The American lawn The American lawn uses more resources than any other agricultural industry in the world. The American lawn could feed continents if people had more social responsibility. Why should it be indecent to have anything useful in the front half of your property or around the house where people can see it? Why is it low-status to make that area productive? The condition is peculiar to the British landscaping ethic; what we are really looking at here is a miniature British country estate, designed for people who had servants. It has become a cultural status symbol to present a non-productive facade. The lawn and its shrubbery is a forcing of nature and landscape into a salute to wealth and power, and has not other purpose or function. The only thing that such designs demonstrate is that power can force men and women to waste their energies in controlled, menial, and meaningless toil. Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture Lawn Order suburbia
Sentimentality plays with sweet intentions Neighborhood is a word that has come to sound like a Valentine. As a sentimental concept, “neighborhood” is harmful to city planning. It leads to attempts at warping city life into imitations of town or suburban life. Sentimentality plays with sweet intentions in place of good sense. We shall have something solid to chew on if we think of city neighborhoods as mundane organs of self-government. Our failures with city neighborhoods are, ultimately, failures in localized self-government. And our successes are successes at localized self-government. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities suburbia
Off the Grid...and Back Again? An Article by Geoff Boeing geoffboeing.com Show image 0 Show image 1 My article “Off the Grid… and Back Again? The Recent Evolution of American Street Network Planning and Design” has been published by the Journal of the American Planning Association and won the 2020 Stough-Johansson Springer Award for best paper. It identifies recent nationwide trends in American street network design, measuring how urban planners abandoned the grid and embraced sprawl over the 20th century, but since 2000 these trends have rebounded, shifting back toward historical design patterns. gridsstreetsurbanismsuburbia
Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface A Book by Robin Clark www.goodreads.com Phenomenal: An IntroductionPhenomenal: Exhibited WorksStealth Architecture: The Rooms of Light and Space Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One SeesRobert Irwin: A Conditional ArtThe Finish Fetish Artists art
Phenomenal: An Introduction An Essay Aesthetic palate cleansingUntitled (Light Canvas)Little Blank Riding HoodNot intended to be read until you have seenA vaporous middle-world+5 More
Phenomenal: Exhibited Works A Gallery Untitled (Light Canvas)EindhovenStuck RedZero MassLittle Blank Riding Hood+4 More
Stealth Architecture: The Rooms of Light and Space An Essay by Michael Auping To absorb it or build your ownA stealth architectThe measuring unit of all spaceThe walls are reserved for the sunA little too something+1 More