Design: Rita with Francis Rollin and Amandine Guillard
Client: Reford Gardens
Date: 2008
Part of the Reford Gardens International Garden Festival, Rita took on reforestation with ‘pine tree air fresheners’ dropped into a natural setting.
1 comment January 19th, 2012
Design: Legge Lewis Legge
Client: International Garden Festival – Métis, Québec
Date: 2010
These gorgeous Fractal Gardens, are a collection of low diamond shaped planters on wheels, which can be rolled and arranged into shifting mosaics and kaleidoscope patterns.
Add comment April 20th, 2011
Design: Canada Goose
Client: Polar Bears International/Holt Renfrew
Date: 2010
Exclusive to Holt Renfrew, purchase of these toques helps this worthy organization raise much needed funds to protect the polar bear and its habitat (two thirds of the world’s polar bears live in Canada – this is a local issue for us).
Add comment December 28th, 2010
Design:
Client: Polar Bears International
Date:
1 comment December 28th, 2010
Design: Charles Saunders
Client: Central Experimental Farm
Date: 1911
A hybrid strain developed in response to the difficulties of growing wheat on the Canadian prairies. Beginning in 1892, Charles Saunders of the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa experimented with various crossbreeds. The most promising was a cross of Red Fife and Hard Red Calcutta wheat from India, dubbed Marquis wheat. Field trials in Indian Head and Brandon proved that Marquis wheat yielded a remarkable 42 bushels per acre, 10% greater than Red Fife, demonstrated excellent colour and baking strength, and ripened six to ten days earlier. The development was timely, as increased immigration to the Prairies and the inflated demand for wheat during the Great War led to a dramatic increase in wheat production.
- J. E. Rea
Add comment September 13th, 2010
Design:
Client:
Date: Early 1900s
Developed by Russian immigrants this watermelon strain grew quicker (shorter season), and could handle the cooler climate. The taste is close to a cantalope, and features a distinct white flesh with black seeds and a thin dark green striped shell. I am still trying to figure out if this is the origin of Roughrider fans wearing watermelons on their heads…any one know?
3 comments September 9th, 2010
Design: Ernst and Alma Lorenzen
Manufacturer: Lorenzen Pottery, Dieppe NB
Date: 1956
Add comment September 7th, 2010
Design: Myfanwy MacLeod
Client: Vancouver’s Olympic Village
Date: 2010
Photo: Karin Bubas
“My work for the Olympic Village tries to infuse the ordinary and commonplace sparrow with a touch of the ridiculous and the sublime. Locating this artwork in an urban plaza not only highlights what has become the ‘natural’ environment of the sparrow, it also reinforces the ‘small’ problem of introducing a foreign species and the subsequent havoc wreaked upon our ecosystems.”
- Myfanwy MacLeod
1 comment August 16th, 2010
Design: Azul Amuchastegui Bari
Client: Concept
Date: 2009
Add comment August 16th, 2010
Design: Lydia Ellen Cambron
Client:
Date: 2009
A conceptual project designed with B.C. Children’s Hospital and Design for Development, these hospital objects are a serious departure from the way that hospital equipment is typically designed. Obviously the real issues of sterilization, disposabilty, and costs are essential, but Cambron goes a step further. Use biometric feedback, like a wilting plant needing water, she designed the objects to broadcast their function and use. Cambron explains “We all understand the vocabulary of plant life and living organisms. Perhaps the medical devices that support our lives should behave in a way we can all understand”.
-Todd Falkowsky
Add comment June 4th, 2010
Design:
Client:
Date:
One can almost walk by this without noticing as it is so elegantly camouflaged. Adorned with greenery and pastel hydrangeas, this Vancouver street-side utility cabinet is a pleasure to behold amid the urban landscape. It’s striking how a simple splash of design can be so uplifting, as if someone cares about the everyday experience of walking down a neighbourhood street.
-Hannah Wise
5 comments April 23rd, 2010
Design: Dr. John Todd and New Alchemy Institute
Client: self-initiated
Production: Living Machine Inc. and others
Date: 1980s
"Living Machine" located at Findhorn Ecovillage, Scotland – L. Schnadt Wikimedia Commons
Dr. Käthe Seidel first explored the use of swamps, marshes and other wetlands to filter and purify wastewater in the early 1950s. In the 1970s, Dr. John Todd and his collaborators at the New Alchemy Institute, applyed these concepts in the self-sustaining bioshelters they called Arks (One of their first clients was the Government of Canada, which contracted the PEI Ark in 1976). The lessons learned from these ambitious designs later served as the basis for a sewage treatment system that combined technology and biology to mimic natural mechanisms – Todd’s famous “Living Machine”.
In essence, living machines are a series of tanks, each containing different organic filters, bacteria, algae, micro-organisms, plants, trees, snails, and even fish, housed inside a green house to support the plant life. As wastewater passes through the micro-ecosystem of each tank, different organisms feed on the contaminants, cleaning the water without the chemicals, massive energy consumption and toxic sludge, associated with traditional sewage treatment.
One of the strengths of the living machine concept is flexibility; components may be added or removed to accommodate different forms of waste and other unique requirements. Today, Lining Machine Inc. (which Todd sold in 1999) produces “Next Generation Living Machines”, which utilize a more naturalized wetland system, generally eliminating the need for greenhouses and greatly reducing maintenance. Other variations of Todd’s design (under various names) have been employed at various scales, all over the world.
-Michael Erdmann
1 comment April 22nd, 2010
