The big news is, the Institute for Landscape Architecture in South Africa (ILASA) held its biennial Awards of Excellence ceremony in Durban on 21 May, and GREENinc won its 7th Award of Excellence for Sharpeville Cemetery. This is the first project we’ve documented on Facebook, so you would have seen its evolution if you follow us. There are some great new pics there, so have a look.

GREENinc takes the stage

Some of us 😉 have also posted lots of other interesting stuff. And some pretty dodgy stuff too – James, were did you find this euthanasia coaster thing? Please take it off. I knew rollercoasters were dangerous, I once went on the cobra at Gold Reef City too many times and now I have a back problem exclusion in my insurance policy.

Ah, now the kombi tent is more like like it.

GREENinc was also featured on Italian design website New Italian Blood. Don’t ask me, I don’t know – maybe you used to have to be young and Italian to get onto it?. Anyway, check it out.

And check out this underground house. It reminds me of the underground houses I used to build as a kid. OK, just a bit more sophisticated.

Please watch the mini-documentary called Taking the Gap by SPACEMATTERS. How come more people aren’t talking about these “fields of matchbox houses” attached to every South African town and their failure to even try to make liveable urban spaces? Why aren’t there urban designers or landscape architects on these projects? Perhaps we have neglected to tell the right people what we can do to help make a better life for all.

Of course we also have potholes – at least these we can give a positive spin. I’ve seen some local ones turned into gardens and even graves, which helps keeps the drivers out.

Have you heard that Telkom radio ad that says something to the effect that Telkom lines score ten out of ten for reliability? Well – and I’m sure you’ll be astonished to hear this – it’s not true! Our ADSL line went down for nearly two days last week. So if you tried to e-mail us and got a message that our mailboxes were full, that also wasn’t true, our mail just got bounced because the line was down. We were all here, hard at work and trying to check our e-mail, honest. All of us except for Anton and Annamari that is, because they went on holiday AT LAST and were in Namibia. And even then, Anton was keeping track of his e-mail via his trusty i-Phone. They brought back some mesmerising photos, I’m sure you’ll agree.

As usual, check out the GREENinc facebook site for news.

I rather neglectfully didn’t post a newsletter last month. There would have been things to report on, mainly because James was galivanting down under and posting things as he went.

Like the Rainbow City installation, which he didn’t find down there, did he? And this anti-drinking-and-driving campaign – mmm, Spanish, not New Zealand either. And another interesting installation, a roof this time – wait a minute, “het dak dat opgaat in rook”? That can’t be Australia. It looks like he spent his whole trip surfing the net. Maybe he didn’t go at all?

Then Anton got in on the act, he posted this restaurant in an old banking hall and a pic of the benches that we will be using in Sharpeville. He also raved about the design review process undertaken by Places Matter in the UK, and posted a link to a Sunday Times article on green roofs in which he is (extensively!) quoted. In fact, some representatives from a German green roofing company visited us here in the office yesterday to investigate green roofing opportunities here. They mainly install green roofs on existing buildings not necessarily designed to have them in Munich, where any new building larger than fifty square metres must have a green roof. The use a much thinner growing medium layer than we have used for buildings designed with a green roof in order to save weight.

Annamari posted a link to a site that gives you a 720 degree view of the interior of the Sistine Chapel. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the view you see here is that there are no tourists in sight!

Anton has posted interviews with SHoP Architects and Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi, so visit the Facebook site for those.

Oh, and James got around to posting a link to Ballast Point Park in Sydney by McGregor Coxall. I’m always showing people images of this inspirational project to illustrate everything from brownfield development to how great gabions can look.

Well, it took us longer than a week to announce it, but a post did go up on our facebook page that we have launched our new website. I think this site is more about our work and less about the site. It’s much quicker than the old site and as a result a lot more fun to navigate. Have a look. In fact, go wild, post a comment.

What else did we post in the last month? See how a Japanese architect made his housing project stack up. We posted an item on another project that we’re working on in Sharpeville. Check out a thingymabob by an kinetic sculptor (never ask “what is it?” about an artwork). And a quirky artwork in a park in Belgium. At least you won’t have to ask this time!

You will be pleased to hear that work is progressing in GREENinc’s own small patch out back, which is evolving slowly. The long-awaited deck has started to take shape, currently in the form of a matrix of stumpy wooden posts. It’ll be great when it’s finished…

The GREENinc facebook page is crammed with stuff this month.

There’s news of two of our projects, the June 16th and Sharpeville Memorials. There are book reviews. There are several video downloads. Are you living as if your mother-in-law were the only woman in your life? Find out on the presentation by Jaime Lerner. There are a couple of posts on the our Emmarentia Environmental Education Centre project, which got an Urban Green File inspiration award. There’s an amazing green-roofed school. There are photos of arbitrary things that have intrigued or amused Anton on his rounds. There’s a light that powers itself from wind or sun power. There is an artist who aims to capture the mystery of natural processes. There is news of the Architect Africa Film Festival. And there are lots of other links, some of them to news sites that feature our projects, which we especially like of course. Here are a couple – check out Freedom Park on the urbarama site and the Fairlands Office project on World Architecture News.

What do think of this new newsletter format? Maybe you haven’t been able to access any of the stuff I’ve been writing about because of some kind of information suppression, so I’m still going to put links in. And you can comment on it more easily. Let us know!