“Despite being surrounded by busy roads, Russell Square gardens remains an oasis of tranquillity amid the clamour of modern London. Designed by Humphry Repton at the beginning of the 19th century, it lies in the heart of Bloomsbury, whose Georgian brick terraces and garden squares were described by the art historian Sigfried Giedion as an architectural composition that is the equal of St Peter’s Square in Rome or the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
Squares are arguably London’s most significant contribution to the development of urban form (there are some 300 in Greater London).”
Photo: Russell Square garden, in Bloomsbury - one of my favourite places in London!
Read the rest of my review of The London Square: Gardens in the Midst of Town, by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, at the Guardian.
Frederick Law Olmsted and the Campaign for Public Health
Image: Design of Prospect Park, by Olmsted and Vaux, ca. 1868
Up on the Roof: New York’s Hidden Skyline Spaces, by Alex MacLean (Princeton).
Slideshow & article: Independent
![The new Madrid Rio park.
“This is like new lungs for us. When the highway was here, I sat on my sofa and watched television all day. Now I feel healthy again because I walk with my friends in the park for hours.”
NYT [via @urbanophile]](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/12/27/arts/27parkcap/27parkcap-articleLarge.jpg)
The new Madrid Rio park.
“This is like new lungs for us. When the highway was here, I sat on my sofa and watched television all day. Now I feel healthy again because I walk with my friends in the park for hours.”
NYT [via @urbanophile]
Vertical Forests
Milan’s Bosco Verticale (vertical wood) project, due to be completed in 2015, consists of two residential blocks, 110 metres and 76 metres in height, set in the Isola neighbourhood just north of the city centre. The towers will house a total of 900 trees, ranging from 3m to 9m in height, plus thousands of shrubs and flowering plants.
Italy takes treehouses to a whole new level
More info and images here.
The High Line
More images from this superb photoessay: http://EruditeExpressions.com/HighLine.html
A showpiece of Singapore’s Garden by the Bay will be 18 manmade trees whose steel trunks will be vertical gardens planted with indigenous ferns, orchids and other climbers.
An Urban Jungle for the 21st Century (NYT)
Image: Vauxhall Gardens by Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827).
‘It must have been a truly magical experience to wander through the gardens at night, along tree-lined gravel walks, with bird-song and music in the air and light from the 20,000 oil-lamps twinkling among the branches (William Wordsworth, who visited aged 18, was struck by the “wilderness of lamps / Dimming the stars”). For 18th-century Londoners, it must have seemed like stepping into a dream world. As Fanny Burney’s heroine Evelina says, it was “enchanted ground”.’
From my review for the Guardian of the rather wonderful Vauxhall Gardens: A History, by David Coke and Alan Borg.
“Section Two of New York’s High Line park opens: The new stretch doubles the length of the park. Now one mile long, it winds its way from Gansevoort Street to West 30th Street, connecting the Meatpacking District, West Chelsea and Midtown West along the way, and hurtling the city towards a new phase of regeneration. Flanked by new buildings by the likes of Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel and Neil Denari, the first section has been dubbed ‘architect’s row’, attracting more than $2 billion in private investment to the area, and the new section is expected to do the same.”
From Wallpaper
