Threads emerge on iconophilia in unpredictable ways. Trees as icons? Bear with me. This time I’m suggesting heroic iconic status for a poor little tree of a completely different character to my previous post. In this instance we witness the architectural trope of planting exotic trees in the most artificial environments, as if somehow they’re going to thrive and enhance their surroundings. Just as Raquel Ormella has been photographing Canberra’s European trees at the end of their lives, so your iconophiliac has been noticing how little we’ve learnt at this end of the timescale. The trees above are planted in a asphalt-sealed geometric plinth which seems designed to shed water. Not that water falls from the sky any more. Good luck tree. We’ll report on your progress. This new building is at 16 Marcus Clarke, Acton. No architects acknowledged. But to give credit where credit is due, the eucalypts in the planter box out the front look as if their future is much more promising.
The trees below have struggled ever since they were planted at right angles to the sloping lawns in the nightmarish Garden of Australian Dreams at the National Museum of Australia. Vertical shoots are not permitted – although some survivors are evident in this photograph. This Cabinet of Cliches was designed by Room 4.1.3 (Richard Weller and Vladimir Sitta). Want to learn more? You can read the latter here on anger management and incontinence – ah! the internet’s a wonderful place.
True to its acronym the GOAD is the epitome of landscape design arrogance. It’s a profoundly uncomfortable site full of lame jokes – see their “Blue Poles” in the background. The other sad consequence (at the expense of its desired effects) is that “The Garden” has had to be modified time and again for Health and Safety reasons… Yet when there were suggestions the whole thing might be scrapped and redesigned, as Matthew Rimmer reports: “one of the designers … Richard Weller threatened to bring an action for a breach of the new moral right of integrity…” As my mother used to say: “goo-ah” (god help us all).
Compromise and insult. Even the NMA’s own account gets it all wrong…
Iconophilia invites readers to contribute to this thread. Examples of both the best and worst of the relationships architects have to trees are invited. In the meantime, you can lift your spirits by following the links the previous “if trees could speak” post has generated.
If only trees could tell their stories. In many ways this may seem a strange topic for this blog, a bit off-topic for this iconophiliac, but when natural forms acquire the status of icons, there are connections worth writing about…
The backstory. Every second day or so I walk up Mount Ainslie, behind the Australian War Memorial. I walk and run, to push the old physiotype a bit… It’s a great experience, and the path takes you through beautiful passages of bush, the wildlife watches you as you pump past, and you pass through complex natural and cultural zones that are strangely compelling, once you get used to them. Some of the zones are totally artificial (cultural) impositions, like the series of excreable plaques that suggest you’re following (experiencing) the Kokoda Trail. By contrast, there’s the so-called Aboriginal Plaque, now adopted by the Australian War Memorial, but originally the private intervention of a Campbell citizen who wanted to quietly protest and memorialise the war-time contributions of Aboriginal people.
And of course, you can’t help but be aware the whole region was once trodden by Indigenous feet, hunting, farming the natural produce of this land. And then you also recognise the relics of other farmers, bits of broken down fencing which remind us this was once also a marginally economic zone for the settlers who preceded the establishment of Canberra and the development of the suburbia nearby.
Which brings me to the tree. There are other, grander eucalypts along this track, but it is this one that has become my favourite. It has somehow survived and re-grown the effects of a serious bushfire which ignited Mt Ainslie in the 1980s. Over the past two years I’ve been watching as the split between the live and dead remnants of its once significant trunk gradually widens.
But then, just today, I looked up and recognised that the stump of its burnt-hollow better half had been chainsawed down sometime in the years since the bushfire, and the solid bits rolled a little way down the hill. Perhaps it was a threat to joggers? Yet despite such traumas, it’s a survivor. These trees have the capacity to re-grow from the most unlikely remnant parts.
So, dear readers, do you have a favorite tree with a story to tell? If other bloggers can have road kill categories, surely we can have a Natural History theme for iconophilia?
PS Since writing this post I’ve discovered On Relations with Trees, an elegant and evocative essay by Melissa Sweet, in which I discover I’ve innocently appropriated the title of a book: If Trees could Speak, by Bob Beale (Allen and Unwin, 2007). Here’s a sample. Will do some more backgrounding, and update…
