Here in Seattle is seems the summer has ended and the rainy season is looming just over the horizon. Although we got a good taste over the last coupld days of what’s in store. While I personally love the rainy season, I’ve found a product that will make it all that more fun. The Rain Level boot from Regina Regis of Italy. Oh yes, it is on my Christmas list…but what color to choose??

On my way to and from work each day I have the pleasure of walking past an art gallery. Sometimes I linger and stare at the art inside, taking in all the colors, shapes, patterns and textures, getting a bit of inspiration for the day. Now they have some paintings up from a particular artist that I always enjoy, Z.Z. Wei.

A Chinese-born artist, Wei traveled to the northwest and found himself in awe of the beauty within the region. The landscapes he creates bring out this emotion, like a dream world stretching out in front of you with the perspective slightly skewed and the heavily saturated. I find his paintings captivating…the light and shadows, the colors. Some of the scenes take me back to my childhood, growing up on a rural farm in the hills where I often spent hours daydreaming about the awe-inspiring world around me or going on car rides with my grandpa as he told me tales or drove the long curving road around the lake that always signalled the beginning of summer. The work of Z.Z. Wei turns my childhood inspiration into a visual display.

images via Z.Z. Wei, Artnet, Atticgallery

I came across this car recently that had an interesting idea for an anti-theft device when parking in an urban area where theft could potentially be an issue. Simply post a sign on all major windows letting people know that you in fact do not have any valuables in your car so there’s really no reason to bust through the window. Of course, do make sure you laminate it first.

The work of Portland-based artist Josh Keyes is unique and eerily fascinating. His paintings bring animals into a human landscape, perhaps after being driven out of their native habitat. However this landscape isn’t a fairy tale, it’s gritty and futuristic. In this future it feels as though the humans have abandoned the cities and left the creatures to fend for themselves, to adapt in this foreign landscape. Some biographical text from his website:

Alternately passionate and playful, outraged and absurd, the artwork of Josh Keyes is memorable both for its resonant imagery and the haunting themes those images convey. Vividly imagined and exquisitely realized, his work is at once highly personal and very much of its time. While it spans a variety of approaches, Keyes’ overall subject matter remains consistent, evincing a fascination with the intersection of the animal realm and the built human landscape, and the imperiled role of wilderness in a rapidly changing global environment.

Perhaps these pictures aren’t really all about animals but about the conflict between nature and society within our own human consciousness. Keyes’ images, in their way, suggest that the division between an intricately self-absorbed society and the connection to nature within us is an artificial one that can no longer be sustained. One can read his work as a plea to let the natural collective consciousness within us emerge, to find a balance within ourselves that contains a place for the other creatures of this planet, with whom we are more connected and co-dependent than we may care to admit.

Keyes’ artworks are neither optimistic nor nihilistic. If anything, they seem to hover between fear and fury, between sorrow and acceptance. But they do contain a level of urgency, addressing such exigent issues as the extinction of species and the emergence of a new global topography. In grafting a dreamlike pictorial language to a passionate ecological concern, he has not only carved out a fertile chunk of postmodern art world territory, but found his own bully pulpit, and catharsis.

I was going through some photo albums and realized I have tons of project photos that I have yet to post. The first, the ecoroof atop the Ladd apartment tower, a LEED certified Gold building in downtown Portland. The tower offers residents an amenity level which includes an outdoor roof deck with patio seating, raised planting beds and 6,650 square feet of native plantings, including an eco roof. The Ladd has eco roofs on the 4th, 5th and the 24th floor.

The 2,500+ plants used to cover the eco roof itself is an mix of six different sedums: Sedum sexangulare, Sedum spurium “Summer Glory”, Sedum spurium “Roseum”, Sedum oreganum, Sedum album. The plants are planted in one big random mixture, mat style, in a minimum of 4 inches of soil and 8 inches on center. The entire eco roof assembly is from American Hydrotech.

Contrary to popular belief that the Pacific Northwest is continuously raining, Portland actually gets pretty extensive dry summers. This means an irrigation system is a must to get the plants safely through this yearly drought. The typical American Hydrotech “egg crate” drainage mat helps to capture rain for continued use by the vegetation but when there’s no rain to capture and hold onto, the permanent drip-line irrigation system kicks in and waters according to the weather during these extreme dry periods.

After a weekend that left me fairly drained of energy, I found myself staring for far too long at my potted plant…highly amused at the thought of it as a little tiny park that I could look down on. I figured somewhere out there someone must have thought of this as a product…sure enough, Tristan Zimmermann has done just that. His Park Planters choose to explore, however, the darker side of the urban park, the side that comes out when the sun goes down.

Drawing inspiration from the bonsai, the Park Planters were created to elevate the common household plant to the status of full grown tree. The potted plant becomes the backdrop for an urban park scene. This is the first in a series of two different park scenes investigating the dark side of the park, the stuff that happens when the sun goes down and you’re not supposed to play in the park any more. You’ll find a lost salesman, a flasher a gay couple and a mugger, with no two scenes being alike ensuring the autonomy of each piece. Beautifully crafted out of porcelain each set contains a plate, the planter base and two parts of the lid, one blank and one with the scene of your choice.

images via Science & Sons

And then I came across this guy who decided the Park Planters were too expensive and made his own. I have to say, these are pretty fun…

And then made more…

Blu has recently finished another stop motion urban graffiti style animation that travels through the urban environment – and it’s a big one. This one is called “Big Bang Big Boom”. Check it out:

Last Friday was a fabulous day for a green roof tour in Seattle with blue skies and warm weather during our trek around the downtown core and over to Seattle Center for a total of 6 roofs. This first post will provide a bit of an overview of the tour with future posts delving further into few of the roofs to include details, lessons learned and more photographs.

The tour, sponsored by Seattle Public Utilities and the Department of Planning and Development, started at the Justice Center Green Roof with the additional ability to look down on the City Hall Green Roof below. As some of the older roofs in the City, the Justice Center Green Roof was completed in October 2002 and the City Hall completed in July of 2003. Since recently moving to Seattle, I joined SvR Design who was actually in charge of the Justice Center Green Roof and after the tour, I wrote a blog entry on the SvR website showing pictures of the roof as it looks 8 years post-installation. Here’s some text from that post about the roof with additional photos below:

The support system is from American Hydrotech and consists of a 6″ profile including insulation, an “egg crate” style drainage/moisture retention layer and a custom soil mix over a multi-layered waterproofing membrane. The planting design by SvR was guided by an image of sunlight reflected in a shallow streambed, much like that of the water feature connecting the Justice Center with the City Hall. The pattern shows through in wavy swaths of greens, blues, and grays.

The City Hall Green Roof, pictured below, was completed in July 2003 by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol using an American Hydrotech sytem and primarily planted with a mix of sedums. The roof was not originally outfitted with irrigation which had to be installed afterward due to Seattle’s summer being mostly without rain, something places like Germany or Chicago don’t experience and unfortunately are the areas putting out most of the research and design/maintenance guidelines in the areas of green roofs. With each roof and each year, we learn more and more about how green roofs function specifically for the northwest, which is why tours like this are so important.

Since planting, the vegetation has since been almost 100% taken over by weeds and according to Peter Jeu, who was luckily on the tour and has provided the maintenance for the Justice Center and City Halls roofs since the very beginning, the roof is now mostly grasses that have blow in and even grow so tall that he has to mow it. They are in process of trying to replant more sedums on the roof but due to the low wall and high winds coming up from the Puget Sound, it’s going to be an ongoing battle.

Next stop, 5th & Madison. This roof is an interesting one because due to the steep slopes of downtown Seattle, this roof actually meets the sidewalk on the uphill side which allows the public to freely meander in and out. A cascading water feature catches the attention of passersby and draws them in and through the site. The roof was designed by Canadian firm Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg.

The roof sits right near the Koolhaas-designed Seattle Public Library and provides a dramatic view of the large glass structure.

Next stop, the green roof at the top of the M Street Apartments that provides an amenity for the tenants. The building and green roof were designed by local firm GGLO.

Below are some views of the pedestrian area with grasses and a wood decking that runs around the perimeter to make the space feel less like a roof and more like a nice outdoor space.

Another interesting addition to the roof atop M Street Apartments is the dog run space and the raised planters for the tenant’s community gardening space.

And just below the M Street Apartments roof, the little green roof on the building next door could be seen.

The next stop on the tour headed over to the two extensive rooftops at the Olive8 building that houses a hotel at street level with condos above. The two roofs, designed by the Berger Partnership, look similar but used two different technologies. The lower used a tray system while the upper one used a rollout sod style, all contain a mixture of sedums. Both were grown offsite and therefore looked nearly mature once installed. For the tray system, the designers decided to fill the trays with a lot of plants in order to allow the plants to grow over the edges. Then the trays were laid out in a running pattern instead of stacked so that there was never an instance where 4 corners came together causing a more visible seam.

After the roof was installed, the restaurant within the building decided they wanted to try to grow herbs on the roof and set a tray with herbs on top of one of the mechanical units as a trial run. If it goes well, they may try to grow more on top of other units.

After a ride on the monorail over to the Seattle Center and up the Space Needle, we hit the last stop looking over at the 5th Avenue N garage roof, the covered parking area next to the future Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation campus. The massive 60,000 sf green roof was designed by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol and was entirely planted in sedums over an American Hydrotech system. Unfortunately, the view from the space needle wasn’t perfect but helps to judge the scale of the massive roof.

all images (c) Lisa Town

My office recently bought a couple nifty Brompton fold-up bikes for the staff which are pretty cool but what about a bending bike that becomes it’s own lock? We’ll just put aside the thought of what might happen should you take a spill. Some text from Design Boom:

Design student kevin scott designed this unusual bending bike that not only folds up tightly but can be used to locks itself up. The de montfort university industrial design student designed the bike to make its safer and easier to lock up your bike in the city. His design looks like a normal bike when in riding mode, but a simple level on the frame triggers the frame to go from rigid to pliable. A ratchet system built into the frame enables the bike to simple be bent around a pole fitting one side of the handle bar into a closure under the seat, locking the bike in place. The design just won runner-up for the business design centre new designer of the year award at new designers. Scott will be using his prize money to further develop the bike, building more iterations for a full testing of its viability.

images via Design Boom

A trip to the ocean with another couple allowed us to score a really cool vacation beach house, obviously owned by some sort of designer that probably built many things themselves. There were a lot of great details throughout with great uses of wood and metal, like the ledge in front of the fireplace in the image below. A nautical theme ran throughout expressed through clean lines and interesting use of materials like the image above where metal cleats where attached to a wood strip for use as coat hooks. This detail was also in the bathrooms for towels.

The house actually sat along the edge of a lake just a block inland from the ocean and in an effort to reduce the disturbance along the lake edge, the house was raised up on metal beams, allowing the natural vegetation flow underneath with a simple gravel path to the staircase leading up to the entry deck.

A rain chain connects the roof to the ground with a stone splash block…

The deck leading to the canoe launch didn’t take out any trees…

The gravel driveway and the vegetated swale…

There were also some fun pieces of art and furniture. My favorites were the chair at the entry that was a simple piece of metal with a strip of tan leather through the top for a seat and especially the fabulous set of 3 paintings of frying eggs in the kitchen.