Tag Archives: landscape

Cross Cultural

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Lived lots of years in foreign countries–foreign cultures.

Cross-cultural are experiences in which I have been face-to-face with people and behaviours I did not understand and often did not agree.

…as opposed to multi-cultural which is theory only.

In my work as a landscape architect in those foreign countries and foreign cultures, I had to build major projects. Had to reach workable agreements in difficult cross-cultural conditions. Learned so very much from so many different people.

The links below track some of my cross-cultural journeys.

They are all HD, all less than one minute long, and they are all growing from the Empty Quarter, the Rub al Khali.

Rub al Khali Enigma: the Empty Quarter in the Arabian Peninsula, what it is.

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Dreams: how to get from dreams to fiction to reality, Atlantis Dubai 2008.

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Empty Quarter: transforming cross-cultural realties, harsh environments into restful shelter, Qasr al Sarab 2010.

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A Golf Academy in the Empty Quarter?

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Listen to ‘Mys Alpli’

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Edelwyss-Starnen sing the last verse of Mys Alpli. High in the Berner Oberland, an alp is a field, a pasture, a productive piece of mountain land where animals can be grazed. Thus in the background of this you can hear the bells of the sheep, goats and cows. Available at itunes.apple.com/us/artist/jodelg…rnen/id329166348

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Mid July in the Berner Oberland Jungfrau Region–it is that time of year when the highest alps receive the animals for the ‘spring’ grasses.

I met a researcher in a Stubbe last week. He was researching linkages between humans and the landscape. He shared with me the following photos of yodelers.

Yodelers in the Jungfrau Region of the Berner Oberland in Switzerland–in the yodel, a human can hear and feel the landscape.

Yodelers demonstrate their respect for the landscape in all aspects of their lives–arts, crafts–and the richness of the detail recalls the richness of their feelings for the landscape. Stewards, custodians of the landscape–that is only the beginning in the Jungfrau Region of the Berner Oberland.

 

He noted that these yodelers are not hired professionals or foreign workers. They are humans whose families have lived in this landscape for centuries.

He posited that there are rootlets of some strange consistency that transcend the lifetimes of humans. Those rootlets, he said, were channels through which a music travels from the landscape through the voices of the yodelers.

Each verse of a song glorifies a different aspect of the relationship between humans and the landscape. And each chorus…well…the chorus is the landscape.

Pasture Waves

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From a distance, it’s hard to see, but the waves carry it in the air…from that huge bowl of a valley…the pastures.

Closer, pastures rolling up and rolling across the slopes, the fields. My eyes and nose battle to receive their outpouring.

Invisible micro-whisps rising, swirling…they enter my nose, uninvited, confusing my sense of beauty with olfactory complexities; but then my receptors are overtaxed and I can receive no more—so I look and my eyes gradually suffer the same fate.

Why are these pleasures time-stamped? Am I being protected from following some forbidden sensual path into the home of these glorious plants?

Just a question. Because I will visit these pastures again tomorrow and for a brief moment share their waves of ecstasies.

…Clou…d…s…

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…the changing of the airs…

There are days when I look across the valley and see flows of clouds, flows of clouds I do not understand. Right side of the brain…nil. Left side of the brain…nil.

Yet, I am entranced by the beauties of the flows…

Other days, I wake up, eager to see those flows…and I find…what might as well be infinitely far away…something in that distance…all by itself…sigh.

…and it begins…

I sigh confronted by beauty I can not fathom. Clouds…if I can not grasp them in my hands, how can I describe them? How can I write about them?

Suggestions?

 

Food Gardens

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The history of the Interlaken landscape before river channel control was one of a swamp as the Lutschine and Lombach emptied huge Alpine catchments into this flat land adjacent to the Aare River.

Up the valleys Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen, Saxeten and Lombach where swampiness was not a problem, people have for centuries managed arable land to support their families. Particularly in the Grindelwald area, there are seven centuries of written records documenting how they managed the landscape.

So this region has a tradition of agriculture, crop and animal management in family scale over the lands from Alpine heights to valley floors. The following series of images show how the Interlaken neighborhoods now follow that same tradition of small land management and family food gardens today.

Most families dedicate a patch for seasonal vegetables close to their house.

Veg, flowers, and a place to sit outside.

This ‘front yard’ is 80% mixed garden, with little strip of grass–maybe for a pet.

A garden filled with healthy plants speaks of health and commitment to neighbors and passersby.

When the yard is large enough, there will be found a fruit tree. If even larger, a nut tree.

Each homeowner finds unique balance with the plantings of flowers, fruits, herbs and vegetables.

Municipal water supply for allotment gardens for people who have no gardening space at home.

In the allotments, beauty comes from sweat equity. Healthy allotment gardens are the best of public realm commitments–people and plants in harmony–heart warming it is.

Past the edge of town is a rural landscape with small scale patches of crops.

Small scale farming climbs up the slopes becoming pastures which are grazed and/or cut for animals.

Villages are densely built in the foreground. Pastures in the middle ground with barns for storing hay.

I just can’t stop including more images of healthy veg gardens next to homes–such a fulfilling feeling.

In this image is a public path on the right–and one heck of a healthy veg garden to the left. Tell me that is not a beautiful and inspiring landscape?!

Pasture in the foreground, veg in middle ground, flowers and home in the background. Nuf said.

Fruit trees and crops right up to the edge of town, then each home with its own veg and flower garden. It is not ideology, not theory. It is fact. It is the result of people understanding plants, gardens and landscapes through their own hard work and intelligence.