Design Class: learning to love your orientation

Have you ever heard designers speak about orientation? Has it given you pause for concern, worried that your penchant for wearing latex and scuba suits in manners for which they were not originally intended is about to be revealed? 

Fear not.

The orientation we’re discussing here, if properly understood, will actually make it easier and more comfortable to enjoy the things you want to do in the privacy of your own home and garden.

So what is orientation?

Orientation simply means the location of your garden and home in relation to the sun.

In Australia the sun rises in the east, travels through the sky to reach the north at noon, before descending again to a western sunset. In summer the sun is high, and in winter it is lower. 

Why is this important?

If you live in northern Queensland and you want to have Christmas lunch outside on your new deck, then you don't need me to tell you that you need to understand where the sun’s going to be at come midday. Once you know, you can make sure the deck is placed where it can be shaded by trees, roofing or a combo of the two.

On the other hand, if you live in high country Tasmania, you'll probably want to plan your deck and garden so you’ll be warm and sheltered. Seems pretty obvious when you think about it, but you'd be surprised how many houses have been built that don't take account of this simple, yet significant factor.

This approach translates through every aspect and detail of designing your home, garden and landscape.

Do you have bizarre night time rituals that require long, uninterrupted sleep-ins? Maybe don’t put your bedroom on the east side of the house. 

Like to swim in a cool oasis, out of the sun? Maybe put your pool to the south, or make sure there’s space for a dense surrounding garden with shade trees. 

Want to grow a kitchen garden? Make sure adjacent buildings or trees aren’t over-shadowing the space. 

And finally, if you do wish to loll on the lawn in your scuba suit, then maybe some strategically placed sun shading will protect your privates from poaching, and your neighbours from nosying. 

Now it’s over to you. How did you enjoy the first lesson in Design 101? What would you like to learn about next? Let me know what weird words you've heard designers use that you'd like clarified. And finally, let me know how understanding your orientation is going to free you up to think more creatively about how you plan things in your home and garden, scuba suit or not.

Walls That Tell a Story

Can you guess where this wall might be?

How about this one?

Even in close-up, these walls are starting to tell stories.

Stories about their location, about their history and about the conditions they experience every day.

It’s a bit of a no-brainer really, once you start looking properly, to tell that these walls are near the waterfront. Both can be found in the ever-increasing necklace of public places fronting Auckland’s famous harbour.

Let’s start with those oyster walls. They’re part of a massive temporary, playspace in Wynyard Quarter. The whole design by Isthmus imagines a waterfront that might lie beneath the existing ground, and the walls help tell that story.

On fine sunny days big kids and small were all over it like you wouldn’t believe. From a distance the shells in the walls can’t be seen, but then the scale, mass and colour of the concrete takes over the job of telling the story.

The other wall is part of a revetment wall near the end of Silo Park that tumbles down to the water. It’s the daily tides that have painted it in such beautiful graduating hues.

The wall acts as a mini amphitheatre, with everyone walking past able to look down and see you. Despite this the change of level creates a surprisingly private and secluded nook (a nookie nook for this pair...) away from the main promenade and activities.

These blocks that make up this wall have been recycled by Taylor Cullity Leathlean | Wraight + Associates from old precast concrete units that were once used for storage.

I love the stories embedded in landscapes, and the connection they create between the past, present and future.

We are working on a project at the moment that will make walls using existing paving that we're removing to create better level transitions. Doing this creates a win-win: we solve the challenging Once built, these walls will then become another chapter in the story of this landscape.

Examples like this are everywhere if we take the time to look. Where have you encountered walls that tell a story? How could you adopt this approach to tell a story in your landscape? Let me know in the comments below.

And if you enjoyed this taste of Auckland’s waterfront landscape then stay tuned, as I’ll be sharing more in the next few weeks.

Rust and Shadows - landscape wonders of the Asia Pacific Triennial

A whole exhibition dedicated to the way artists from different cultures and places see their landscape – few things could be more enticing for your Landscapologist. So it is with great excitement I bring you my completely biased personal faves from APT7.

APT is officially The 7th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and it’s on until April 14 at the Queensland Art Gallery.  Sure, sure, it’s not described in any catalogue as a ‘landscape’ exhibition. But that doesn’t change the fact that nearly every single one of the pieces on show in this epic cultural event represents a deeply physical, emotional and sensory connection to place and landscape.

Let’s start with Shirley Macnamara’s gorgeous Wingreeguu 2012. At first glance it looks like a chance breeze has blown it, ready formed, into place in the gallery, and yet it tells so wonderfully of a very particular place - spinifex land of far western Queensland - and its role in the lives of both Shirley’s traditional people and the later grazing community. It’s as if the artist has reached back through time and plucked out the heartstrings of a thousand generations, and then woven in the tough grass to encircle the work.

You can see the same re-imagining in Lorraine Connelly-Northey’s stunning pieces.  Crafted from salvaged farm and building materials, they reinterpret the traditional fibre practices of her mother’s Waradgerie people. Couldn’t you look at the patina of rust for hours? No matter what distance you’re at the surface resembles it’s own richly detailed landscape of tiny textures and colours.

I’m not sure if it was the way they were hung, or the overcast sky when I visited, but these works would have been doubly delicious for me had they been lit to throw shadows.  As a long-time shadowphile I was heartened to discover that several other APT offerings definitely gave good shadow.

These elegant beauties were cast by Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi’s Kulasi; crisp geometries and such rich, strong colours humming as the taut cylinders floated against a dark background.

Richard Maloy’s Yellow or Blue?  both consumes space and creates it anew. The enormous cardboard installation suggests a landscape of rugged, impermeable terrain that all the same could collapse at any moment. Is it perhaps reminding us of the dangers of hubris? That humanity’s great edifices remain standing by chance rather than design? And what's with the yellow? Is Mr Maloy tipping his hat to The Vault, Melbourne's much maligned 'Yellow Peril', or am I reading too much into things?

Around the corner, Parastou Forouhar’s Written room uses clouds and dust storms of Arabic script to create a swirling, pulsating landscape that writhes off the walls to embrace the viewer.

The urban landscape is not forgotten either.

Both Nguyen Manh Hung’s Living together in paradise and Paramodel’s How to make a paramodel use accessible, almost whimsical techniques to comment on today’s cities and pose questions about the future of the metropolis in Asia Pacific countries.

Phuan Thai Meng’s jaw-dropping realistic painting in The Luring of [ ] draws us into the in-between spaces of the urban landscape.

Finally, Yuan Goang-Ming’s Disappearing Landscape – Passing II  is a wondrous video installation across three screens that evokes the urban landscape of Taiwan with great delicacy, compassion and genuine curiosity. I loved it.

If this was all the APT7 had to offer it would have been enough. Luckily for us, there’s way more on offer. If you’ve been along, tell me which artist most moved you, or most clearly evoked a different landscape? If not, when have you experienced an artwork that powerfully spoke of a place or landscape?

Art shares with landscape the power to move, inspire, comfort, awe and amaze us. I hope they continue to do so for you.

See the APT while it lasts or check out the QAG website for more details on the artists and the show.