works in glas, stone - Joseph J. - metal & natural materials

This being the proper beginnings of a roof top garden in June 2010,
you might be able to think of what went on before things got as far as this beginning in 2009

 

"Rooftop Gardening", as it is called to day
is something my wife and myself were just waiting for to happen, until that very moment we had to intervene as the flat bit of the (old fashioned asphaltic) roof of the annex that we built some twenty years ago had to go, being to brittle, and beyond repair.
It was something of an old wish of mine.
In the years I was a student in the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam my creed was that an architect should always consider a building to be 'in a difficult relation' with nature ('nature' being all things beyond mankind, which in my view is about everything of any importance: nature thrives well without mankind, mankind could be fairly non-existant without nature - which of course could be just a 'silly-me idea'). This now was something our attention was drawn to again by the state of the oak, and the ash tree that are standing right beneath our annex, guarding it from all too-direct sun and cold (apart form being beautiful trees that we like to sit under). These two had their branches developed away from the roof top. The branches growing direct over that roof died long before their counter-parts on the four other sides of the trees; and to be honnest it was not a fine place to be what ever way one would look at it.
So there we were 'being happy with a proper leak'.

In 2009 all began with an idyllic pucture from our bedroom window.
And that is after much ( a few hundred kilos) of the asphalt-paper, the stones and what-nots had been taken off - and much more had to go in order to get a clear view, and that 'sound surface' for a new start:



- The actual damage was not fun at all - only our mice loved it

 


- one keeps mice for the owls that are living in the area (and in fact in our trees) in a family of about 14 now -

 

since some time, I'm aware of it since Mai 2010 and heard their hoarse barks never before (I live here more than 30 years), there are Short-eared Owls between the Long-eared Owls in the trees around the house (Asio Flammeus amongst Asio Otus). I'm told that they go together well, but have not heard much of the ongoing, nightly soft hoo - hoo - hoo that was soo caracteristic for the stately-upright Long-ears. I know them every year to have to give up one of their favorite trees to some terribly agressive pigeons, so I am a bit on the look out for explanations for their silence (other than their well known silence during the weeks of having eggs and hatching)

- just a few hundred kilos of smaller and bigger stones, earth, sand,


rubber stepping stones, and indeed plants had to be brought up only after being brought down

 

- then just ballasting, and waiting for 'rain proof' signals -


that is, the sort of thing that makes you properly nervous -

 

On the next page you might find what this was all leading to

 

 

 

vertalingen Joseph J. Visser

 

Art in a Relation to the Architecture page 1

 

 

Joseph Johannes (Joop) Visser Personal Home & Vitae

 

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