May 2022 - Page 14 of 28 - Art of Landscaping

May 17, 2022

Get the look: Maxine Brady’s New York coffee shop inspired kitchen

This kitchen is so zen (Picture: Maxine Brady / Metro.co.uk)

Maxine Brady is proof that you don’t need Gordon Ramsay around to suffer a kitchen nightmare. Maxine is an interior stylist from Brighton and shares her immaculate peppermint Victorian terrace house with her white fluffy dog, Teddy.

But it wasn’t always so pretty. When she moved in, the house had been empty for seven years and came complete with an overgrown garden, leaking roof, horrible 1970s staircase and orange pine floorboards. Then there was the kitchen…

‘The kitchen was awful. There was a bank of 1990s beige wall and base units, an awkward corner sink and drafty back door,’ Maxine says.

‘The fridge was positioned in a corner cupboard. It was so cold in the winter you couldn’t spend much time in here. In the summer, it wasn’t much better as snails would trail across the floor.

‘When I ripped out the kitchen, I could see that water had been running down the back wall from the bathroom above into the plug socket. It was lucky I didn’t electrocute myself when cooking dinner.’

For the last 20 years Maxine has been a creative force in the world of home design, working as a stylist, a TV presenter, art director, interior designer and content creator, as well as running her own award-winning blog.

Maxine Brady's Home — Maxine’s whole house is relaxed and chic (Picture: Maxine Brady)

To finish off the room, I went for a copper sink and tap. I try to marry style with practicalities and in the summer it can get pretty hot, so I’ve invested in a premium, super-quiet fan from Duux and it’s been a game changer when I’m cooking. I wanted a sleek fan that worked.’

Maxine fitted an integrated washer-dryer and slimline dishwasher, and had a window installed above the sink to create a view out over the garden and to flood the room with light.

A floor-to-ceiling spice rack was squeezed into a 6cm gap by the fridge freezer. ‘It saves me so much cupboard space. I also love the open shelving, which holds so much more than bulky wall cupboards.’

Maxine says that it proves that a small kitchen can be full of design features. ‘I use the walls for storage space, hanging salad plates up. I have kilner jars filled with pantry basics on the shelving unit.’

The kitchen is now a bit internet famous, appearing on home decor websites and in Danish interior design titles. It’s also one of the most popular rooms on her Instagram account, @maxinebradystyling.

As Maxine says: ‘Not bad for a little kitchen that cost me less than £6,000.’

Lava Light Grey 3D Rhomboid 25.5cm x 29.5cm Mosaic Tile

Look at those tiles (Picture: Maxine Brady)

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Maxine says: ‘These green sage colour units are warmer than grey, and add a softer look to my home.’

Get the sage look from Symphony kitchens.

Map on the wall of Manhattan. Maxine says: ‘It’s wrapping paper found in Oz on holiday that I framed up.’

Exact map not locatable. Buy this alternative Vintage City Map Of New York for £174.99 from Wayfair.

Moroccan Style Dinner Plate

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Habitat Food Storage Heart Canisters

A little bit of love (Picture: Joseph O'Brien) — A little bit of love (Picture: Joseph O’Brien)

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Quadron Nicolas Copper Sink from Olif Designs

Make a statement (Picture: Olif / Quadron Nicolas)

Buy it for £318.38 from Olif.

Stoves Sterling 600MFTi Range Cooker

Simple and effective (Picture: Sterling Range Stoves)

Buy it for 1,149.99 from Stoves.

Terracotta Stripe Pattern Planter

You're in pot luck (Picture: George Home at Asda) — You’re in pot luck (Picture: George Home at Asda)

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May 16, 2022

Fondation Louis Vuitton’s new art installation at Venice

Katharina Grosse has lengthy built work that transcends boundaries her in-situ installations tread the line between sculpture and painting, installation and experience, and her most current do the job – commissioned by and established for Fondation Louis Vuitton – is no exception. On screen at Espace Louis Vuitton in Venice for the Biennale, Grosse has made a multi-layered, sensory and exploratory piece that reaches back again in time though speaking to the existing the set up, referred to as Apollo Apollo, will take its cue from Aeschylus’s ancient Greek trilogy the Oresteia, which charts the rise and tumble of the house of Atreus, the victors of the Trojan war. The daughter of the defeated Trojan king, Cassandra, is cursed by the god Apollo, whose advancements she has turned down, to give correct prophecies that will by no means be believed. “Cassandra sees a little something but every person says she’s mad,” states Grosse, when I talk to her at the opening of the Biennale. “I thought that was tremendous intriguing.”

katharina grose, apollo, louis vuitton, venice

Apollo Apollo

Daniele Nalesso

Techniques of looking at is a topic that Grosse wanted to explore by means of a variety of mediums. Apollo Apollo is a cascade of iridescent, metallic mesh that bleeds into the area on the fabric by itself the pinks, blues, golds, reds are painted on and meld into each individual other, representing photographs that seize Grosse’s creative course of action, taken more than a variety of years. “The reflectiveness [of the fabric] erases the picture that is printed on it,” she claims. The artist played with warm and cold mild to convey out the diverse layers of the function. “The simple fact that the gentle that shines on it truly erases what you see was an attention-grabbing paradox.”

Apollo Apollo is about voices that are not listened to

Certainly, Grosse appeared to the theme of the Biennale itself, “The Milk of Dreams”, a title from a book by the Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, that refers to a environment that is re-envisioned by way of the imagination, and exactly where anyone can be reworked. “Apollo Apollo is about seeing, but it is also about the voice,” says Grosse. “It’s also about connecting to the Biennale, discovering the voices that are not heard.”

The trope of women of all ages who talk but aren’t listened to is a theme that resonates strongly in contemporary culture. Is this, I request, a feminist function? “Cassandra is surely a feminist voice if you want to study it that way,” she says. “She’s not thought. She’s disregarded.”

Grosse frequently finishes works in situ and regarded the point that the viewers would have travelled via Venice and the retail area just before coming up to the personal Espace Louis Vuitton on the prime flooring. “It’s like a stage: there is a person house, a person individual – there’s that dialogue.” It’s only on nearer inspection that you realise that there are objects underneath the mesh – a fold-up chair, a pair of shoes. They are almost imperceptible – outlines, impressions of what lies beneath. “The objects themselves are turned into anything else within your fantasy. The sneakers in there are no longer footwear if you never walk in them. They are stripped of their features. These are objects you may possibly not see straight away, camouflaged by the material.”

Grosse is presently collaborating on two far more installations for Louis Vuitton, 1 of which is impressed by the architecture of Frank Gehry, who also conceived the primary structure for the Fondation. It’s rewarding to adhere to the thread of connection in Grosse’s entire body of work, immediately after all, the ebb and stream of the Apollo Apollo reflects the fluidity in her solution, and the transient from the Fondation was the fantastic option to have ‘carte blanche’ and reinvent the prospects of the space.

katharina grosse, louis vuitton, venice biennale, apollo

The artist Katharina Grosse

Courtesy

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May 16, 2022

St. Augustine featured in exhibit at Governor’s House Cultural Center

Billy Triay, property manager for the University of Florida Historic St. Augustine, looks at a painting in a gallery in the Governor's House Cultural Center and Museum in St. Augustine on Thursday, May 12, 2022. The "Painting St. Augustine" exhibit is from UF's Harn Museum of Art's "The Florida Art Collection." The collection was a gift from Samuel and Roberta Vickers and features paintings of Florida. The exhibit opened on Friday, May 13, and it is free to the public. Exhibit hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.

At the time termed the “most paintable town in the U.S.” by artist Anthony Thieme, St. Augustine drew artists to paint its historic surroundings around the Gilded Age and outside of, said Dulce Roman, main curator and curator of modern day art for the Harn Museum of Art at the College of Florida.

Paintings from artists who stayed at Henry Flagler’s Hotel Ponce de Leon and sold functions showcasing St. Augustine to rich visitors are part of an exhibit at the Governor’s Residence Cultural Center and Museum at 48 King St. in St. Augustine, Ramon explained.

The show, which opened Friday, is cost-free to the general public. Show several hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday as a result of Sunday. The bank loan agreement for the pieces is for 1 yr, in accordance to UF Historic St. Augustine Residence Supervisor Billy Triay.

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A painting by Robert German shows St. Augustine's bayfront in 1890. The painting is part of an exhibit at The Governor's House Cultural Center and Museum in St. Augustine.

The exhibit was element of the St. Augustine Heritage Pageant, which featured distinctive situations and venues about the metropolis by Sunday. The celebration was developed by UF Historic St. Augustine, the firm tasked with caring for point out-owned houses in the metropolis. Details are at staugustinehistoryfestival.com.

The “Painting St. Augustine” show is from the Harn Museum of Art’s “The Florida Art Assortment,” a gift from Samuel and Roberta Vickers. The couple gave their selection of about 1,200 is effective of artwork to the Harn Museum.

The component of the collection that is in St. Augustine options “is effective by far more than twenty artists who captured lively landscapes and city sights of Florida’s oldest town,” according to the Harn Museum of Art. “The performs date from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries and address a broad selection of themes from views of coastlines and waterways to depictions of historic landmarks, picturesque streets and courtyards. Collectively, these paintings comprise a visible history of St. Augustine, its exclusive topography and local climate, as perfectly as its individuals and their each day lives.”

The St. Augustine show features near to 40 paintings.

Among the highlighted artists are Frank Shapleigh and Laura Woodward, each of whom stayed at the Lodge Ponce de Leon.

“By the 1890s, St. Augustine experienced develop into a wintertime playground for artists and travelers alike, and paintings these kinds of as these on look at listed here held a immediate charm to readers who could purchase them as souvenirs of their travels,” according to an show description by Roman.

Scenes involve the Castillo de San Marcos (Fort Marion), Fort Matanzas, occupied downtown streets, nuns, the bayfront, and people strolling via the Plaza de la Constitucion, between many others.

Lee Anne Chesterfield, director of the Harn Museum of Artwork, claimed about the Vickers Selection, “I assume of it as a stunning historical past of Florida in painting.”

May 16, 2022

How countries weaponize landscape design in war

Nevertheless there have been cases exactly where nations have utilized the landscape as a weapon. In one particular such touchstone case — Operation Ranch Hand — the U.S. army introduced a defoliant termed Agent Orange over the South Vietnam countryside to weaponize the forest in the course of the Vietnam War.

The U.S. military services unveiled a defoliant called Agent Orange around the South Vietnam countryside to weaponize the forest through the Vietnam War as element of the Procedure Ranch Hand venture. [Photo: USAF/Wiki Commons]

Even though the stop of the Vietnam War observed an international ban on making use of the setting as a weapon, landscape style and design — which features the scheduling and planting of inexperienced areas — proceeds to existing alone as a resource able of influencing the hearts and minds of neighborhood populations and ultimately acquiring army goals.

Whilst talking about the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed,

“Winning a struggle is not successful the war. Having a metropolis does not necessarily mean Vladimir Putin’s using the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people today. On the contrary, he is destined to lose.”

Evidently, the United States armed service doctrine considers profitable “hearts and minds” as a important measure to earn a war.

As a style critic who has been learning the role of landscapes in warfare, I argue that trees and inexperienced spaces can be elements of a non-coercive manner of warfare, as they can be utilized to further more group solidarity and diminish the likelihood of insurgency.

Winning hearts and minds

The working experience of the United States army in Afghanistan has demonstrated that having a extra powerful military services force does not warranty winning a war.

Although the Taliban surrendered Kandahar only two months just after the launch of Procedure Enduring Freedom in 2001, the U.S. army remained in Afghanistan and engaged in violent conflict for the subsequent 20 years, in the long run withdrawing and returning the nation to Taliban regulate.

Central to the United States’ work to secure peace was the approach of winning “hearts and minds,” or building psychological and intellectual appeals to the neighborhood inhabitants by attraction and persuasion alternatively of force.

Through Procedure Allies Welcome a US military company member performs with an evacuated Afghan lady in an Afghan refugee camp on November 4, 2021 in Holloman Air Force Foundation, New Mexico. [Photo: Jon Cherry/Getty Images]

The U.S. military may have finally unsuccessful to get the war in Afghanistan, but they did build techniques to secure peace and gain over the hearts and minds of area citizens. Whilst not each individual energy was successful, I identified numerous cases where by the U.S. military’s war-preventing goals aligned with an not likely ally — the profession of landscape architecture.

Considering that Olmsted’s time, a expanding body of scientific exploration has concluded that exposure to green area contributes to improved well being and perfectly-currently being. When health care professionals have been prescribing spending time with nature, landscape architects have been operating to increase the optimistic results of publicity via style and design.

Landscape style and design presents itself as a resource capable of influencing the overall health and properly-becoming and, consequently, the hearts and minds of neighborhood populations. Finally it can realize army goals via the organizing and planting of green area.

Weaponizing the landscape

Employing the landscape as a weapon is an below-appreciated spot of examine.

In 1976, the United States, together with 47 other nations, turned signatories to the Conference on the Prohibition of Military services or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Tactics. This treaty prohibits “modification of the purely natural setting for use as a weapon of war” and “acts of war injurious to the purely natural environment.”

A burning oilfield during Operation Desert Storm, Kuwait. [Photo: Jonas Jordan/United States Army Corps of Engineers/Wiki Commons]

Even though deliberate environmental destruction proceeds, exemplified by the burning of oil wells established ablaze by Iraqi troops all through the Gulf War, researchers hope that the Worldwide Criminal Courtroom may a person working day prosecute “crimes from the ecosystem.”

Far more not long ago, the Halt Ecocide Foundation has been working to present a criminal definition of ecocide that will have the pressure of international law, building punishable “severe and either common or long-expression injury to the surroundings.”

These attempts are laudable and should have our guidance. Yet, the understandable emphasis on destruction and destruction decreases the focus presented to acts of war, like tree planting initiatives, that “improve” an environment.

Comprehension the long-time period impacts of war

One challenge carried out by the U.S. military in Afghanistan observed lively troops direct a reforestation effort in the Panjshir area, exactly where they planted 35,000 trees, building a regional inexperienced house.

A U.S. Army officer crops a sapling for the duration of the ‘Afghanistan’s Foreseeable future Takes Root’ initiative in Panjshir, Afghanistan. [Photo: 1st Lt. Holly Hess/DVIDS]

As a lot of persons knowledgeable this regional planting energy, the landscape motivated the hearts and minds of area citizens on a populace scale.

Irrespective of the U.S. army now getting withdrawn from Afghanistan, these planted trees and other inexperienced spaces continue on to increase and exert influence. Consequently, it is not just acts of war injurious to the ecosystem that have wide-achieving and lengthy-phrase impacts on a inhabitants.

As I produce from my business on the unceded territory of the Musqueam people, I am more keenly knowledgeable that a lovely landscape can manipulate hearts and minds and grow to be a weapon of war. The continued presence of a colonial landscape, made and imposed on these lands, is simpler to understand if we talk to what this land looked like prior to and following creating a settler-colonial modern society.

We working experience green areas in another way based on their design and style and our cultural history. We want to think about who developed and created our community green spaces and for what purpose. Finally, it matters if the landscape is redesigned and replanted by community populations or by occupying forces.

May 16, 2022