An excerpt from a Boston Globe article:
I spent a year working for this architect in Sri Lanka who made wonderful buildings, using pieces of other buildings that had been demolished and putting them together in different ways, and they always looked as though they were just about to fall apart. They were very carefully maintained to give this illusion that they were just about to be swallowed back into the jungle….And it struck me that buildings are always like that really - they’re always about to slide into ruin or fall to pieces or do something. They never just sit there, doing what we want them to do.
I am always fascinated by buildings shaded by humongous trees and embraced by vines, shrubs, and a plethora of leafy plants. They give the illusion that, sooner or later, nature will have overcome them, dragging these buildings back to the ground where they belong.
That's a sharp contrast to what architects would like their buildings to be. As man-made marvels, buildings generally stand out from their surroundings: aliens amidst landscapes of green and blue. They are built always to appear "new" and "formidable".
For me, that's easy to do. It is easy to make a building stand out. All one has to do is remove all the surrounding vegetation and that's it. But I guess it takes more skill, and certainly more time, to make a building "disappear", to make a building a seemingly organic part of the horizon, to make it blend with the foliage.
One doesn't see landscaping plans incorporated in building plans. That's probably because architects don't think that's still part of their work. But perhaps - maybe in the future - a new architectural movement will come to change all that. I'm crossing my fingers.
I spent a year working for this architect in Sri Lanka who made wonderful buildings, using pieces of other buildings that had been demolished and putting them together in different ways, and they always looked as though they were just about to fall apart. They were very carefully maintained to give this illusion that they were just about to be swallowed back into the jungle….And it struck me that buildings are always like that really - they’re always about to slide into ruin or fall to pieces or do something. They never just sit there, doing what we want them to do.
- Edward Hollis, Architect
I am always fascinated by buildings shaded by humongous trees and embraced by vines, shrubs, and a plethora of leafy plants. They give the illusion that, sooner or later, nature will have overcome them, dragging these buildings back to the ground where they belong.
That's a sharp contrast to what architects would like their buildings to be. As man-made marvels, buildings generally stand out from their surroundings: aliens amidst landscapes of green and blue. They are built always to appear "new" and "formidable".
For me, that's easy to do. It is easy to make a building stand out. All one has to do is remove all the surrounding vegetation and that's it. But I guess it takes more skill, and certainly more time, to make a building "disappear", to make a building a seemingly organic part of the horizon, to make it blend with the foliage.
One doesn't see landscaping plans incorporated in building plans. That's probably because architects don't think that's still part of their work. But perhaps - maybe in the future - a new architectural movement will come to change all that. I'm crossing my fingers.
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