Eco -Villages

Last week in our class our professor shared with us a few videos for Eco - Villages, as I mentioned before I wrote an paper this semester about Eco Villages... Today I wanted to share with you One of the movies that we saw last week.

About the Video: "An introduction to Crystal Waters covering permaculture design, innovative housing design, intentional community living and land restoration. Crystal Waters is situated in rural south east Queensland Australia. Filmed in 2001-2002.

This video is the first of several related videos covering Crystal Waters. Please check out this playlist for all the videos featured. The bakery videos and wildlife video are well worth seeing."

Sustainable Landscape Construction

    This semester I had the opportunity to read a book named Sustainable Landscape Construction which was required for an online course that I took. The book was written by J. William Thompson and Kim Sorvig, this book is considered as a guide to green building outdoors. I used the information from the book to create and design my project for the LA Grad studio and the Landscape systems class.

    The book consists of 12 chapters, the authors discussed the defination of sustainability and the 10 main principles for sustainably. For  example they discussed how to keep the site healthy, how heal injured sits, how to respect the water and clean, how to maintain the site, and create a management plan. They also spoke about how to use the renewable energy and to know the cost of energy over time. Moreover, they spoke about how to use local materials, use native plants while designing, how pave less by using different techniques and reduce paving and many other issues. I found that this book is really useful, and it is very helpful for anyone who is trying to create a management plan or designing a site ( Large or small scale). .

Presenting our Ideas to the Community

Presenting our Ideas to the Community

We had a wonderful experience yesterday , 12 students from Mississippi State University went to City of Pelahatchie to present their work. We had the chance to meet people and speak about our drawings, concept for the 2 projects that I have posted earlier: The Muscadine Sculpture Garden, and the Research Sustainable Center... It was my third time to visit Pelahatchie, MS, and for sure it is not going to be the last one. They started decorating the city for Christmas, the city is very neat and clean... In my opinion Pelahatchie is a unique city...

Thanks goes to Prof. Taze Fulford for pushing us to do our work for the last 4 months and to create projects that we are proud of. Thanks to the Mayor of Pelahatchie who came several times to Starkville and gave us the opportunity to present our work and for hosting us. Thanks to the Alderman, and to all the People who showed up yesterday and gave us the time to speak about our ideas... It was a great experience... 

 Mayor of Pelahatchie Knox Ross

Pelahatchie at Night 

My Colleagues and our Instructor Prof. Taze Fulford

Rest in peace... G.Glenn Cook

This November we received a heart breaking news, we lost one of our great teachers, Glenn Cook. I met Professor Cook for the first time in 2013, he participated in the MSU LA Design week 2013. Prof. Cook was drawn wonderful free hand drawings. I remember that he was showing up in the studio for days while were finished our drawings to do our presentation in the design week... Our professors told us that he was a great mentor a great teacher and a great friend... Rest in Peace Prof. Cook...

Here is what Prof. Pete Melby wrote on our MSU LA Blog

Glenn Cook was from Lake Charles, Louisiana.  He studied landscape architecture at Louisiana State University where he received his degree in Landscape Architecture.  Glenn was a very strong designer and very knowledgeable about construction materials and construction detailing.  In fact, many of his design projects were featured in home and gardening magazines, including one that was featured in Southern Living Magazine and was the cover feature for that month. 

Glenn started working as a professor at Mississippi State University in 1978 when Charles Parks was the head of the Department, Bob Callaway was the head of the Landscape Contracting program, and Dean Charles Lindley was Dean of the College of Agriculture.  Glenn was respected both as a person and as a professor by Charles Parks, a lifelong friend since Glenn’s days at LSU when Charlie was the Extension Landscape Architect. 

Students enjoyed Professor Cook and the respect was mutual.  Glenn was a hands-on design professor, both explaining his evaluation of their designs, and showing alternative solutions with the soft lead pencil he always carried in his shirt pocket.  He knew most designers are visual learners and he was expert at explaining with his visuals.

Glenn is survived by his sons Steve Cook a landscape architect on the east coast, Tim, a graphic designer in Nashville, Tennessee, and his wife Margie. Landscape architecture has lost a valuable professor and a classic landscape architectural designer.  We will all miss the kind and creative person that was George Glenn Cook, FASLA.

--Pete Melby

Link: http://msulalc.blogspot.com/2014/11/in-memoriam-gglenn-cook.html

PELAHATCHIE Sustainable RESEARCH CENTER...

PELAHATCHIE Sustainable RESEARCH CENTER was my lat project for this semester... feel free to add your comments and opinions

Waterlogged... Water colors

Waterlogue, an application that transfer your images to a water colored drawings. One of our professors introduced me to this application it is amazing ... I used it for my last project to create a conceptual watercolored drawings, images, and diagrams...

Here are some of the drawings that I used for my project... I think that there will be many interesting softwares to create neat, powerful renders ...

Aquaculture Pond

As I mentioned before I'm working on a project in Pelahatchie. I'm trying to create a research sustainable center and Eco Village community, for the last 3 months I read a lot of different articles and journals. While reading those researches I  found an interesting element and it's called Aquacultural Pond; In Aquaculture ponds systems, the sewage water flows through a series of ponds with floating aquatic plant. I added this series of ponds and link it with my research center. I will post the Final posters soon... very soon... but now I will share some of the details that I found on the Internet.

This is very Useful Link :http://water.epa.gov/type/wetlands/upload/design.pdf

Typical scheme of a waste stabilisation system: An anaerobic, facultative and maturation pond in series

Please check this for the Source: http://www.sswm.info/category/implementation-tools/wastewater-treatment/hardware/semi-centralised-wastewater-treatments/w

Wrestlmania 30: A dream came true

This year my brother Amer and I decided to go to Wrestlemania & Hall of Fame event, these two event were held in New Orleans. It was a wonderful experience, when we were young it was a dream for us to go and attend one of the WWE events. This year 2014 the dream come true. What happened is amazing, my favorite wrestler and performer WWE superstar the Undertaker lost for the first time ever at Wrestlemania. The streak is Over and I was proud to be part of Wrestlemania 30. By the way there was around 80,000 people attending this huge event. 

Here are some picture for the two event that me and my brother attended last April:

From Art to Landscape

My friend hardy gave me a book last week and told me it out, It is really interesting. The book name is " From Art to Landscape: Unleashing Creativity in Garden Design" by W. Gary Smith, Smith is one of North America's leading landscape designers, he is specializes in botanical gardens, arboreturns, public art installation, and privet gardens. Smith many awards from different associations and societies (ASLA).

In his book Smith discussed the artists tools in garden design, creativity while designing. Moreover, he wrote about sketching, painting, and drawings as a ways of seeing. I found this really interesting because sketching and painting is our way to communicate with people, it's our way of selling our ideas and show them to the world. Check his book he merged the ecological and cultural themes together. 

Some of W. Gary Smith works:

Art to Landscape, Landscape to Art by W. GARY SMITH

Planting plan for the xeric “Dry Garden.Designed by W. Gary Smith

His book includes different kinds of drawings, paintings you have to check it out. Everybody has his own way to design, and I think Gary has an amazing way to create spaces and places. 

The Garden of The Prophet...

I just wanted to share with you one of my Favorite Quotes for Khalil Gibran from his book "The Garden of The Prophet"

“Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave
and eats a bread it does not harvest.

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again.

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years
and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle.

Pity the nation divided into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.”

― Khalil Gibran, The Garden of The Prophet

The story behind the High Line Park ...

      The High Line, a new park atop an elevated rail structure on Manhattans West Side, is among the most Innovative urban reclamation projects in memory. The story of how it came to be is a remarkable one: two young citizens with no prior experience in planning and development collaborated with their neighbors, elected officials, artists, local business owners, and leaders of burgeoning movement of horticulture worldwide as a model for creatively designed, socially vibrant, ecologically sound space ( David and Hammond, 2011).

      The importance of studying the High line park is the transformation of the Death Avenue to an urban garden, and the way of the recycling of the railway into urban park that has spurred real estate development in the neighborhoods which lie along the line. According to Pamela Hartford, the High Line was under threat of demolition, it has been resurrected as a park, and it was considered as one of the 10 landscape design projects that turn damaged and spaces into healthy, beautiful environments .

      Also, one of the great delights of the high line is the mix of the architectural styles with different colors and textures that represent virtually every period of the city’s history. “The high line is a great, unfolding gallery where this urban work of art can viewed in real time” (La Farge, 20e12). For example, there are many building designed by famous architects overlooking the High Line Park such as the sail building by Frank Gehry, the Metal Shutter Houses by Shigeru Ban, and many others.

Im sharing with you the images that I took last summer for the High Line

Amazing tour of New York City

This is an amazing, time-lapse video by Cameron Michael, I found this video in Youtube, I had  a wonderful stay in NYC last summer, I had the opertunity to do my internship there, moreover, I went to the Highline several times to do my research there. Check out the movie its great movie. 

"This time-lapse production has been a wild and exhilarating ride, with a lot of physical work lugging my 120-130 pounds of gear around all of Manhattan. I bended (broke) some laws and made a ton of friends. Thank you all for your support and please feel free to help out a starving artist and share this video with the world" by Cameron Michael. 

The prophet

Last week my sister called me and told me about her latest books she has read which was The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. I heard a lot about the book and how amazing it was. So I decided to read it. I finished it in one setting and I loved the book. 

Gibran's writing is very beautiful and attracts you to keep reading the book till the last page. Whenever I liked something from the book, I wrote down the page number in order to go back and reread it. This book explains everything about life, from birth to death. I highly recommend this book because it's a book that literally explains life.

One of my favorite quotes:

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you, 
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”- The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

Thank you Paul and Tina

Hey guys I found this video for "sing language" Its really amazing, I loved the video, Dont forget to see the other acoounts and visit Paul and Tina page on FACEBOOK!! By the way Congrats Paul and Tina, I just knew that you recently got married...

For more info visit their page : https://www.facebook.com/ptsignalong

Muscadine Jubilee 2014

I went to the the Muscadine jubilee this year, it is a great event in Pelahatchie, Mississippi, "For over 30 years, thousands of people have been coming to Pelahatchie late in the summer to pay homage to the
muscadine grape, famed ingredient in southern wines, pies, and jellies. The Muscadine Jubilee is Pelahatchie’s premier event. The event begins with the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast. Later, the crowds assemble at Muscadine Park for food, fun, arts and crafts, music, and of course, the Grape Stomp!"

For more info here is the link: http://pelahatchie.org/?page_id=49

Here is the pictures that i took for the  "Muscadine Jubilee 2014"