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Showing posts from October, 2012

Designer fallow field in Battery Park City

The Irish Hunger Memorial is today's Archtober Building of the Day.  We first encountered the memorial after arriving at the Battery Park City Ferry Terminal from Jersey City . The memorial, designed by artist Brian Tolle , landscape architect Gail Wittwer-Laird , and architect 1100 Architect to honor and to educate about the 1845 - 1852 Irish famine, consists of "an authentic Famine-era cottage" and "a rugged landscape thickly planted with native flora, plants often found growing fallow fields."  The plant palette includes bearberry, blackthorn, Burnet rose, cross-leaved heath, foxglove, gorse, Ling heather, soft rush, and yellow flag iris. The memorial's landscape reminds me of building-less parcels that are spontaneously vegetated.  Nany M. Page and Richard E. Weaver, Jr. in Wild Plants in the City ( Arnoldia , Vol. 34, No. 4, 1974) write, Where do these seeds come from?  Some, of course, already may be present in the soil of a new lot, and

Fall tree fruits and seeds

The smell of fresh pressed apple cider is so incredibly apple-y!  I went on an apple picking field trip today and had the chance to smell both.  Unfortunately we were not allowed to taste the unpasteurized version so I did not compare the taste.  This experience reminded me that I have been meaning to share a few photographs of the fall tree fruit showing in my neighborhood. Crabapple Hawthorn (Washington?) Hawthorn Redbud Ginkgo London planetree  Green ash samaras Interested in this topic?  Consider Types of tree fruit Tree Walk: Eating the fruits of city trees Fruit Tree Walk: Guest post from Jen English of Walking Berkeley Book Review: Public Produce by Darrin Nordahl Ginkgo's smelly fruit is edible and the tree is long lived Harvest walk: persimmon, pomelo, passionfruit, and pomegranate

Building of the Day: Xocolatti

Xocolatti, home to "The Finest Handcrafted Chocolates and Exotic Truffles, is today's Archtober Building of the Day. The store is located at 172 Prince Street and I had to double-back on the block to find it. The interior design is by De-Spec with Brian Gillen and received a AIANY Honors 2012 Design Award .  For more photographs, check out the De-Spec project profile .

Urban plant stories

Image: "Out of the Woods", Kathleen Vance, Open Source Gallery I don't recall how I heard about Urban Plant Research but I have continued to read the blog for the stories.  Leslie Kuo, a co-founder of the project, shared stories about the plants featured in her slideshow at the Open Source Gallery in Brooklyn on October 14. Image: Vines on a wall at Prospect-5th Ave. The vines have been removed from the site. Image: City worker removing Ailanthus from a rose garden Image: Community garden partnered with a bakery to recycle their crates as growing beds to avoid planting in polluted soil Image: Plant Quiz installation at Berlin subway station Image: Close-up, Plant Quiz installation at Berlin subway station After the slideshow, we talked about foraging for edibles like mulberry, elder, apple, ginkgo, and pear.  One audience remember told of an apple picking event in Park Slope which culminated in a neighbor bringing out his press and maki

Biophilic Design: Film Screening & Discussion, 10/23

Courtesy of Biophilic Design ( source ) Come on a journey from our evolutionary past and the origins of architecture to the world’s most celebrated buildings in a search for the architecture of life.   Yale Blue Green will present “Biophilic Design” a documentary by Stephen Kellert and Bill Finnegan at the AIA Center for Architecture on October 23, 2012. The film explores innovative ways of designing the places where we live, work and learn, and will be introduced by executive director Stephen Kellert.  Afterwards, join us for a panel discussion with Hillary Brown (City College of New York, CUNY), Bill Browning ( Terrapin Bright Green ), and Bob Fox (Cook+Fox Architects, Terrapin Bright Green). Light refreshments will be served. This event is co-sponsored by the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the Yale Alumni Association of New York.  Open to a ll Yale alumni, friends, family and the general public. When: Tuesday, October 23, 2012, 12:15 – 2:45

Building of the Day: NYU Global Center for Academic and Spiritual Life

Archtober's Building of the Day program "celebrates contemporary as well as iconic architecture in New York City."  The NYU Global Center building is contemporary; it was completed this year.  It was designed by Machado and Silvetti Associates . The center's design is strikingly different from its neighbors, the Kimmel Center (view a photo here ) and the Judson Memorial Church, pictured below. Image: Judson Memorial Church courtesy of Beyond My Ken ( source ) 40 Bond was the October 7th Building of the Day .  Check back on the 20th for Xocolatti and on the 26th for the Irish Hunger Memorial.

Before & After Green: Schenley Plaza

Image: Schenley Plaza (foreground) circa 1920s Between 1923 and 1949, Schenley Plaza was " a formal entrance plaza" to Schenley Plaza, one of four regional parks in Pittsburgh.   The landscape was designed by James Greenleaf.  By 1949, the plaza was converted to a parking lot to accommodate Pirates fans as well as the "expanding universities, businesses, and healthcare community" in the Oakland neighborhood.  I first saw the plaza in 2007, one year after the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy has transformed the existing parking lot back into a park. Image: Schenley Plaza with parking (date unknown) Image: Schenley Plaza, central lawn, 2007  The restored parkland is five acres and incorporates " Bryant Park’s best design features , such as permeable edges, lush gardens, a carousel, quality lighting, a great lawn, food kiosks, space for programming events and activities, and moveable tables and chairs."  Additional photographs of the plaza can

Building of the Day: 40 Bond

October is Architecture and Design Month in NYC or Archtober .  The AIA Center for Architecture is celebrating a building on each day of the month.  40 Bond was the Building of the Day on the 7th.  I am slow in showing it here and I won't feature all the buildings but stay tuned for the NYU Global Center for Academic and Spiritual Life (10/13), Xocolatti (10/20), and the Irish Hunger Memorial (10/26). About the building from the 40 Bond website : Herzog says of 40 Bond Street: "We like radical positions and we try to offer them. The idea of gates came to us first. It gave us a signature, a scale and an individuality. The gates introduce the scale of the townhouses. The question was what kind of structure or grid or image would they have on them. We tested different things and most of them looked too traditional but we then came up with the idea of something very chaotic which we thought could be seen as coming from urban street culture, where graffiti is part of the

Updated: A bronze Zelkova in August

We have been following the death and life of trees in Washington Square Park since we moved to the neighborhood two years ago.  While we have not written much about them (see our English Elm in the Tree Year posts), Washington Square Park Blog author Cathyrn Swan has written extensively about the park's trees.  You can read her tree-related posts here . Strolling through the park yesterday morning I was struck by the bronze foliage of one of the remaining Zelkovas ( Zelkova serrata , Japanese zelkova; Ulmaceae (elm family)) around the fountain.  Bronze is a color typical of fall foliage; this tree is not exhibiting the dark green typical of summer. The bronze (brown) color indicates leaf scorch.  The entire canopy appears scorched.*  Also, there is some dieback in the center of the canopy.  What are the causes of scorch?  From The Ohio State University "Disease Control in the Landscape" (Bulletin 614): These diseases commonly result from winter damage as well

Bird Watch: Fruit eating pigeons

Used to seeing pigeons eat bread crumbs and other human-food scraps I was surprised to observe three pigeons, pictured above, eating the berries from a type of holly, possibly an Ilex glabra 'Nigra' (Black Inkberry).  On pigeon food , the Mass Audubon website provides the following information: A pigeon's diet consists primarily of seeds, but it also eats many other foods such as berries, vegetation, and even an occasional small mollusk or bit of seaweed. City pigeons thrive on the weed seeds in vacant lots and, unfortunately, on the grass seed in newly sown lawns; on spillage from bird feeders supplemented by human handouts of bread crumbs, doughnuts, and the like; and on discarded food in human refuse. Pigeon defenders assert that these birds are very good scavengers and really help to clean up city streets. Here is a close-up of the shrub.  The fruit is described as "a round drupe or berry, red, black, or yellow, with stalkless stigmas, bitter pul