Weekly Wrap-up: City Lighting and Green Roofs

Excellent post today by Richard Layman in his blog Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space on Lighting as an element of urban design and community identity.

The six categories of light:

• urban lighting (streets, public areas)
• buildings and objects



American Sign Museum in Cincinnati

• art (indoor and outdoor)
• events and festivals
• information
• advertising

Among Layman's many examples of creative urban lighting to support urban design goals are:  church steeples, rivers, erecting a chandelier in a theater district, neon entries like Reno's, illuminations in Calgary and lighting master plans in cities like San Diego and Mayor Rahm Emanuel's initiative to use architectural lighting in the "City of Light" to boost tourism.  

This last is controversial after the International Dark Sky Association took it to task.  For me that has to be the last word because protecting wildlife, as the DSA does, always trumps architecture in my book.

Thank you, Richard, for a thought-provoking piece.

And at Inhabitat this week, mcdonalds-goes-green-in-singapore with a vegetative roof designed to provide space for local wildlife and on Sauvie Island near Portland,  this 540-square-foot-oregon-home provides home for a family of four and sports a lush green roof.  Originally worker housing from the flooded shipyard worker village of Vanport, the cottage was floated down the river to its current resting place, where it shares the 5-acre property with a large green house, chickens, beehives and more as the family continues its journey toward self-sufficiency.

Sauvie Island 540 square foot green house

McDonald's, Singapore

Keep Newport Hills Weird with Puffballs

In the "weirdness" sweepstakes, the contenders are decidedly un-weird in their choice of symbols:  Vermont's is an outline of their state.

Berkeley's is generic:

And Austin's, the original, is downright predictable and a bit of a sell-out: token tie-dye and the subheading: "support your local businesses." 

"Keep Portland Weird"appears in the opening credits of "Portlandia,"  and had its origins in 2007 when the owner of Music Millenium imported it from Austin.  There's even an extensive article about the KPW movement in Wikipedia, from which I take the following facts:

:

In a "weirdness" contest with Austin, Portland emerged the clear winner, taking nine of twelve total categories.

So What makes Portland weird?  Things you'd never see in Newport Hills, that's what.  For example, 

Voodoo Doughnut shop,

the Velveteria Museum of Velvet Paintings,

the 24 Hour Church of Elvis, 

theWorld Naked Bike Ride,

the Zoobomb cycling events

artist Adam Kuby’s Portland Acupuncture Project, as well as

the popularity of yarn bombing, 

and the Portland Urban Iditarod

  Another is the "Horse Project".

"The first "Keep Portland Weird festival" was held in October 2007 at the Central Library, and among the participants were the Portland Ukulele Association, Free Geek, and the Portland Area Robotics Society. Another took place in November 2009.

If you launched a campaign to keep your community "weird", what are the top five symbols you'd choose?  I've only come up with one so far.  Here's a possible contender for Newport Hills.  An egg-shaped topiary outside the beloved Chevron gas station.

Gardens: Nature vs. Nurture

It's so difficult to tell the real from the unreal, what's for sale, what's for free, what's "natural" and what's artifice, and cultivation, lately.  You can enjoy both a park and a nursery for free.  Is one "real" nature, and the other, "fake?"  At the moment, my mother gets more enjoyment from the "fake" because the "real" waterfall is too hard for her to get to.

Coal Creek Falls, Bellevue, WA

Down to Earth Nursery, Eugene, OR

Here is a sculpture by Julie Spiedel in the City Hall gardens, downtown Bellevue, WA:

It's my favorite sculpture in the City, and I was reminded of it on a recent visit to my favorite plant nursery:

Wells Medina Nursery, Bellevue, WA

Perhaps there is no "real', no "fake".  Perhaps it is all just a matter of art or advertising, as in a game we used to play with the kids...we would drive past something and ask, "Is it art or is it advertising?"  I know it came from my father's wife, Elizabeth, herself an artist of nature.  Click here to see more of her work on her website.

Sea of Tranquility

Ancient Light

Beth's work is haunting, painstaking and extremely beautiful.  Well-worthy of comtemplation.  In fact, I would love to do several blog entries just about her.  But...another day.

I really wanted to talk about my newly-found friend again, Sarah Horton, and her allotment garden in Liverpool, England.  Allotments are like p-patch gardens, which I've written about in these pages.  On the other hand they're very different.  For now, I just want you to enjoy a visit to Sarah's garden, and save the politics and history for another time.  Sarah, a fiber artist, film-maker, writer and certified horticulturist (in addition to many other things) incorporates who she is into her garden.  This is truly gardening for the soul.  Thank you, Sarah, for sharing it with me.

Sarah in her poly-tunnel

Sarah starting a fire with her flint

Inside her garden shed, complete with...

Fairy lights that really work

Sarah's Garden:  "Arrangement 1"

Sarah's Garden: "Arrangement 2"

Sarah's Garden:  "Arrangement 3"

Sarah's Garden:  "Arrangement 4"

Sarah's Garden: " Arrangement 5 (Masks)"

Sarah's Garden:  "Arrangement 6 (Oners)"

Sarah's Garden: "Arrangement 7  (Succulents)"

When I returned from my travels a month ago, I headed over to my father's garden in Indianola.  What a difference to Sarah's!  And yet, I kept finding similarities, as well.  For one thing, the focus is on contemplation, not production per se.  There are collections, arrangements, accomodations.  Dad built his house here with great respect for the existing land and flora.  Gradually, over many years, he has found his way to gardening with nature.

Dad's Garden:  "Arrangement 1"

Dad's Garden:  "Arrangement 2"

Dad's Garden:  "Arrangement 3 (Mondo and Mara)"

Dad's Garden:  "Arrangement 4 (Chairs)"

Dad's Garden:  "Arrangement 5 (Path 1)"

Dad's Garden: "Arrangement 5 (Path 2)"

Dad's Garden:  "Arrangement 6 (Ferns)"

The day after visiting my father, I walked my dog up to Coal Creek Falls.  It is here that I've done all my most productive thinking and peaceful meditation for the last 20 years.  For the first time, I'm asked to contemplate something.   A rope fence, which Stella cheerfully ignores, separates a patch of ground from the trail.

Things are not as "real" here as I thought.  

 It turns out that this is an art installation highlighting Cougar Mountain's history of extracting natural resources.   The artist is from Basel, his name is Hans Baumann, and the work of art is called "Black Forest (29,930,00 Tons)".  It uses "bio-char"and asks us to envision the ash planted on the site as a proposal for carbon sequestration. Over time, they are asking that 29,930,000 tons of CO2 be sequestered here.  This is the amount emitted over the 100 years of mining on this site.    

Hans Baumann installation at Cougar Mountain here
and here
Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Area, Bellevue, WA
On Tumblr

Hans Baumann installing "Black Forest"

Doncaster Market

Award-winning Doncaster Market is known as the "biggest and best traditional market in the North" with some 400 shops, stalls and stands.  Unbelievably, its charter dates back to 1248.   It's open three days a week, with an additional day devoted to antiques and bric-a-brac.

As it looks today

Market Gates of Doncaster

Doncaster-grown Parsnips, Sprouts and Leeks

I love the Victorian architecture in these northern markets, very much like train stations...

Conger Eel

Here is a delicious recipe for conger eel from Gordon Ramsay's show "Kill Your Meat Before You Eat It"

"Martyn the Fish"

Today's Special Offer:  The Boozy Banger

Welsh Dragon Pork

Farmer's Markets struggle to compete with large supermarkets and need our support.  In Doncaster, the Market is run by Doncaster Council's Town Centre Management Team.  They also operate a variety of occasional and regular speciality street markets in the town center throughout the year, and a popular Sunday Car Boot Sale every week.