In the age of ecology and sustainability, landscape architecture, like other design professions, is in the process of finding new areas of exploration, new types of work, and a more diverse group of clients that require renewed research and learning. Gary Hilderbrand’s erudite and accessible essay, in a new book on his firm, is an inspiring guide through a modernist’s commitment to rationality and abstraction while it shows a deep understanding of and respect for the immense variety and unpredictability of the profession’s pre-eminent material, Nature. Combining skill with hope, the firm has created and is in the process of creating, some of our most memorable, yet sometimes invisible landscapes, thus the name of the book, Visible/Invisible: Landscape Works of Reed Hilderbrand, newly published by Metropolis Books. In addition to Gary’s enlightened view of his profession, we hear from such notable figures as Peter Walker and the photographer, Millicent Harvey, among others. But it’s Hilderbrand’s own words that make us want to see, examine, marvel at, and appreciate what his firm is doing. “The landscape is bigger than we are,” he writes. “We alter its substance and its processes, and it grows back at us with force. We can’t see exactly how, but we know it will. We come to embrace a certain image. Is it right?” —SSS

In the early morning light of a photograph taken by Alan Ward in the summer of 2010, a canopy of cedar elms hovers over a pavilion, a swimming pool, and gently graded lawn terraces. The image was made on the bank of Upper Bachman Creek in Dallas, Texas, on a 6-acre property where Philip Johnson designed a house in 1964 for Henry S. and Patricia Beck. When Doug Reed and I first visited this site in 2003, the spatial power of these trees was barely visible. Fully engulfed in a tangle of two species of Ligustrum—one shrublike, growing up to 12 feet in height, the other with 3-inch trunks reaching nearly 20 feet—the land was virtually impenetrable. For perhaps two decades, an aging Mrs. Beck had neglected portions of her property east of the creek and benignly allowed nature to run its course. More than a hundred volunteer cedar elms and a handful of other trees, including several Texas live oaks and a single giant cottonwood, had formed a canopy that merged with comparably overgrown woodlands on either side of the parcel. We saw a degraded, illegible landscape.

Mrs. Beck sold the property in 2002 to a young Dallas family of four, and the new owners committed to a massive project to rescue and reinhabit Johnson’s house and to recover health and functionality for the landscape. Over a seven-year period, we transformed this patch of emergent forest through a set of operations and practices whose evidence is sometimes visible but often obscured. Recapturing a space for family life and for the display of sculpture necessitated significant disturbance and successive rehabilitation efforts: removing dozens of the poorest trees and preserving the most viable; opening up the canopy to improve light and air; eliminating invasive plant species; correcting drainage and soil structure; reinforcing and replanting the stream bank; and establishing several kinds of grassland and prairie and groundcover crops. Read more…

Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto will be designing this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, came the recent announcement. This prestigious commission is given once a year to an international architect who has not completed a building in England. In the past it has been given to major names such as Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, and Oscar Niemeyer. Fujimoto will be the thirteenth commission for the pavilion, and at age 41, is the youngest architect to ever receive this honor.

Fujimoto’s design is for a semi-transparent ring that shelters visitors from the elements and forms a visually engaging backdrop. The ring itself is constructed from a lattice formation of thin steel poles that form an irregular, helter-skelter geometry. Fujimoto has stated that his intent is to encourage visitors to interact with the landscape, by emphasizing the transparency of the design, and the cloud-like qualities of the structure. The 350 square-foot space will also include seating areas and a café for visitors. The pavilion will be built for three months on the Serpentine Gallery’s lawn in Kensington, London, after which it will be dismantled like its twelve predecessors.

The pavilion’s unusual design fits in neatly as an extension of Fujimoto’s recent work. His firm, Sou Fujimoto Architects, has lately been maintaining a high profile with several bold experiments in residential architecture, like his recent House NA. Each room of this nearly entirely transparent house is at a different elevation, and connected by ladders or stairs to the adjacent rooms. 2008’s Final Wooden House was another experiment in multiple levels and dynamic use of space. The house is a box formed out of wooden blocks that are stacked to create an irregular, undulating floor plan. Floors from certain areas become seating for other areas of the house, and the use of each space changes according to the perspective of the inhabitant.

Fujimoto’s latest design is an exciting continuation of his experimental approach to architecture. The pavilion will be on display from June 8 through October 20 of this year.

Brian Bruegge is an undergraduate student at Fordham University, majoring in communications and media studies, and history. He also studies visual arts and environmental policy, and has previously written for several other websites and publications on a range of topics.

Palms reflecting on Glade Lake

As much as I have enjoyed New York and its famous urbanity in the years since I moved here, a recent visit to Miami (where I moved from) reminded me of the softening powers of nature. It’s easy to forget this primeval presence when we’re underground or walking in crowded canyons of grey stone and brown brick buildings.  By contrast, in Miami, I am soothed as I go about my day and catch a glimpse of unobstructed skies and expansive bay and ocean views, and the reinvigorating presence of lush flora year around and everywhere. On my last day there I went by the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden to get a good dose of that green paradise, hoping it would last for me through end of winter. The Fairchild does not disappoint!

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Winning an award should be in and of itself good enough, but the satisfaction of the win inevitably deflates when you’re stuck with a plastic trophy to put on your desk. That was not the case when our Game Changers received their Corian, laser-engraved, geometric trophies by Tietz-Baccon at this year’s Game Changers awards ceremony.

The awards presented at the ceremony were custom designed, assembled, and graciously donated by the digital fabricators, based out of Long Island City. They were laser-carved out of Corian, with the seven sides of each award carved simultaneously. Their heptadronal shape allows for each model to sit on any side. Put together, they create an entirely different symphony of shapes and capture the spirit of our Game Changers.

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I have mixed feelings about the sea of mail that inundates us around the holidays. Having worked with architecture firms for many years, I’ve had the card versus email greeting debate time and again (and, admittedly, landed on both sides over the years). But once in a while, I receive a card that reminds me what thought and intentionality can do for the “hard copy” format.

KieranTimberlake’s annual message of good wishes is a five panel, fold out card. On the one side there are elegant, muted-hue diagrams from five of the firm’s green roof projects, illustrating how the vegetation has evolved over time. The Middlebury College Atwater Commons project, for instance, is shown in 2003 and 2012; the other depictions vary in duration. All prompt careful study.

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What is a Game Changer? Guests of Metropolis’ annual Game Changers awards ceremony this year encountered that very question at the host sponsor Axor’s immaculate showroom in New York’s Meatpacking District; in this generous upstairs space the class of 2013 Game Changers were inducted. The six honorees are the Women’s Opportunity Center’s life-changing project in Rwanda; architect and climate advocate Edward Mazria; SOM’s vision for a massive regional revival via the Great Lakes Century project; tastemaker and promoter of young design talent, Jamie Gray; a far-reaching research project in India, Dream:In;, and historian Vincent Scully, who inspired generations of thinkers, like the Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, who accepted the award on behalf of Mr. Scully. Other VIP guests included John Cary and Bruce Nussbaum.

The awards presented at the ceremony were designed, made, and graciously donated by digital fabricators, Tietz-Baccon, based out of Long Island City. They were laser-carved out of Corian, with the seven sides of each award carved simultaneously. Their heptadronal shape allows each model to sit on any side. Aggregated together, they create an entirely different symphony of shapes and capture the spirit that resides in each Game Changer.

The event space similarly came together as a symphony of game changing design by the host and sponsor Axor, with support from Shaw Contract Group and Affordable Art Fair. The beer was lovingly donated by Brooklyn Brewery. As a snow storm loomed in the forecast, guests from all industries convened to usher in Metropolis’ Game Changers, with a special call out by Edward Mazria to top off the night of celebration, “Metropolis is the real Game Changer”. Please join us again next year.

Grace Ehlers is coordinator of marketing at Metropolis magazine.

Art and architecture thrive on influence, an asset that knows no boundaries, geographic or disciplinary. It is in this spirit that we welcome new voices, perspectives and interpretations.
 National Building Museum and Metropolis Magazine contributor, Andrew Caruso, begins the 2013 run of Inside the Design Mind with an emerging voice: Yang Yongliang.  At only 32, this Chinese born graphic designer-turned digital artist has come of age in one of the most pivotal (and controversial) times in his country’s history. His digital-collage reinterpretations of China’s cities present explorations of the built environment that are simultaneously critical and aspirational, dark and foreboding yet filled with light. Already showing in galleries from Shanghai to Paris, we think he’s one to watch.



Andrew Caruso: What parts of your childhood influenced the way you approach art?


Yang Yongliang: I grew up and learned about art in an old town that had retained its traditional Chinese character. My teacher made oil paintings and he taught me basic exercises in drawing and watercolor. I remember him telling me on his deathbed that he was thinking about painting. His manner and attitude toward art had a far-reaching influence on me and his death had a profound impact. 



AC: You originally studied very traditional forms of art making. Why then did you begin your career with digital media?

YY: My childhood education included traditional paintings and calligraphy and at university I learned graphic design. I began using different software programs and studied photography and shooting techniques. Combining these skills became natural. 



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The Campana brothers, Fernando and Humberto, are without a doubt two of the most prominent Brazilian designers out there. Until February 24^th, much of their work will be on display in North America as part of the traveling exhibition Antibodies: The Works of Fernando and Humberto Campana, at the Palm Springs Art Museum in southern California. The career-spanning show (provided by the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany) includes many of the brothers’ best known pieces, along with prototypes, artwork, interviews and other related material.

The Campanas’ Favela Chair, inspired by the favelas of their native Sao Paulo. Courtesy Edra.

The brothers have spent thirty years experimenting with designs that embody the colorful character of their home country. Their style of creating is best exemplified by their trademark use of found materials, which deliberately focuses on the possibilities of each material, only considering form and function secondarily.

The Sushi Chair. Courtesy Edra.

The 2010 book Campana Brothers: Complete Works (So Far) is another career-spanning collection of their work, and provides in one volume the most comprehensive look at this eccentric body of work available. Both collections prove that the most striking examples of the Campanas’ design were created through an improvisational approach to design. This has allowed them to experiment with and reinterpret the use of materials during the construction of each project. One notable creation, the sushi chair, began as an exploration of the use of upholstery. It is made out of discarded scraps of fabric, foam and carpet, which have been bundled together to form a seat, the beauty of the design originating in the chaos of its provenience.

Campana Brothers: Complete Works (So Far) book cover. Courtesy betterworldbooks.com. Read more…

Before his graphic commentary on the urban environment and its quirky denizens began to occupy the last page of Metropolis in 1998, we asked Ben Katchor to contribute to the magazine. His provocative visual-verbal narratives on urban manufacturing and sustainability grounded our preoccupation with these topics, still in the headlines. (Note President Obama’s second-term inauguration speech, in which the economy and climate change play important roles.)

On our May 1995 cover, Ben brought to life our story, Made in New York: The Art of Urban Manufacturing. He envisioned the look and feel of a many-layered city occupied by ordinary people, who are never quite so ordinary, making everything from Chinese food products to plywood shiva benches. When, in September 1996, we took a deep deep-dive into the subject of sustainability and the built environment, Ben showed what the city might look and feel like in 2030, if sustainable practices prevailed or if they didn’t. He saw a lively green city with bustling street life versus an abandoned pile of skyscrapers seen in the distance,  “From her concrete porch in her [subterranean] suburban home, Mrs. Levitt [wearing a gas mask] watches the sun set over a forsaken city.”

Each month for 15 years now, I look forward to reading Ben’s column as the magazine is being produced. And each month I chuckle at the foibles of teeming humanity negotiating the complex, friendly, awful, graceful urban environment where the new dukes it out with remnants of an ever-present past.  This is where we meet the architect who over-designs a light switch only to have a contractor install a cheap, noisy mechanism behind it, scaring the kids; or a man inside a Miesian skyscraper desperately trying to meet up with a woman on the windswept plaza below but she will have none of it. Modern architecture, it seems, can stifle romance.

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Wrapped into our predilection to explore, and at times our most urgent immediate motivation, is the search for orientation – to know exactly where we are.  Again, what happens in a built environment parallels person-to-person encounters. We want to eliminate unknowns and get-our-bearings in relation to the mental maps that we have constructed over time. Being disoriented – being “lost” – triggers anxiety, fear, and ultimately panic. It is clearly a “peril”, and it can be costly. Though we lack the innate homing skills of other animals, we do have an evolved capability to learn how to navigate; it’s another way we “master” our environment and feel “in control”.

“The classic legibility of a city – geography and the power of the alliances that built Florence”

Maps and legibility

In his pioneering study, The Image of the City, professor Kevin Lynch analyzed mental maps created by many people to orient themselves in a city.  Although each individual’s map was necessarily unique, he found important overlaps – propensities – that he organized into clear, practical, usable ways that we use to make a city “legible”. Many of his insights and much of his vocabulary of  “imageability” and “way finding” have been adopted, built upon, and absorbed into the conventional wisdom of generations of designers because they can be successfully applied in practice – and not only in his field, urban design. It seems likely that he is describing patterns that come naturally and easily into most human minds – a specific genetic preparation for learning.

In any case, we all know that aids to navigation and clues to orientation are integral parts of built environments – whether conscious and intended or not. Lynch focused on the physical form of Boston, but his pattern of thinking also organizes the broader bands of perception that we habitually use in practice to find our way.

• He identified five key elements that continually reappeared in mental maps – edges, paths, districts, nodes, and landmarks – and spelled out common themes that are perceived in each of them, primarily qualities of clarity, continuities, differentiation, and dominance, and the awareness of motion and time – plus, naturally, the recognition that all are then interpreted through filters of culture, personal skills, and associations.
• In addition to distinctive spatial forms, sources and echoes of sounds, aromas or stench, temperatures, wind and light levels are all elements in the maps.
• Sensing distinctive kinds of human presence and action, past, present, and anticipated – the social and cultural clues – can be even more powerful. The energy and excitement of crowds and commerce, a fear of strangers and violence, or the reassurance offered by records of long established human settlement, all tell stories of stability, danger or vitality that define a place – and whether we want to be there or, instead, find a path to escape or explore further.
• Ultimately, of course, the underlying coordinates of a mental map are framed in the context of our own pressing motivations, accumulated memories, and the feelings locked into them.

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