Pier

(Photo courtesy of Lift11.)

For Lift11, an urban installations festival being held this summer in Tallinn, Estonia, architects Siiri Vallner and Indrek Peil chose a “weathered and deformed” pier as the site for their temporary intervention.


(Photo courtesy of Lift11.)

There, they covered up some of the upturned concrete slabs with terrace boards on which one can sit and relax.


(Photo courtesy of Lift11.)

“This way,” as the project statement explains, “a derelict and crumbling object can be revived as part of the modern city space, opening up the seaside area of Tallinn for local people and for visitors.”


(Photo courtesy of Lift11.)

We would love to see the rough edges of the pier similarly boarded up in its entirety, though with some modulation on the surface like Vicente Guallart's microcoasts.

(Via Vulgare.)

Liquid DMZ

(South Korean soldiers doing some landscape architecture on the DMZ. Photo by Yonhap/AP.)

This is one of the more interesting photos we've come across in recent weeks. It shows South Korean soldiers searching for North Korean landmines that may have been dislodged from the Korean Demilitarized Zone by last month's devastating floods and landslides. This is a familiar drill, as heavy rains often carry mines across the border. In fact, dozens of them washed up in South Korea last year, killing one and injuring another.

What we like about the photo is that it runs counter to our mental picture of a DMZ that's sharply defined by clipped vegetation, chain-link fences and concrete barriers. Instead, it conjures up an image of a no-man's-land pulsating on the margins. During periods of geologic and hydrological excess, it expands and bulges, then contract when soldiers have comb through the hazardous aggregate of earth and explosives with their metal detectors. You see a crisp line on the map, but it actually sprouts invisible, lobate foliation.

Of course, this variable terrain can be easily and visibly delineated with our post-natural version of Vaux-le-Vicomte's gardens.

Cryptosmoutallen

(Here presumably being field tested in the feral patches of a cryptoforest is part of a new work by Smout Allen commissioned for Landscape Futures: Instruments, Devices and Architectural Inventions, an exhibition opening 13 August 2011 at the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno.)

Algaegarden

(Heather Ring, Brenda Parker and Synnøve Fredericks, Algaegarden, 2011. Photo by Martin Bond, courtesy of Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens.)

That decorative workhorse of gardens since time immemorial — the water feature, pond scum included — gets a makeover in the Algaegarden, one of the new additions at this year's International Garden Festival at Les Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens, Quebec.


(Heather Ring, Brenda Parker and Synnøve Fredericks, Algaegarden, 2011. Photo by Martin Bond, courtesy of Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens.)

In the installation, an art/science/landscape collaboration between Synnøve Fredericks, Brenda Parker and Heather Ring, several different species of algae course through “curtains of tubes hanging from steel frames.” For the moment, the soupy mixture of nutrients and pointillist vegetation looks rather pallid, but the collaborators hope the algae will thrive and their colors grow bolder, like any foliage chromatically mutating through the seasons: reds becoming more vibrant, greens more lush, and blues turning bathypelagic.


(Photo courtesy of Heather Ring, Brenda Parker and Synnøve Fredericks.)


(Heather Ring, Brenda Parker and Synnøve Fredericks, Algaegarden, 2011. Photo by Martin Bond, courtesy of Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens.)

“The algae, often considered a nuisance in the garden pond, here become an object of secret beauty and curiosity,” the avant-gardeners explain. “The garden leads the visitor to appreciate algae both as an alternative to oil and other energy sources and a source of food and nutrition.”

It's a technolicious pergola (or is it an archetypal labyrinth? an espaliered cyborg-plant?) providing a cool respite from our post-millennial angst over peak oil and peak food.

Other gardens:
Sonic Garden
Poule mouillée!
Réflexions colorées

Réflexions colorées

(Hal Ingberg, Réflexions colorées, 2003-ongoing. Photo by Louise Tanguay, courtesy of International Garden Festival, Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens, 2006.)

We've posted Hal Ingberg's marvelous pavilion, Réflexions colorées, at least a couple times before, and we're doing it again to alert our readers that Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens' annual festival of avant-gardening in Quebec is well under way.


(Hal Ingberg, Réflexions colorées, 2003-ongoing. Photo by Louise Tanguay, courtesy of International Garden Festival, Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens, 2006.)

As described by the artist, this “semi-reflective equilateral triangle (20 x 20 x 20 ft) provides an intimate, courtyard-like enclosure that both frames and intensifies the perception of the forest. Within the enclosure, the colour of the glass establishes a sense of spatial definition, while its semi-reflective surface creates surprising perceptual readings that change with the conditions of light and the visitor’s position towards trees and angles at which glass corners meet. From the outside, the installation is physically understood, but its receptor quality transforms it into an enigmatic object.”


(Hal Ingberg, Réflexions colorées, 2003-ongoing. Photo by Louise Tanguay, courtesy of International Garden Festival, Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens, 2006.)


(Hal Ingberg, Réflexions colorées, 2003-ongoing. Photo by Louise Tanguay, courtesy of International Garden Festival, Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens, 2006.)


(Hal Ingberg, Réflexions colorées, 2003-ongoing. Photo by Louise Tanguay, courtesy of International Garden Festival, Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens, 2006.)

The festival runs through 2 October 2011.

In the Archives:
Sonic Garden
Poule mouillée!

(Im)possible Chicago #18

(A spaghettified zoo.)

No longer just a regular plot tucked into a small corner of the city, Lincoln Park Zoo now zigzags through neighborhoods, suburban outlets and farmlands further afield. It even extends through the lake. To make this spaghettified zoo continuous, wildlife overpasses are spliced in.

Inner precincts once barren of biodiversity now teem with exotic species. From living rooms and kitchens, one can spy on the wildlife scampering around in their habitat enclosures. Day and night, the sonic ambience of jungles and savannas mingle with that of the city.

In the summer, the zoo's small herd of wildebeest undertake their annual migration, usually doing at least a few, dusty orbits. Next up are the elephants. On rooftops, bleachers are erected for spectators to watch this natural spectacle, NASCAR-style.

While rare, animals do escape from time to time, and when that happens, news helicopters are dispatched immediately to follow the retrieval team. On the ground, reporters shadow their every move like wildlife filmmakers, even emulating the hushed timbre of David Attenborough during their live telecasts. It's always a top story, even if people aren't savagely attacked or an outbreak of a virulent disease isn't imminent.

((Im)possible Chicagos is a series of hallucinatory joyrides through one hundred and twenty five asynchronous Chicagos.)

A Center for PostNatural History

(Photo courtesy of the Center for PostNatural History.)

We've always liked the work produced by the Center for PostNatural History, so it's great to hear that they've recently opened a central location in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to house their collections, a ragtag bunch that usually travels around from galleries to museums to more atypical exhibition spaces. It's not Plum Island though.