Editorial - a summary

A country garden in Stevns, p. 130 
Annemarie Lund 

Michael Møller, horticulture graduate from KVL in 1966 and former gardening consultant tells about his garden. My place is a former smallholder farm. When I took it over in 1967 it was quite run-down and consisted of a jumble of buildings and sheds, with old hen houses, horse and cow stables. The house itself is from around 1900. The family lived primarily off the ten acres of land and there was no real flower garden, just fields, grass areas and vegetable and fruit gardens. I preserved the most unusual small buildings, including the old granary, which has been converted to a guest and cool house for the winter storage of plants. Everything you can see, with the exception of the large horse chestnut tree and some old fruit trees has been planted since the 1970’s. There was a need to dampen the west winds and create shelter. So besides the thick beech hedge around the garden, I established a wide sheltering windbreak toward west. Internally the garden was divided up by larch hedges, which form a kind of inner T and thereby create seven-eight garden spaces that each have their own special character and function.

GBL 50 years: Conversation with Torben Gade, p. 136
Annemarie Lund

Tegnestuen Gruppen for by & landskabs-planlægning, GBL – has existed for fifty years. Torben Gade explains what the office has worked with and for. The following shows examples of current planning commissions and projects. The office was started in 1962 by three classmates from the Royal Academy’s landscape architecture department: Ole Klaaborg, Gunnar Moos and Arne Lindholdt, originally with the name Klaaborg – Lindholdt– Moos, KLM. Over the last twenty years GBL has consolidated its position especially in the area of urban and landscape planning.

Nature Plan Fredericia, p. 138
Sødde Clemensen and Torben Gade

Nature Plan Fredericia – Space for greenery, supports work in developing and preserving a rich and varied landscape and to ensure access to this for the local citizens. The plan is a theme plan, an operational tool to pursue the municipality’s visions for strengthening and developing the landscape in a wider sense and a tool to realize and target efforts in concrete projects. The graphical icon for the landscape plan’s vision consists of three green rings: The historical ring, The recreational ring, The untouched ring and a blue, The active ring. The rings are linked together by radial green wedges. The Nature Plan designates a number of special effort areas, so that resources in future years can be targeted. Focus is placed on: Activity beaches and access to the coast; More nature in the city; Afforestation on the edges of the city; And that the concept for municipal forestry efforts with a number of environmental considerations is implemented in the municipality’s other areas as well as the facilitation of the concept to private forest owners; The re-establishment of ponds and the clearing of streams in the areas that no longer are suitable for modern agriculture.

Detours and special spots, p. 140
Christian Hylgaard and Lise Thorsen

As the result of the prize in the competition for the good detour, GBL has in Kolding and along the stream created three places based on the concepts movement, game and play. The architectural concept is to tie the city together in informal and unorganized sport and movement in spontaneity and impulse. Furthermore for Kolding Municipality GBL established four special spots along Kolding Stream, from the city and eastward out toward the fjord. At all of these good detours and special spots signs were placed with QR codes that describe the place’s distinctive features and attributes.

Better green experiences in the city, p. 142
Torben Gade

The development project Better green experiences in the city was based on an initiative from the Danish Nature Agency in collaboration with the Danish Outdoor Council with the primary goal of further developing green planning on the urban level, local level and detail level. This included the development of new planning tools for the country’s municipalities and the focus on potential barriers in legislation that could limit the municipalities in making their cities greener. The project should contribute to developing tools to create different types of green features in the city. Tools, which the municipalities can use if they wish to promote citizens’ opportunities to cultivate exercise, experience nature or if there is the desire to promote biodiversity in the city. The Nature Agency and the Outdoor Council were interested in elucidating the possibilities of employing the tools for recreational experience values in planning as well as the tool: bio factor. The project Better green experiences has resulted in a number of recommendations to the Ministry of the Environment and the Outdoor Council concerning the development of tools and legislation for the purpose of further development of green planning in our cities.

A changeable monument, p. 144
Steen Høyer

At Christmas 1945, C.Th. Sørensen created ‘The Musical Garden,’ which is also known as ‘The Geometric Gardens.’ It was planned as a city park in Horsens, but was not realized until later and then in Herning. Today the garden is fully grown and lies in a clearing that is part of the comprehensive plan for the Birk area. ‘The Musical Garden’ is a masterly architectural effort that epitomizes the entire modernistic idea of simple rational geometric forms in a dynamic interplay as a complex artistic experience, a composition that is not to be found more simple and clearer in any other architectural expression – neither planted nor built. This, in brief, is the basis for Christina Capetillo’s photographical documentation of the garden, which she carried out during all seasons, and the results are gathered in the book A changeable monument. The book, which is published in both English and Danish, has a foreword by professor Anne Whiston Spirn, articles about photography by professor Carsten Thau, and about C.Th. Sørensen by Steen Høyer.

EFLA: Students & Young Professionals’ Competition, p. 148
Stine Borgstrøm, Lise Anette Breivik, Kjersti Bjerke Hagen and Line Stybe Vestergaard

The Danish/Norwegian architecture collaboration byterra – testrum for arkitektur won first prize in EFLA’s, European Federation for Landscape Architecture, competition for landscape architects under 35. The competition was divided in three categories: Project, place and concept, and there were 100 submissions. The proposal Ecolab CO2rridor won the category: project. The proposal possesses a number of ‘Danish values.’ The office was inspired by the historical implications of the 26-kilometer long railway line that connects Singapore with the continent. The project attempts to clarify and reinforce nature’s processes and existing qualities along the line while also creating a new space in the city.

Competition: Day-care center Forfatterhuset, p. 150
PK3 Landscape Architects

PK3 in collaboration with COBE and DAI ing. won the competition for a new day-care center Forfatterhuset, with space for 160 children in a day nursery and kindergarten. The outdoor spaces for the children will be on ground level as well as roof terraces. These spaces are conceived as a whole, where the garden, terraces, small sheds and the building create a small ‘village’ with small and large spaces. The garden is based on Reggio Emilia’s pedagogical principles. The concept of the kindergarten as a public space is interpreted with a transparent and tactile fence, where there is visual contact between the institution and life in the neighborhood and with a view from the roof terraces to the traffic flow on the street below. Nature experiences and space for creativity were the basis for the design and that the garden’s structure in the areas invites a variety of activities simultaneously.

Pete Avondoglio