Plants Walk

Here are "my" students on the plants review walk last Sunday.

Trick-or-Treating on the Lawn

This year, I made sure to get over to the Lawn to see the Trick-or-Treaters. On the Friday before Halloween, the residents of the lawn host trick-or-treating families, most with very young children. They stand in line and circle clockwise around the lawn rooms for candy, and at the same time, the lawn is full of people taking advantage of the photo opportunity:



Here were a few of my favorites:

The Incredibles


The triplets (I had seen them once this summer at a coffee shop, practicing taking turns-- very important for their family, I am sure!)

Fall in Virginia

I haven't made it out to Skyline, but there are some beautiful colors close to home, too!

Everybody Loves Popcorn (thanks, Mom!)

Thanks Mom-- you made a lot of people happy! Here we are around our studio common table, digging in to the Fisher's tub.

sneaky design students

Some of the planted areas on the National Mall are fenced off for rejuvenation. My friend Chloe and I snuck under to get some photos of some amazing 100+ year old trees.

two silly photos

A group of my classmates and I went to Trenton, NJ to visit brownfield sites that we had been researching. We met with two people who work for the city on brownfield development, who were extremely helpful. The site I am looking at is an overgrown lot with a decaying warehouse. There is no sign that would reveal that it is actually an African-American cemetery that dates to the 1880s.

Overall we got the sense that Trenton really is a tough city. The amount of vacant, boarded up property and the number of brownfield sites is sobering. We started to think about how transformation can begin to happen when the problems are so complex and profound.

On a lighter note, here are a few silly photos from the trip:

We had a delicious meal at the Yardley Inn in charming Yardley, PA


And were very disappointed that DeLorenzo's, rumored to be Trenton's best tomato pie, was CLOSED!

Hannover

Our last stop was Hannover, and the architecture school where our local hosts were based. It was a bit like trading places for one week-- our architecture school for theirs-- with the odd similarities and contrasts.

The building was not so different from ours, with a sort of faded appearence.


Being a public university, and our class being a short summer workshop, we didn't have access to the "mod cons" we are used to-- internet access was limited, as were scanners and printers. We made do-- this was my group's workspace for the week.


Hannover did not have Thomas Jefferson, but it does have its own baroque garden, a la Versailles, pretty much across the street from the architecture school. We had a guided tour with one of the local professors. The planted form included a lot of allees, hedges, and trees that had been heavily pruned. These forms extend out from the garden into the surrounding urban landscape, including this unbelievably long allee of lindens that led to the school.


I noticed how the hedges showed differing degrees of transparency-- letting light through, or blocking views, in different ways.


Also near school, another street with planted allee led to the Kleingartens, the local version of community gardens. Compared to ours, these gardens are more like "country homes," although the small sheds are meant for day-use and not overnight stays. I have the sense that the American model is more about cultivating a productive patch, so to me, the Kleingarten seemed very expressive of each individual's personality-- the details were more homey-- like more imaginative front lawns (if the lawns included a lot of plants). Unfortunately, my camera batteries gave out at this point, so I don't have a good image of these places.