Posts from — May 2008

Connected by a coastal thread two hours south of Cancun Mexico is a town of 14,000 people called Tulum. Translated from Mayan, the name Tulum means wall or fence. The title references the ruins of a walled Mayan community built and inhabited between 1200 and 1450. The site was formerly known as Zama, meaning City of Dawn.

Sun burned, standing 40 feet above an impossible blue ocean and squinting into the southeastern sky it becomes quite clear why ancient Tulum was named the City of Dawn and why all bedroom windows should face SE.

The orientation is empowering, humbling and logically selected.

Once the site was chosen, the forest was cleared and the future city was walled on three sides with the ocean cliff providing protection on the fourth. Temples, palaces, homes and castles inhabit the site, all orthogonally positioned to the Caribbean coast and organized to worship such wonderful things as Venus and the Wind.

The ruinous landscape is intensely powerful in its topographic siting and continuing decay; an ongoing testament to the control of the sun, the planets, the wind and the waves. Landscape and architecture moving slowly into another at the hands of salt and ultraviolet leaving residual axes and green grass to revel in culturally protected moments of shade.

In 2020 Washington DC should hold a World’s Fair.

But it should be a different kind of World’s Fair.

Instead of spiraling people and culture to a particular geographic place, this event would spiral out. Digital information from each participating country or region would be collected, organized and re-presented to the world. Although all the data would be stored in Washington DC, the fair would be accessible from anywhere. A giant l.e.d. world would be displayed on the National Mall mapping the weave of connections between access and destination points. The weave would of course be constantly changing; different locations on the globe aglow at different times of day and during significant geographic and political events.

tracing inspiration; on looking through the Columbian World’s Fair Atlas…

The Columbian Exposition (1893 Chicago World’s Fair) opened on May 1, 1893 and continued until October 30, 1893. During the 6 months it was open nearly 30 million people traveled to Chicago to see the fair. While many other Expositions have been held since, few were of the scope, organization and duration orchestrated to build the White City (exposition list from the Bureau International des Expositions).

A sanctioned exposition is scheduled to occur in 2020, and American cities such as Houston, Energy and Exploration: A Vision for the Future, New York, Showcasing the World, and San Francisco Interculture: Celebrating the World’s Cultures while Creating New Ones through Interaction and Exchange are already vying to host the expo.

Instead of creating a destination, I think Washington DC could become a conductor through which information could be charged; the copper of next World’s Fair. The wiring is already in place. The political network centered in DC could provide a conduit of submission to be supplemented with less formal strings and loops. The creation of the fair would create technologically advanced jobs in DC and across the world with each country / region working to showcase their future. And of course as part of the future we would reflect on century old visions.

If you are in Washington DC and have some free time this week or this upcoming weekend, go see the Azaleas in bloom at the National Arboretum. Although the Rhododendron genus is certainly not my favorite collection of species, and Azaleas are not in my view the most interesting of plants, I must admit that their display and collection of color is fantastic (in a sort of F. Scott Fitzgerald way). Not because of any one species or even as a collection of flowering azaleas but more because of the composition and experience as a whole. Moving from the Capital Columns set in the meadow to the Azalea collection set beneath a canopy cover helps contain their song and let light in and out of the path. I found them most striking when they were able to contrast a structure of brick paths and boxwood edges. It was great to see so many people at the Arboretum and I encourage anyone to get there within the next couple weeks to see the blooms.

If i was a bird I think I would eat red berries. I think my favorite would be serviceberries. I wonder what else I would think about? Surely I would travel in search of hedgerows along century old American farmlands and seek winter warmth in coniferous hearts.

What if I was to design a landscape entirely from the perspective of a bird? Would humans appreciate it? Would they applaud its variance from other parks and plazas? Could I design a house for a human that birds would like to fly over, land on and sleep around? Could the walls of my house be houses for birds… singing the sun under the western horizon.

As a bird, would I like music? How about Bob Dylan? What is the best size wire to land on? Are my feet shaped this way to stand in a particular tree? Are my colors suited to the changing landscape. As the leaves, berries and blue skies disintegrate into a culture of consumption will my feathers match the strip mall? Will it matter anymore?

My bird’s eye view still looks for serviceberries and serviceberries are coming soon. Amelanchier sp., common name Serviceberry or Juneberry, is an understory tree that flowers in early spring (now) then produces small (1/2″) red/purple berries that are prized by 40+ species of birds and some astute humans. The fruits likely won’t be out around these parts until late June or July but the flowers that are blooming now are paving a sweet road to summer…between the white flowers, the delicious fruit and lantern fall color, the serviceberry is surely top 5.