using only found or recycled
materials the only costs are the seeds and soil improvers.

So who are these innovators nestled amongst the art and
design community in Shoreditch? These are the gardens of the first generation
Bangladeshi community.

They’re not aware that their common sense is our avant-garde.
For them it’s never made sense to leave bare soil between rows of spinach as it
means more weeding, watering and essential nutrients washing away. They
appreciate how precious every patch of land is and fulfil it’s potential in a
way that we’ll have to mimic as urban environments become further populated.

I say first generation Bangladeshi as the next generation on
the whole prefer not to be associated with the vegetable gardens of their
parents and grandparents. These teenagers and young professionals see these
admittedly messy gardens, inferring a certain level of poverty, as something
they’d like to escape from.

However, for those of us hoping to
take advantage of the scattered pockets of redundant land throughout the urban
environment their skills and knowledge are a resource to
harvest .

N.B. Photos taken in
mid November

Templeman Harrison: London Garden Design

It’s mid-September, and the hangovers have now merged with that beginning of school year dread a lot of us still feel. That means enough time has lapsed to both still remember the performances at this years Edinburgh Fringe but also gage which actually still resonate. And it’s quite clear to me at least, that the unofficial entrant Little Sparta, perched on the fringes of Edinburgh, was the star of the festival. It was one of those shows you would never want to end.

The best-known features of Ian Hamilton Finlay’s garden are perhaps his concrete poetry. Many of these words, mostly carved into stone, are concerned with his moral and philosophical interest in societies at key points of history. They’re at every corner, and in truth, there are actually too many I believe. But they do anchor the ephemeral experience of the garden and weather-beaten countryside to something more permanent- a description often associated with Chinese garden’s use of the written word.

The planting takes its lead from the epic countryside, mimicking the limited plant palette that you see throughout the heathlands and Caledonian forests. This sits well with his conceptual interest in man’s place in nature. But conversely, so do the many little garden rooms that hug the house, which talk to us about man’s cohabitation with nature as well as each other.

These small rooms, with tree canopies as ceilings, are made to human scale. Indeed, there are a few that seem intended to invite two people to lie down- they’re incredibly intimate, romantic spaces. It seems he’s concerned with all the roles humans play, whether as thinkers or as lovers, in the natural world and society. I’ve never visited a garden that caters to human intimacy so explicitly before. Does anybody know of any other examples?

Despite being much loved, it was named Scotland’s favourite work of art after all, Little Sparta does need more support as it can’t access traditional funding (there’s no wheelchair access and it’s only open 50 days a year).
So whilst you may not find it in the official programme if you visit the Edinburgh festival, do reward yourself with an emotional afternoon where you are the integral part of the performance – as this show must go on.

Templeman Harrison: London Garden Designers

These are legitimate concerns. However, if you also choose to listen to the angry response from New Delhi over our media’s hyped up reports, you could also view the whole affair as part of a pattern developed by the press every time that we’re at risk from something alien, whether that’s jobs, diseases or terrorism. For a long time now there have been obvious concerns voiced that the stories accumulate to create long-term cultural prejudices in society.

The examples of the destructive impact that non-native invasive species of plants or pests can have on our flora are very real and many. And counter to this we know through recent research that non-native plants don’t actually have much of a diverse affect on our gardens’ eco-systems.
But what about the cultural impact on landscape design- if we’re living in an age of media saturation, can we really expect our designs not to be swayed by these stories?

I say this in response to something that James Hitchmough shed light on at a symposium at the London College of Garden Design recently, and it made me question ‘creative’ decisions I’ve made at my own practice. He asked that we should ensure that drives for native only planting don’t have any ‘nationalistic’ motives. I’d never considered it before, believing that there was no other subtext in promoting this ‘purity’ other than ecology and a sense of place.

But I was uncomfortably enlightened further when I read an account in Susan Herrington’s essential book On Landscapes of the native planting drive in the 1930s by the Third Reich. She recounts how they recreated pre-industrial landscapes in order to galvanise National Socialism and legitimize notions of racial superiority in connection with understanding nature. It promoted the idea that National Socialist Germans were just good forest people from a fertile north which should be protected from the rootless Jews of the desert. The Third Reich landscape designers were honoured for being especially gifted in interpreting nature and recreating it in their designs, and their work was even considered of military importance.

Guidelines were created, ‘Rules of Design for the Landscape’, to ensure that only native plants were used in a ‘close to nature style’. Alien plants along highways, parks and rural areas were exterminated and replaced, becoming symbols of the Third Reich’s good handling of nature that was morally superior to others.

This is obviously an extreme scenario, and it’s worth taking a look at the Wikipedia page on Jens Jensen to read arguments to suggest that this is just “an imaginary conspiracy in Ecological Design”.  But it illustrates the point that even the most natural looking gardens, whether from Eighteenth century Britain or the Third Reich, express the culture of the time, and the aspirations of the designer and client.

My question is, when observers look back at the naturalistic gardens of the beginning of the 21st century, what they will read our underlying intentions to be?

Templeman Harrison London Landscape Design