On a crisp and cool Sunday morning you can’t beat sipping a cappuccino while looking for inspiration at the Magnolia Community Garden. Today’s featured image is a vegetable trellis structure for growing – I decided to snap a photo for future reference in studio. This past week my studio partner, Caleb, and I have explored the concept of a vegetable trellis structure but on a grander scale for the Magnolia park site. What if we show urban horticulture as a vertical garden, a vegetable trellis system, and a horticulture center where the walls are seasonal?
Here are some snapshots of this weekend’s progress in developing this concept:
Our strategy ‘mood’ board includes ideas on vertical gardening that is ornamental or artistic, low cost trellis structures like rope or thin wooden strips, as well as rock garden or water retention to help with site water management.
There is an opportunity to leverage this axis on the site for a pleasant promenade under this trellis structure concept. Can this strategy support community events? Can it encourage more pedestrian foot traffic or perhaps become a popular running route?
We want the building program to have direct access to a pavilion space, or a site opportunity that allows for a flexible and expandable program. Perhaps you aren’t under the Center’s trellis, but the Center is under the Community Trellis with you. Growing together. Think about it.
First things first I’m the trellis(t?). Something something, Hip name. Here we are considering the scale on site with a preliminary massing model. And, some markup doodles. We want to be intentional with the structure, consider shadows casting on plantings, and frame moments on site that highlight the quality efforts of the Parks Conservancy and their community partners who garden on site.
We might be getting slightly ahead of ourselves in design but we are exploring this concept as a way to challenge some of the site specific limitations that we face. We want to address how we can maximize our site presence, provide more resources to the Avondale neighborhood, and yet be conservative with our physical building interior square footage. We’ll see how our arguments hold up and if our concept is a tad bit farfetched or not when we have our next meeting this week!
Enjoy your Monday.
Thanks Friends,