Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Friday, March 7, 2014
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Horticulture Magazine Names Grounded Design Best Gardening Blog
Horticulture Magazine named grounded design “Best Gardening Blog” for 2011. I’m delighted and humbled by the recognition from such a great magazine. The article highlighted the recent series on native plant myths, as well as other postings for 2011. Many thanks to the magazine for the recognition, and mostly, thanks to all of you who keep coming back to read my ramblings. Happy gardening!
Here is the post: http://www.hortmag.com/blogs/gardening-blog/best-gardening-blog%e2%80%94grounded-design
Landscape Design Fire Water Features From Start to Finish
Landscape design is a beautiful process involving a lot of creativity, planning, and execution. Warming Trends just completed a custom residential design project in Willow Springs, Colorado. Watch as you see how a stripped and barren backyard can be transformed into a beautiful custom landscape. This start to finish video shows before and during pictures of the backyard being developed and includes video footage of the final product. This landscape design project includes a seating area with custom fire pit and a recirculating waterfall lined with natural stone.
Visit us online for all of your custom fire pit and landscape design needs.
Read More..
Visit us online for all of your custom fire pit and landscape design needs.
Free Schools Unnecessary Design and Aesthetics
My eye was caught this morning by an article in Building Design which quoted renowned education expert, Toby Young, (I believe his “How to lose friends and alienate people” is a standard textbook for all PGCE students) as saying that “design is not necessary.”
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/free-school-pioneer-says-design-not-necessary/5005341.article
While I appreciate that the piece is written in a pretty provocative way (and that the headline didn’t appear to be a direct quote), I found the general gist made me feel profoundly depressed, although initially I wasn’t really able to really articulate why.
Following a frenzied morning of tweeting (thank you, @NemesisRepublic), I think I’ve figured it out.
The last couple of years have been a very tough time for designers across the board, with fee’s being squeezed again and again. As an example my former boss, Don Munro, used to get us to put a time into fee proposals for ‘designing’. This would be the time when we sketched, thought of ideas and just considered the site and project. Increasingly clients started to challenge this. I think this was best summed up by client who said , “I don’t want you to design, I just wasn’t you to draw it up.” As far as I know, Don no longer puts time for ‘designing’ into his fee proposals (but he still designing).
I think this trend has been reflected in much of what has been designed and built recently. Landscape Architecture companies have won work with incredibly low fees, which are only possible by rehashing schemes that they’ve done before – same surfacing, same planting, same furniture, same details and often starling similar arrangements (I’m particularly thinking of some recent public realm schemes). The results are generally mind-numbingly bland and uninteresting. I’m afraid this type of approach is like kryptonite to me. Without wishing to sound like Prince Charles, it’s my fundamental belief that all site design should begin with consideration of context.
Perhaps I’m just being paranoid, but I get the sneaking feeling that there are people in power who do see money spent on professional design advice as unnecessary (yes Michael Gove, I’m thinking of you), and that it can be eliminated. But I think it’s also fair to say that the public perception of designers, and architects in particular, isn’t that great.
I think the problem is that design has become confused with aesthetics in the public consciousness. Like fashion – expensive and frivolous.
But design is also about functionality (for most designers of the built environment I’d say much more so). Time thinking about design, is not just time given to making things look pretty. It’s thinking about how a design will be used – is that space big enough, is that material suitable for this location and how will it be used in the future?
I guess my concern will be that instead of employing architects and landscape architects, there are those who think you can just send some volunteers on a course about how to design stuff, meaning less work for the likes of me. Isn’t this what the Big Society is about?!?
Or maybe I’m being overly concerned. It could be that when the likes of Toby Young say that “design is unnecessary”, what he really means is that they don’t want designs that are too fancy, but that he lacks the understanding of the subject to properly articulate this. Perhaps he could do with some professional advice?
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/free-school-pioneer-says-design-not-necessary/5005341.article
While I appreciate that the piece is written in a pretty provocative way (and that the headline didn’t appear to be a direct quote), I found the general gist made me feel profoundly depressed, although initially I wasn’t really able to really articulate why.
Following a frenzied morning of tweeting (thank you, @NemesisRepublic), I think I’ve figured it out.
The last couple of years have been a very tough time for designers across the board, with fee’s being squeezed again and again. As an example my former boss, Don Munro, used to get us to put a time into fee proposals for ‘designing’. This would be the time when we sketched, thought of ideas and just considered the site and project. Increasingly clients started to challenge this. I think this was best summed up by client who said , “I don’t want you to design, I just wasn’t you to draw it up.” As far as I know, Don no longer puts time for ‘designing’ into his fee proposals (but he still designing).
I think this trend has been reflected in much of what has been designed and built recently. Landscape Architecture companies have won work with incredibly low fees, which are only possible by rehashing schemes that they’ve done before – same surfacing, same planting, same furniture, same details and often starling similar arrangements (I’m particularly thinking of some recent public realm schemes). The results are generally mind-numbingly bland and uninteresting. I’m afraid this type of approach is like kryptonite to me. Without wishing to sound like Prince Charles, it’s my fundamental belief that all site design should begin with consideration of context.
Perhaps I’m just being paranoid, but I get the sneaking feeling that there are people in power who do see money spent on professional design advice as unnecessary (yes Michael Gove, I’m thinking of you), and that it can be eliminated. But I think it’s also fair to say that the public perception of designers, and architects in particular, isn’t that great.
I think the problem is that design has become confused with aesthetics in the public consciousness. Like fashion – expensive and frivolous.
But design is also about functionality (for most designers of the built environment I’d say much more so). Time thinking about design, is not just time given to making things look pretty. It’s thinking about how a design will be used – is that space big enough, is that material suitable for this location and how will it be used in the future?
I guess my concern will be that instead of employing architects and landscape architects, there are those who think you can just send some volunteers on a course about how to design stuff, meaning less work for the likes of me. Isn’t this what the Big Society is about?!?
Or maybe I’m being overly concerned. It could be that when the likes of Toby Young say that “design is unnecessary”, what he really means is that they don’t want designs that are too fancy, but that he lacks the understanding of the subject to properly articulate this. Perhaps he could do with some professional advice?
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Landscape Design Tips for Your Garden
If at all youre planning a Landscape Design project there are plenty of factors that you would need to keep in mind and come to a final decision only after you make sure that the Design in your hands is the best that you could come up with.
Landscape Design Tips The following Tips would surely help you execute your plan well and even more, you would be able to make the right decisions and hence have a beautiful Landscape Garden in your front or backyard.
Does the Design blend with your home?
You need to make sure that the Landscape Design that youve come up with or the Design that youre Landscape Designers came up with are compatible with your home in a sense that it shouldnt stand out and at the same time it should be noticeable.
The colours and shapes that you pick need to go hand in hand. Dont try and pick everything that you could possibly place in your Garden as this would make it seem more like a jungle.
Uniformity in the plants as well
When planning your Garden, you need to make sure that you pick your plants well. See to it that youre Garden doesnt look like a rainbow. Pick your colours and plant plants with leaves and flowers of that particular colour in beds or any other Design that you think would look good.
Do you want to place benches?
If youre planning on walking in your Garden in the evenings and spending time there, you should probably thing of adding a few park benches as well. This would be a great place to spend your evenings after work.
If youve got kids at home make sure that you create a sought of play area too. Usually you wouldnt want them playing and threading on your lawns, so why not create a special spot just for them?
Repetition is good, too much however is bad
Its good to repeat certain Designs through your Garden as this would make it look better and people would notice the Designs. However, if you repeat too much it wouldnt look good. Therefore, every aspect of your Garden should strike a balance if you want it to look beautiful.
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