TPJ

Troublesome Houses, from

THE PLANT JOURNAL

Things have been starting to pop up on the internet (HERE & HERE & HERE), so I suppose I should join the club. I'm sure a more extensive post will follow when the issue is out, and I have a copy in my hands, but suffice to say I'm really excited and honored to have been able to contribute to the beginnings of this magazine.

Isa and Carol have worked exceptionally hard over the last year or so to put out this first issue.

A magazine about plants.

What's not to love?

I wrote an article on the lack of gardening spaces available in New York City and the ways in which we all get around these limitations. Creative New York gardening. The simple life.

I shot the accompanying photographs too. For better or worse.

JENNILEE MARIGOMEN, JUAN IGNACIO MORELJO, YUKINORI MAEDA, MARK BORTHWICK.

That's some good company.

Plus: Bless, Stephen Eichhorn, Lope Serrano, Antonio Luque, Amy Wu, Louis Cervero, Diego Bustamante, and many more.

It should be out any day now. I'll keep you posted on where you can find copies.

New Mexico

One of my favourite things about the work I've been lucky enough to do for INVENTORY has been that, in doing a few things here and there, I've been able to bring in friends, and talented people I know, to contribute to various articles. The first person I called on, back in issue two, was NICHOLAS HAGGARD. Nick's photos have always been outstanding and he's also one of the very best people I know. After the first contribution I worked with Nick again for a shoot my WIFE styled and Simon and I art directed called Stayed North Too Long. That was for issue 3 and is still one of my favourite things any of us have done for the magazine.

This time around, for issue 4, Nick went big. Simon and Ryan asked him to come along on Ryan's trip to New Mexico with Yuki Matsuda from MEG COMPANY. The photo's Nick shot on that trip, and that were featured in the subsequent article, rank as some of my favourites from Nick's extensive body of work.

Luckily being friends with contributors still has its perks, and Nick sent along some outtakes for me to share.

The photos above are a mix of images from the print article and some that have not been seen before.

I can't stress highly enough the need to see these on paper, away from your computer screen, up close, and IN PRINT.

XCVI

LOS EUCALIPTUS

JUAN seems to always have something new, and something inspiring he's working on. Having spent the last few months releasing the first issue of CORRESPONDENCIA, he is now knee deep in the second. Somewhere between the two he made the decision to open up his living space and office in Buenos Aires to host workshops, book exchanges, and film projections. Alongside these things the space is also a permanent library featuring the publications Juan both works for and loves.

LOS EUCALIPTUS

"The 1941 construction by Juan Kurchan and Jorge Ferrari Hardoy (designers of the famous BKF or Butterfly chair, with Antonio Bonet), is located in Belgrano, the area which these architects described at the time as the "Garden neighbourhood, whose inhabitants tend to lead freer, sportier lives." For this reason they avoided the most common solution of wedging in a compact building block, and instead locating the building at the back of a lot. In order to get permission to do this they used an irrefutable argument: to protect the aged trees that dominate the property. They incorporated three eucalyptus trees within the same structural volume, in a fusion never before seen in Buenos Aires, combining architecture and nature, about which Ferrari opined, "Perhaps the most important quality, that stands out the most, is the composition of its facade; when night falls the light shines through its windows, in close-up the trees blow in the wind. All of this means that we can say something not often repeated about this building: it has poetry."

In contrast with the usual occurrence of buildings destined for being rented, this building was destined to construct a community, with its large park, reading room, restaurant and communal laundry room. The utopian characteristics of the project greatly responded to the powerful influence exercised by Le Corbusier, with whom both had collaborated in the mythical Rue de Sevres atelier, following the model of the Unité d'Habitation of Marseille.

The apartments were sold with furniture that they had designed specially. This integral universe involved guidelines and instructions on modern living; radically anti-conformists, it all pointed towards the critical refounding of ways of living."

{So what's been happening with Blogger? That post I made yesterday has been up and down, up and now down. It's like it never happened. What's going on Google? Did anyone see it? Now I'm going to have to do the whole thing again...}

*and it's back...

XCV

{There were a couple of order errors/limited edition versions for all you Google Readers}