Category: architecture

From there to here, from here to there

Cindy at enclos*ure9 Comments

Today is Dr. Seuss’s birthday.

Seuss, aka Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-1991), took the art of Surrealism and the architecture of Antonio Gaudi, combined them with childhood memories of early cars and machinery in New England and then the flora of his adult home in southern California, and created the famous illustrations for his over sixty books.  (His Green Eggs and Ham is the fourth best-selling English-language children’s book of all time.)

His strange plants and landscapes — tops of mops, spikes, and feathers; elongated, twisty trunks; improbable angles, odd hills and rocks — form a visual vocabulary that we all understand and use routinely.  These are just a few of the many, many snapshots I found by typing in “Dr. Seuss” and searching Flickr.com.

Photo by Randy Robertson, labeled “Dr. Seuss Plant Silhouette.”  All three photos via Flickr.com, under CC license.
“Dr. Seuss Bush” by Shawn Henning.
“Dr. Seuss Trees” by Allan Ferguson.

A 2010 article from the News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington, has a list of plants that also look Seuss-y, here.  Among others, they recommend weeping sequoia, Nootka cypress, and contorted hazelnut.

If you want to visit a Dr. Seuss-style landscape, the blog SPOTCOOLSTUFF has 10 “Places That Look Dr Seuss-ish” around the world, here.

ADDENDUM: Today is also the NEA’s Read Across America Day, here. And The Washington Post is calling for Seuss-inspired verse about current events, here.

 

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: le cortil

Cindy at enclos*ure8 Comments
Look closely at the lower right corner: the huge Chateau d’Amboise has a ‘little yard’ — cortil in Old French — and a side door.
A closer look.
At the top.
Another view of the chateau.
The chapel.

Also see here and here.

In which I discover a new word and an old garden

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A west window of Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest revealing a view of the curtilage. Photo by Jack E. Boucher, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Curtilage –a piece of ground (as a yard or courtyard) within the fence surrounding a house.  Origin: Middle English, from Anglo-French curtillage, from curtil garden, curtilage, from curt court.  First known use: 14th century. — Merriam-Webster Dictionary

A bit more: a cortil was ‘little yard’ in Old French: cort + il (diminutive suffix).  A ‘cortile’ (in English, in architecture) is an internal courtyard of a palazzo.

As a legal term, curtilage means the land immediately surrounding a residence that “harbors the intimate activity associated with the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life.” In U.S. law, it is important for dealing with cases involving burglary, self defense, and unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment.

I came across the word while reading the website of Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson’s second home and getaway (I remembered something about it after Apartment Therapy posted a slideshow of presidential retreats).  Its curtilage originally included an octagonal house (possibly the first in America), orchards, ornamental and vegetable gardens, and slave quarters. It was surrounded by a ‘snake’ or ‘worm’ stacked-rail fence, as well as fields of tobacco and wheat.

Because little visual evidence of Jefferson’s plantings remain, the 61-acre area is being reconstructed through archeology and research of his papers. Letters do indicate that a sunken garden behind the house contained “lilacs, Althaeas, g[u]elder roses, Roses, and clianthus.”

At Poplar Forest, Jefferson was working from a concept of “an ornamental villa retreat within an isolated agricultural setting.” He was thinking of ancient Roman villas, as they were reinterpreted in the 16th century by Andrea Palladio.

The estate is located in Forest, Virginia, near Lynchburg.

The top photo was taken as part of a 1985 Historic American Buildings Survey.

Wordless Wednesday: the fountain

Cindy at enclos*ure2 Comments
Equisetum and fountain detail.
Horseshoe Fountain on the steps from the swimming pool, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.

Sunday morning lagniappe

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If it’s cold outside where you are (or rainy like here), imagine yourself on this wonderful Louisiana porch surrounded by a flower garden.

Palange Plantation, New Roads vic., Point Coupee Parish, Louisiana, 1938. From the Carnegie Survey of the South, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Another view.  Both photos by Frances Benjamin Johnston.

And then click here to listen to this classic by Etta James.  Everything’s great now, right?

Something to read

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve enjoyed a lot of posts on the blog  Studio G, but especially those about Brazil, here and here. I really liked looking at her six sets of “before and after” pictures from a Brazilian home makeover show on Thursday.  My favorite is here.  I also enjoyed her post on a different kind of roller coaster in Germany here.

Grounded Design’s post, “Why We Plant,”  here, was inspiring.  “Designers don’t create beauty. To believe otherwise makes us guilty of forgery and blasphemy. But what we can do is create the conditions where people can have an experience of beauty.”

Phyllis Odessey at her eponymous blog wrote here about the Hudson Valley Seed Library and its seed packets with original artwork.  Also, if you have an interest in school gardens, take a look at an older post here, about a rice garden in New York.

If you’ve been outside since Tuesday, pulling up your lawn (and here), as per Garden Rant’s anti-valentine to the lawn, here are some funny things to do with the now superfluous sod, thanks to Black Walnut Dispatch. (BWD also has a very funny visual here about how landscape designers are perceived by different groups.)

The New York Times has an article on artist Cindy Sherman this morning. Interestingly, this 2010 article in Smithsonian magazine makes a brief connection between Sherman’s work and Frances Benjamin Johnston’s self portraits.

From Pinterest, I just discovered this odd, but rather lovely, blog.  See what you think here.

What are the best blog and website posts that you’ve read this month?