More behind the gateway than meets the eye!

The word "gateway" is so loose, so undefinable. A gateway is not necessarily any of the things you first think of; there are so many possibilities tied up in the name. It is not merely an entrance, or even an opening. It may not even have a visible point at which you may pass through to what lies beyond. For example, there are a number of elemental barriers through which the human form may pass without any aperture: fog - in some places a real pea-souper can descend on you in moments, without warning encasing you, uncertain, shifting, glowing, cold; water - allows the diver to slip through the waves and create his own gate, only lasting for the moment of impact; smells - at the entrance to London Victoria station a specialist cosmetics company (no endorsement here!) has recently opened, creating a barrier of unseen but potent scent that every weary commuter must pass through two times a day; warmth - my first experience of Florida was leaving the air conditioned airport and being hit by incredible levels of humidity, causing my clothes to cling to me instantly. In its very simplest form a gateway can record or mimic the movement of the person entering by it, as the gate is left swinging in testimony. A gateway can even be a means of transportation: "the trains are the gateway to the city"

All of these interpretations and possibilities are what we are trying to understand in our first project welcoming in the new educational year. It amazes me that something so simple as a gateway can easily go unquestioned in our minds, leaving it as a meaningless entry to a house or such. There is just so much to even the simplest aspect of landscape architecture that can be utilised as a resource and it's our choice how far we delve in! This has to be one of the aspects that I love best about our profession.

Image from Flickr.com under search: wall of fog

Somerset Dreams

After savouring the flavour of America's deep south, the next taste would be from our own fair shores in and around Somerset. We spent a few days there driving and walking through the countryside, visiting ancient monuments, and the like. I was surprised to find that in Salisbury Plain I could see further afield than when looking across the wheat fields of Illinois. The fields were also much more structured, and separated from each other by hedgerows in patterns of brown, gold, red and green. This could be seen clearly from the summit of Glastonbury Tor, a place that I have always wanted to visit and finally did. It was worth it - WHAT a place! WHAT a view!

Another great asset of the English country, is the manner in which the houses have been built. Every village has been constructed from local materials, meaning that as you drive through them you see the colours subtly changing, through reds (iron rich sandstone), dusky yellows (loamy clays) and mottled greys (slate and rough hewn granite). This lends a wonderful sense of identity and individualism to every new location, something that has been lost in the mass production and distribution of building materials such as brick that can now be bought for a new build in any colour desired ("Staffordshire Blue" etc.) Now, to build in local materials is being encouraged as an eco friendly approach to new build and as a result, the cost of these materials has rocketed making it prohibitive to attempt in some places. Sad.

American landscape.is... meaningful.

Well, I just got back from a week's vacation in the states, and it gave me so much to think about. Rather than going to a holiday resort or anything particularly commercial, we drove from Chicago to Nashville, Tennessee (sticking to the country roads) and then we drove east of the city into the mountains, where we hired a beautiful big cabin looking out on its own 150ft waterfall. From here we based our activities and went canoeing down a river for four miles and spent a day walking through the mountains on a trail named the Fiery Gizzard, where legend holds that Davy Crockett burnt his tongue on the gizzard of a lizard he was cooking! This was all marvellously beautiful, wild and rugged, but in terms of an understanding of landscape it was the four days spent driving, that really opened my eyes. The country through which we drove was mainly agricultural, with small run down townships and the occasional small city. But what was interesting, was how much one place could change from another just down the road. Two petrol stations next door to each other show differences of half a dollar per gallon in price; a successful city shares none of its prosperity with a small town just five miles away; the farming communities who grow their produce sell it all to the food giants; and rather than cooking at home, whole communities eat every meal they have at the local restaurants. While this all seems very negative, there are a number of positives that can be drawn from it: Because farmers sell all their produce to large companies, there is no local competition and no angst between them. Because their produce is largely crops, there is a set time for everything and apart from weather, this form of work allows for a gentle slower pace of life and lower stress levels. Because people eat all their meals at local restaurants they all know each other well and there is a real sense of community spirit, with generations of people living in the same town because that's where their friends are. And all of this community spirit spills over into how they situate their houses: In the cities everyone has a fence up and all boundaries are clearly marked, but here in the country, the property deeds are the only thing that shows where one garden ends and another begins and neighbours share each other's porches watching the sun go down over fields of golden corn at the end of every day. Seeing all of this and experiencing it, touched my heart deeply. If only things were kept this simple and meaningful in England, if only our society was this tightly knitted.

New stuff!

As per my Uni tutor's advice, and the purchasing of CS3 (which comes with a nifty DVD tutorial series), I have been learning some Illustrator skills this summer. Whilst at first there appeared to be an insurmountable difference between Photoshop and Illustrator, I discovered that apart from basic commands these programs were never, in fact, supposed to be the same. Their similarity lies more in their vast adaptability and user freindly interface. This is an enjoyable program to be using for all sorts of work. For instance: the image above is a logo I designed for a camping trip this summer. I feel confident that Illustrator is going to be of great use to me in the coming year and onwards.

Process makes perfect?

It's a wonderful thing to see, something you've designed coming into being. After so much speculative work at university, this is the icing on the cake, it's the closure that's been missing. Initially what I felt was that this was a great thing and instinctively it made me think of the project as having come to a close, but I soon realised that, in fact, it's never that simple. There are just so many things that can yet go wrong and surprisingly, it's the small jobs that you'd think were the easiest, that in fact stand the greatest risk of going drastically wrong. This appears to be because larger jobs have more money in the balance and so a greater investment is made into their running. A role that deals with the running of the projects is the Clerk of Works, something I came across this year which basically means the person who acts as the Landscape Architect's eyes and ears on site, maintaining a high level of work and reporting back to the office, thereby ensuring an efficient process. This is a great role for a student to have, as it enables them to better appreciate the practicalities of their own designs and the difficulties that can ensue from them.

Down-sizing Landscape's Carbon Footprint

What with all of the recent pressure being placed on companies, to offset their carbon footprint or to make it smaller, there has also been a radical shift in the manner in which landscape architecture firms are approaching their projects. For instance, I was recently looking for some wood benches to make a feature in a restoration project, and in doing so, I found that a lot of companies that create furniture, though they may be based in the UK, are outsourcing to all over the world for the wood. Not only this, but they are often very reluctant and defensive about giving you this information! As a result I had to greatly refine my search in order to come up with a small number of conscientious suppliers who are sourcing local and sustainable timber for their products. One of the best is this artist and tree surgeon based in Pontypridd Wales, whose work I saw last year in a park in the Brecon Beacons.

www.gno-sis.co.uk