groundcondition

Brooklyn, August 10th, 2100: a summer story “Do you remember the summer of 2075, when the hurricanes hit? Do you remember how it was before the water got so high?” I asked my friend. We were sitting together on the stoop of our Brooklyn brownstone, it was a sweltering day, 105° F. “I remember how […]

    From mid-June to mid-July in Amsterdam a landscape architectural ad campaign of sorts is addressing the Amsterdam public. The messages are intended to underscore the relevance of landscape architecture in dealing with issues that affect everyone. The project is one of the outcomes of the Living Landscape research group at the Academy of […]

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 […]

The “Swimming to Manhattan” competition was created by the Amsterdam Academy for Architecture and ARCAM. Jacques Abelman, Txell Blanco Diaz, Simona Serafino, Egle Suminskaite, and Marit Janse collaborated to present Red Point Parks, a vision for future development around New York’s Upper Bay, in a future where the sea has risen over 3 meters. Climate […]

  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 […]

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 […]

The project brief was to design a temporary public garden in a building construction site ( a 160m x 60m 6m deep construction pit!) along the banks of the Ij river. I chose to create an urban farm for the production of fruits, vegetables, and high value crops in modular planters on a scaffold system […]

Projects at the Academy are completed in eight weeks bursts and done mostly at night, so they require immense drive and conentration; at the end of the project period all students post their work in the halls of the school and groups of professors walk around judging the work. You are given about ten minutes […]