groundcondition

Cultivating the City. During the months of March and April I was in Brazil for intensive site visits in the state of Rio Grande do Sul for my landscape archtiecture thesis work Cultivating the City. I was based in the rural sociology department of URFGS – that is where the most relevant research is happening […]

Jacques Abelman | groundcondition in collaboration with Marijke Bruinsma | de Stuurlui stedenbouw MushroomWall aims to capture a part of the urban waste stream in the form of used coffee grounds and transform it into food— delicious oyster mushrooms. At the same time, the project aims to make the process of recuperation, transformation, and harvesting […]

TEAM: Jacques Abelman, Celine Baumann (celinebaumann.tumblr.com), YukaYoshida STATUS: design research competition The Wildpoints strategy creates a new form of urban green by actively seeking out new places for nature to colonize the city. The biodiversity network of found and new Wildpoints allows insects, birds, and small animal species to establish themselves in micro-habitats across the […]

  One of the remarkable characteristics of The Netherlands, especially from the foreigner’s point of view, is the amount of carefully protected open green space surrounding densely populated urban centers. The Dutch are extremely keen on verdant fields with placidly grazing cows and sheep always being within a bike ride away from the city, and […]

from the website of BRACKET: ISSUE #1: ON FARMING Once merely understood in terms of agriculture, today information,energy, labour, and landscape, among others, can be farmed. Farming harnesses the efficiency of collectivity and community. Whether cultivating land, harvesting resources, extracting energy or delegating labor, farming reveals the interdependencies of our globalized world. Simultaneously, farming represents […]

The essence of the “Wild Side” landscape vision is new farming methods that will transform the site into an official “High Nature Value” area. This designation describes certain types of agriculture that increase the biodiversity and ecological health of farmland. This plan has three layers. First, a network of hedgerows is re-established on existing parcel […]

Quote from Alan Berger, professor at MIT and director of the laboratory for design research called P-REX, The Project For Reclamation Excellence (www.theprex.net) “The main issue for me is that landscape architecture is not doing a great job addressing the larger-scale environmental issues that are currently affecting urbanized regions in the world. Rather, landscape architecture […]

Dennis Moet is author of “Autarkische Wonen” and a number of other works dedicated to framing contemporary views on sustainability within urbanism and architecture. He currently works as a senior advisor on water, climate, and sustainability at ARCADIS (www.arcadis.nl.) I was recently able to ask him some questions about sustainability and urbanism in the context […]

Time Out : Visions of Amsterdam 2020 LAgroup is a leisure and arts consultancy firm that has developed plans for the Amsterdam Hermitage, the NDSM, Paradiso and the Westergasfabriek. Concepts by Johan Idema Illustrations by Jacques Abelman Where have all the mavericks gone? To make Amsterdam a truly world-class city, we need grand projects that […]