Anish Kapoor - Turning the World Upside Down

Anish Kapoor sculptor, whom amazes people each time with his sculptures, his work does not have any limitations of scale, materials, structure or imaginations, which gives his work a powerful aspect. His an artist with no fear to express his feelings, influence or inspirations. His audience's are set to question his work and think deeply of what it represents, in a way he challenges his audiences imaginations and thoughts.

His latest work in Kensington Gardens ''Turning the World Upside Down'', with four sculptures around the garden, The Sky Mirror, which measures 10metres in diameter, giant C-Curved Mirror, Sky Mirror Red one of Kapoor's first work to placed in water, Non-Object (Spire) which is located between trees on its own. All sculpture's were distanced from one a other. I will say I was fairly disappointed once I saw the sculpture's, knowing Kapoor's work and the drama, character he adds to his work I will say I didn't see much or feel much with these pieces of work of his. I found these sculpture's very simple and plain to address it as works of Anish Kapoor. Comparing these to his work I saw at the Royal Academy of Art's last year,his work tat the exhibition  I will say could easily be defined and interpreted as his work. Where these four sculpture's I believe does not define the true Anish Kapoor. I will say he may have chose a more simple route with the use of materials, and structures with his work at Kensington Gardens. But on the the other hand scale wise the pieces of sculpture's did stand out and could easily be seen. 

Non-Object (Spire) 302 x 300 x 300 Stainless Steel


On it's own it is a strong piece of sculpture, it has a sharp feeling to it, and with the scale it does stand out pretty well between trees. When I first walked into the park I through to myself I will be here for hours trying to find these sculpture's, but i was pretty wrong the scales of these sculpture's are big, and they do catch your eye from metres away. 
I believe if a few more was added around in different scales it would have been maybe a better experience

Sky Mirror, measures 10 metres in diameter.

The boggiest of all sculpture's, even dough I was on the other side of the river to view it on the day as maintenance work was taking place. It felt massive from where I was viewing it, can't imagine how I would have felt if I was close by it. The scale will definitely over shadow anything around it. 
It's a piece on its own again like the rest of the sculptures, having more around wouldn't be as an good idea as like the Non-Object (Spire) as the Sky Mirror on it's own speaks very loud.

Sky Mirror, Red

Similar to Sky Mirror but it's just in red, with a smaller scale and one of the other difference is that it's in the lake. The reflects the changing seasons, colours during the day by time, 

C-Curved Mirror 

Is and distorting mirror, not much can be said. Once seen two of the pieces of works, these last two just did not caught my attention as much as the first two. 
Its just that you know what to expect but just in a different scale, shape and form so the excitement or the interest fades away. The sculptures does not keep you guessing, you don't get questions mark in your mind in what you will be seen next. And this was a big disappointment, I truly expected more. And later finding out that these sculpture's costs thousands of pounds up to £900,000 and all four sculptures are guarded around the clock at a cost estimated to be £120,000 and the exhibition is up till 6months in Kensington Gardens till 13th March 2011. Now I ask the question of is it worth it? My conclusion to Turning the World Upside Down is  a disappointment. When I first read the title it got me, when I saw it was an exhibition of Anish Kapoor I had to see it, had high-expectations returned back home disappointed. Anish Kapoor is an artist to be watched out for, his a artist/ sculptor who has no fear from his imagination, and this brings him to be successful. Everyone has ups and downs, some people may have enjoyed this exhibition and some may have not.

(The photos are taken from the internet, as my photos are not clear due to the weather on the day of my visit was horrible and dark.If requested will be sent to readers)

Aims for Focus Week 2

As two years flied by, when I can still remember my first day in university sacred and not knowing what to expect and thinking how three years where going to go by and with what obstacles I was going to face and if I was going to over come these obstacles, and how I was going to over come with the stress of work load.

Now it's my final year and I am more aware of how an landscape architect/designer should think, work and approach designs, I am bit more confident with myself when approaching, analysing and investigating landscape designs, where I could reflect these approaches to my own way of style and design work, with the two years experience and knowledge I will putting everything I have learnt  to the test on my final year as well as strengthen myself.

 As a final year student and the time for Year Out is approaching I have to find and define myself as a landscape architect/design, I have to look in to How I work, What's my style of work, How I approach designs, What are my inspirations, How I engage with landscape designs. And a way of finding the answers for these questions will be by visiting sites, exhibitions and etc to see how I approach and question other people's works such as artist, landscape architects, architects and etc.

So within this Focus Week 2 I will be visiting exhibitions, site's where I tend to go often  but I don't analysis the site but this time I will be visiting to analysis/explore and to see how I engage with the site. I will be critical about what I see and will be questioning the designs/art works.

Aims I set myself for this week are:

- To find and define my own personal style of work 

       i. What are my weakness and strengths within a design?

         ii. What would help me in developing my weakness? 

          iii. How I approach designs?

           iiii. What are the examples of contemporary practices that interest me the most?

- Improving and developing my analysis / survey skills when visiting sites/exhibitions.

- I will also be improving my knowledge within Landscape Architecture, reseraching  about Landscape Architects, their approaches to designs, the combination within their designs, the style they produce.

Arcelormittal Orbit

Olympic Park Sculpture by Anish Kooper  

The first question Im going to ask before reviewing this post is:

Is this Sculpture Suitable for the Olympic Park ?

The second question Im going to ask is:

Is it Worth £19.1million ?

Firstly I do not agree this strutural public art sculpture will suit to be in the Olympic Park, Why? beacuse the twisting and trangling structure which is up to 115meter of height will over power the beautiful green landscape, yet it will not suit the surrounding area. Rather than an Landmark, it looks like a commerical some sort of structure only screaming out Anish Kooper rather than the Olympics, yet that is the theme right? I truly dislike it where it's been place, if it was somewhere else yes a nice strutural scultpure. 

Now forgetting about the location, maybe I could deal with that, but what is the cost of this structure. Rather than spending so much money on this scukpture, I think it would have been more wise to spend the money on more surrounding developments and improving London landscapes, roads, parking, buildings, lighting, drainage, and many more, as we'r going to have thousands of poeple visiting. I dont hate the design, I think it's an great structural sculpture but in the wrong propose.

For full details on the Arcelormittal Orbit please click on the name

Reading and Writing

During Summer we were told to look in to a topic that inspired, excited, and motivated yourselves, the topic had to refer to or related to the practice  Landscape Architecture. It had to be an study that related to yourselves.

The Illustrated Essay had to identify s specific I'm and reflect it within it's title. As well as researching about a topic that interested ourselves, one of the other aims within this essay writing it to improve and develop our research skills rather then relying just on the Internet resources.  

Writing our own personal proposal for the critical study will motivate ourselves more and will help us understand our own way of approaches to Landscape Architecture.

My topic will be based on Art of Landscape Architecture, I will be looking in to aspects of how much of Art is involved within Landscape Architecture? Will be looking in to areas such as the differences between what is called Art and Design, how Landscape Architecture Designs may be interpreted as Art forms of the present time. The reason why I'm interested in this topic is because I want to understand the boundary of Art within Landscape and how much artistic can we be when designing, it is argued that Art does not have to function all the time, but an design has to function, so what are the limitations when designing an Landscape? Can Landscape Architects be artistic as well as having an functional design. And also can Artists do the jobs of an Landscape Architect?

There is many questions going through my mind about this topic so I believe it will be an interesting essay to write and to seek answers  for those questions.

One of my worries with writing this essay is my Dyslexia problem, I know I will be having problems in writing this essay but to over come this matter I will be starting early with my essay and orgnising myself well in to getting this essay finished on time.

A Landscape Manifesto - Author Diana Balmori

''Landscape's role for our time must be redefined Now. The need is urgent. This book sketches twp major new tasks that come out of such redefinition, and shows how they can be accomplished.

First, Landscape can now create a new kind of livable city; second, through design it can broker the coexistence of human beings with the rest of nature. To design a livable city that coexists with nature as a whole will require establishing different relationship among parts. The harmful relations created by nineteenth-century industrialization will have to be revised in some cases, reversed on others. 

I have chosen a Manifesto as the format to express the critical shifts needed to carry out these tasks. You may be surprised by the use of the word Manifesto. Usually it means a rigid set of rules, pronounced in a stentorian voice, that you must (lest you fall of the right path). This Manifesto instead proposes the realignments required of our work and lives in order for us to participate in the permanent re-creation of our world. '' 

Diana Balmori

The book proposes  to a new definition of the landscape, with bringing together the concepts from biology, evolutionary theory, and ecology. Biology shows that even at the level of our cells, we are historical structure that adapts old pieces to new uses - but that history does not move toward and end we plan on. Evolutionary theory shows us a nature constantly changing, and us changing with it. Ecology puts us inside nature and shows our interdependence with its many parts.

Landscape Manifesto - 25 points

1.Nostalgia for the past and Utopian dreams for the future prevent us from looking at our present.

2. Nature is the flow of change within which humans exist. Evolution is its history. Ecology is our understanding of its present phase.

3. All things in nature are constantly changing. Landscape artists need to design to allow for change, while seeking a new course that enhances the coexistence of humans and the rest of nature.

4. Landscape forms encapsulate unseen assumptions. To expose them is to enter the economic and aesthetic struggles of our time.

5. Historical precedents do not support the common prejudice that human intervention is always harmful to the rest of nature. 

6. Shifts are taking place before our eyes. Landscape artists and architects need to give them a name and make them visible. Aesthetic expertise is needed to enable the transforming relations between humans and the rest of nature to break through into public spaces.

7. High visibility, multiple alliances, and public support are critical to new landscape genres that portray our present.

8. Landscape - through new landscape elements - enters the city and modifies our way of being in it.

9. New landscape elements can become niches for species forced out of their original environment.

10. The new view of plants as groups of interrelated species modifying each other, rather than as separate and fixed, exemplifies fluidity a main motif of landscape form. 

11. Nostalgic images of nature are readily accepted but they are like stage scenery for the wrong play.

12. in his History of Modern Taste in Gardening (1780), Horace Walpole writes that William Kent ''was the first to leap the fence and show that the whole of nature was a garden.'' Today landscape has leapt the fence in the opposite direction, to the city, making it part of nature.

13. Existing urban spaces can be rescued from their current damaging interaction with nature.

14. Landscape artists can reveal the forces of nature underlying cities, creating a new urban identity from them.

15. Landscape can create meeting places where people can delight in unexpected forms and spaces, inventing why and how they are to appreciated. 

16. A landscape, like a moment, never happens twice. This lack of fixity is landscape's asset.

17. We can heighten the desire for new interactions between humans and nature where it is least expected: in derelict spaces.

18. Emerging landscapes are becoming brand-new actors on the political stage.

19. Landscape renders the city as constantly evolving in response to climate, geography, and history

20. Landscape can show artist intention without imposing a predetermined meaning.

21. Landscape can bridge the line between ourselves and other parts of nature between ourselves and a river.

22. Landscape is becoming the main actor of the urban stage, not just a destination.

23. The edge between architecture and landscape can be porous.

24. Landscape can be like poetry, highly suggestive and open to multiple interpretations.

25. We must out the twenty-first century city in nature rather than put nature in the city. To put a city in nature will mean using engineered systems that function as those in nature and deriving form from them.

Digital Media: Landscape Graphics

Landscape Graphics: Plan, Section, and Perspective Drawing of Landscape Spaces, Author Grant W. Reid Fasla

One of the other books I will recommend will be Landscape Graphics: Plan, Section, and Perspective Drawing of Landscape Spaces.

 A great book with amazing graphic illustrations , again step by step guide to help you improve your technical drawing skills by hand, which later on can be worked on the computer for a more professional final piece of work. With great time saving techniques presented.For a beginner student with this book you will get the most out of graphic drawing. With different chapters and exercises you could chose the most relevant area in to enhance your drawing skills.The book has all the helpful areas within the process an landscape architect will be going through within a design process. Areas such as :

1. Program Development 

2. Inventory and Analysis - Content and Purpose within a design.

3. Design and Development - Conceptual Design (including concept plans, functional diagrams) and Preliminary Design (including perspective drawings, master plan, illustrative sections, proposed development plan)

4. Construction Details - Layout Plan, Planting Plan and Grading Plan 

I intend to work from my drawings and sketches and develop them afterwards on the programs, I find this more easy and time saving with the advantage of progressing solidly through my design works. And with the help from this book in how to free hand draw certain objects, plants, trees, and etc in the correct way has improved my skills in drawing and also has gave me the confidants in developing my work to the next stage. Not only simple drawing but it also teaches and guides you through how to do perspective drawings, sections and plans in the accurate way, where again later scanning in your work and defining your drawings and improving them on the design programs adds to your design work. 

Working this way develops my drawing skills and my computer skills, I intend to balance both out rather then concentrating on one, the balance between the two makes me work faster and produce better quality work. My computer skills are not as good as my drawing skills, but rather then spending more time trying to figure out things on the programs, I scan my drawings and work from them, from the help from this book my drawing skills have improved massively which saves me an awful a lot of time when it comes to developing it more on the programs. 

Not only this book but also the Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture book has helped me in developing my skills, with the work from both books I believe I am developing my skills in both areas equally.

Digital Media - Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture

Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture - Contemporary Techniques and Tools for Digital Representation in Site Design -  Authors Bradley Cantrell & Wes Michaels

I would recommend this book to anyone who's studying landscape architecture. The step by step detailed guides helping you to develop and explore your skills in specific areas like creating digitally rendered plans, perspectives, visualisations, plans and sections, is just amazing how faster you can enhance your skills rather then spending hours in front of the computer trying to figure out how to use the program, not only you get to enhance your skills, techniques digitally it also helps with developing your understanding in different design programs. The outcome work at the end will look as good and professional. Practice makes prefect, once you get the hang of applying the techniques within your work, each and every time you design you will bring in your own style of working around that specific technique. 

At first I had difficulties getting the hang of applying the techniques and understanding how the software worked. A tip I will suggest will be first read through the specific technique you want to apply within your work, first read through the steps and familiarise yourself with the tools and the software, second time read through it normally and one the third attempt apply the technique step by step. Yes it might take time but it's a way of taking in the information slowly which will stay with you for the next time you apply the technique.

Above is the front cover of Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture 

The Book has many professional works by landscape architects with guides in how to produce the same quality of work, the above photos by Mossop+Michaels Landscapes Architects, whom design-focused service dedicated to the implementation of sustainable landscapes. The firm is focused on the public landscape of cities, parks and open space systems and infrastructure. The collage/visualisation (top photo) is created  by using Photoshop, and  the section (bottom photo) is created by using Photoshop and Illustrator.

Aims for Focus Week 1

One of my aims within this Focus Week is to develop my skills in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and AutoCAD. Its takes time to learn and get use to each and every one of the software programs.

Learning how to use these software's takes time, good solid days work sitting in front of the computer and teaching yourself how to use an program might sound so boring and dull, but at the end it will be worth the hours of work in front of the computer, and it's an big advantage for you in the future when applying for jobs. Well as designers we have to know how to use these programs, so the dull hours in front of the computer is a must I guess.

So this Focus Week one of the things I'm aiming for is to develop my digital skills, and with the help of Digital Media for Landscape Architecture  book, which should be fun learning the tricks and easy methods in how to use these programs and should save me a lot of time.

The other aim I have this Focus Week is to my reading knowledge, as well as the Internet been helpful and all the information we look for in on the net, I believe books contain much better information plus primary solid information by the author and you are set to understand and learn from the reading rather with the net you just browse and then we intend to forget about it. One of the books I'm so keen to read is A Landscape Manifesto by Diana Balmori an Landscape Architect from the States, the book looks into Diana Balmori's theory and practice of urban landscape and design as an art that spans the divide between culture and nature. And combines the science of ecology with the formal aspects of aesthetics.
Reason why I am keen to read this book is because I'm currently writing an essay on how Landscape Architecture is been defined at the present time, and going to this talk and listening to a person whom has years of experience, it kind of made me think of how I will define myself one day as an landscape architect in my on style of working.

Diana Balmori's talk can also be listened from the Royal Art website. Just click on the Link below. It's worth listening to =) enjoy.
http://static.royalacademy.org.uk/files/balmori-813.mp3

One of the main ways of teaching yourself an learning things is from books, now a days even dough every thing's there for you on the Internet, with YouTube tutorials, step by step  design tutorials layouts, print screens for us on how to do certain things on design programs we all go for the easy options to save time. But we forget about researching for primary information from books, journals, newspapers, reading and taking notes down might be a classic way of learning and taking in information, but I believe it's a way which information is more assimilated within the brain then browsing on the Internet , or we could get so lazy to go to talks, exhibitions and events, which makes our enthusiasm fade away . where also these things will build on our inspirations and knowledge on our design works and within the career path we're taking,