Greenhouse by Joost - at Sydney Harbour for 6 weeks

 "I have designed the restaurant in reverse. I’ve started at the end and worked back. My dream has always been to build a restaurant that creates no waste and now I believe I can achieve it!” – Joost

temporary greenhouse, cafe, bar on the harbourside.

This is a good reason for a trip to Sydney if you ask me.... well ... add in a visit to family, friends and such! I love the fact this is temporary set up. It was set up in Federation Square in Melbourne in early 2009 when I was there for a month so I got to see the earlier version Of this brilliant idea!

I think  should let others do the describing.

Joost Bakker’s Greenhouse opened last Friday. Visit the website for all the news...

When I said harbourside I meant it... that wash is fairly close to the open window
... must be very refreshing sitting there looking out!

He thinks of everything!

Joost on the building site

a wall of strawberry pots

The David Bromley painting on the shipping containers





artist at work.

Thanks to the support of Design Files who did the most lovely blog post on their site by writing Joost and the Greenhouse a letter today. It was also great to see you on Friday night for a drink and to enjoy our new space.

“Dear JOOST BAKKER,

How do you do it?

How is it that on December 23rd, the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority offered you, out of the blue, this amazing location at Circular Quay for one of your world-famousGreenhouse temporary restaurants, and less than 2 months later it is HERE for us all to admire?

How is it that local council seem to turn around approval on all your crazy ideas in a timeframe most architects could not even imagine in their wildest dreams?

How is it that you manage to inspire so many brilliant and super high profile local creative people to be involved (David Bromley, David Band, Spacecraft, Queen B Candles, Top chefs Jason Chan and Matt Stone, to name only a few) – with little or no lead time at all?

How is it that you rope in support from so many businesses and project sponsors (Framecad, Little Creatures, Miele and many more) without a corporate logo to be seen?

How is it that you manage to get by on about 2 hrs sleep each night, without a wink of grumpiness, red-eye or evidence of energy depletion?

How is it that you inspired this design blogger to travel to Sydney twice in the past month just to see what you’re up to?

I’ve heard from reliable sources that you have Jedi Powers.  I believe it.  You’re AMAZING.

From Lucy  ”

To read the full post and see all the images – just click here.

THIS TEXT COMES FORM THE GREENHOUSE WEBSITE... ITS A COPY OF THE DESIGN FILES ARTICLE... THESE PHOTS ARE FROM THE WONDERFUL DESIGN FILES AS WELL!

ABOUT JOOST: FROM HIS WEBSITE

Born into a dynasty of Dutch flower growers, Joost is a discipline-crossing creative who constantly draws on his ‘horti-culture’ to make artful commentary on the world’s wasteful ways. Working exclusively with the discard of human activity he has fashioned such extraordinary forms that the word ‘rubbish’ has risen from the scrap heap.Joost has been commissioned to design furniture, vertical gardens and event spaces in his trademark style juxtaposing nature and industry.  In March 2006, Joost set about the construction of a new home for his family, employing a unique building system; a contemporary take on a great sustainable construction method utilising straw bales set into a 100% recyclable steel framework. In 2008, the same building principles were used to construct the first‘Greenhouse by Joost’, an exhibition and event space at Melbourne’s Federation Square which was open from November 2008 to January 2009 and attracted 1,000 visitors per day, global media attention from major publications and over 2.5 million viewers on YouTube. A permanent Greenhouse by Joost is currently located on St George’s Terrace in Perth, Western Australia and in 2010 received the Restaurant of the Year in Perth and attracts 800 to 1,000 visitors per day.

OK.... THis you have to read... from here

I have designed the restaurant in reverse. I’ve started at the end and worked back. My dream has always been to build a restaurant that creates no waste and now I believe I can achieve it!” – Joost

Suppliers will only be able to supply fresh produce in returnable Chep crates. Like in Perth, fresh milk will be delivered from the farm straight to us in returnable stainless steel buckets with which we will make our own butter, yoghurt and mozzarella cheese. In Perth we stone grind almost 1 tonne of wheat every week and I anticipate we will use more here in Sydney.

A local wheat grower will provide us with wheat direct from the farm every week, we cut the thread on the bags in such a way that they can be returned and re-used. We will use our Flour Mill to grind the wheat into fresh flour to make bread, pastries, pasta and wood fired pizza. Oats will also be rolled fresh.

All our waste from the kitchen will be organic. This organic waste will be composted on site using a JoraForm in-vessel composter. This will grind and produce 10 litres of compost for every 100 litres of waste. Our  compost will be required to maintain the roof top garden. In Perth this year we have added almost 6000 litres of compost to our roof top garden (that’s 60,000 litres of waste we have composted!) Our cutlery is made from plantation timber and will be composted in the JoraForm, even the baking paper we source from Finland is unbleached and can be processed through the composter.

The rooftop garden is planted in Chep liquid bins that are traditionally used for transporting olive oil. The rooftop bar serves wine from returnable kegs or barrels. The beer will only be available on tap. I have also been working with Mitch from Hepburn Springs Mineral Water. Greenhouse Sydney will be the first to use carbonated water derived straight from the aquifer into kegs. This pure Australian carbonated water will be used to make our own Tonic, Soda and Cola. The house pours of Gin, Rum, Vodka and Whiskey are also Australian made and owned. Mark Douglass (glass artist) will transform the empty bottles into beer glasses as he does now for Greenhouse Perth.

The staff t-shirts designed in collaboration with Space-craft and Joost, re-printed using natural dyes, are overruns of political and business t-shirts salvaged by the Salvation Army.

The Greenhouse Sydney interior walls will be completely clad in MgO board (magnesium oxide board).  Joost has developed MgO board impregnated with Bio-Char so that The Greenhouse can store carbon within its walls! The Greenhouse steel framed walls are filled with straw and its doors and windows recyclable steel framed.

The toilets are Australian made Caroma Dorf, with the sink above the cistern using water from the hand wash to fill the next flush!  Waterless urinals are used and the kitchen and bathroom floors are lined with natural linoleum.

Joost has designed & made chairs out of old aluminium irrigation pipes.  They are incredibly light & have been named Squirt Chair! The leather used for the seats are off-cuts from a saddle makers in Ballarat (Victoria’s last tannery).  Lights have been made from willow trees and rolls of old fencing wire.

via Mes Petites Miscellanees...

Although I dont read french I still keenly visit various blogs written in this lovely language... a little sad at what I am missing out on understanding - but nevertheless finding pleasure, mystery and inspiration in varying degrees! From the blog Mes Petites Miscellanes comes this charming image above which hails from Nick Bartoletti on Flickr.

The December 13 2009 post titled Ode a l'Oeil (which features the images below!) is intriguing in the way that is characteristic of Marie-Es. Have a peek if time permits and say hello - she's very sweet about my lack of facility with her language! 

knowing when it its time to 'find a hammock' & take a break whilst encouraging those with the energy for the next thing!

A few days ago in blogland I happened on the comments page of a thoughtfully written blog which I cannot recall the name of now or how I arrived there at all! The post that inspired 20 or more comments triggered the audience's thoughts on global warming and planetary changes. People  commenting seemed to be in the over 40s bracket - people with children, even grandchildren, life experience and so on. No-one seemed to be contradicting the idea of global warming...it was almost an agreed upon fact in these comments that there is no point concerning oneself with issues around global warming as we have destroyed the planet, there's no hope, its a fact its all going down the proverbial, once upon a time there were no humans walking the earth etc... thats where we are going and we just have to deal with it.  It seemed one lonely voice came along towards the end of the comments and said "YES...ok that's all true perhaps....but we have to do something!" I should have written to that person.

Instead I just felt restless and discontent and kept thinking about it.
It reminded me of the period 2001- 2007 when I returned to teaching in secondary schools - surrounded in part by excellent people with huge commitment to their work and their students. However, some of those whose vocation was seen as more of an endless wait for retirement and superannuation, made comments as to the ridiculous notion of global warming or shrugged it off with an "oh well...it wont affect us....we wont be here - we'll be long gone!"
Numbness and burn out is a fact of life- its not hard to understand how it happens, but its not a creative space to be operating from - especially when your audience is the future waiting to be initiated into a sense of what's possible for them.
It did, and still does bother me, to hear people of similar vintage to myself be that ho hum or tired about global concerns when they actually perceive it to be a real event we are facing.
WHY? Because the 12 to 18 years olds I was conversing with daily were not ho hum at all. They were, too many of them, dealing with the effects of parental absence - actual physical absence to emotional or spiritual absence, substance dependance and many such raw edges to life. Lectures on the future on top of curriculum topics weren't what they needed ...instead - asking them what they saw, what they perceived, what mattered to them. They were thinking, they were keen to talk and to be asked. Story-telling was welcomed over lectures - but - getting them to ask questions,  be curious, find out what they could do, encouragement to move towards what mattered to them in their lives and to not lose heart -there was endless desire from kids for this kind of nurturing. Nurture - not pats on the head - or empty praise!
If we are burnt out the least we can do is NOT burn out those around us who have ideas and energy, especially those younger voices. Maybe we need to get a whole lot better at being encouragers as opposed to doers. We dont need to be everywhere doing everything! That's not feasible or desirable. But genuine words of support to someone who is doing something is actually sometimes the greatest gesture and most effective doing we can do.
well...now I will be accused of lecturing. I'll get off the soap-box and pass this on after finding it at Kim Carney's wonderful little something blog today. The GOOD 100 list is put together to celebrate and inform about projects and ideas that are making our world better. Read here to get the background story.

on the list of 100 is Bundanoon's bottled -water boycott. This small australian town of Bundy (in aussie-speak)  prohibited sales of bottled water this summer. Read more here about how and why this happened. Also visit www.bundanoon.com.au to read about the town.

Ok...so that was the Australian example on the list of 100. There are 99 more to investigate. Then there are the myraid ideas out there that we stumble across, take part in or have friends and family putting energy into. Artists might like to check out this one from Chattanooga in Tennessee called CreateHere. With the aim of connecting inspired, entrepreneurial doers with a rich network of existing resources and to try and unlock the endless potentials of Chattanooga's people CreateHere this year raised $450,000 which funded 57 grants to local artists. THAT sounds like a brilliant scheme. Artists often identify what's needed in communities - so to enlist them in giving life to their ideas through grants is inspired and no doubt hugely enriching - with a broad flow on effect.

living, breathing walls

Patrick Blanc's vertical gardens have made the name of this French scientist come artist. Green roofs Australia have a post on his work that includes a YouTube video interview with Blanc in Paris worth watching.

Book available now in bookstores

Marche des Halles in Avignon

These images I found on the always intriguing  Saint Verde blog. Take a peek at theis post of his...and more. His references are exccedingly eclectic and very often quite unique. From there I went to Blanc's website and was enraptured with certain travel and project images.

Nicola Moss: a walk in the Gardens

Nicola Moss is  Artist-in-Residence at Mt Coo-Tha Botanical Gardens in Brisbane this year and on Wednesday a small group joined her for a 2 hour walk along the Australian Plant Communities Trail. 11am was just the time to set off... the day was perfect, a slight breeze blowing, warmth in the air and the garden just  blissful. Nicola has familiarised herself  with this part of the Garden in particular over the course of the year... working on paper in situ, photographing her discoveries and the changes, subtle and otherwise, through shifting seasons, times of day, and weather conditions. Many treats lay in store for us as she guided us to her favourite places along the trail, explaining her observations through her time here. Nicola has recorded the year to date  on a fabulous blog dedicated to the garden residency with visits wonderfully photographed and details noted, along with posts on work that has evolved out of this experience. Nicola's website is equally current and has an excellent portfolio of her work.

'Pollen drift' - Acrylic and pigmented ink on canvas, 600 x 600 mls, is  a work from 2009 which can be viewed on Nicola's website.

New growth on a small tree...particularly striking for its amazing colour.

Blue Quandongs - a native fruiting berry that is used in jam (amoungst other things)  in Australia... although I must say I have never tried it. Non-indigenenous Australians have for the most part not been quick to try natives sources of food. Historically hardy cooks would not have turned up their noses at these blue beauties or the  varieties of lilly-pillys available for jam-making! I was  delighted to find these many-hued quandongs nestling on the brown leaves near a large tree. It was quite a sight ...all the variations of blue and blue-green!

My photo here does not do justice to this tree which was covered in a beard-like matted growth with green pea-like berries ...a wonderfully wild looking rainforest-type  specimen. Where was my pen and paper?...I was too busy clambering around looking at things!  Huge thanks to Nicola for a memorable and  enervating experience... so willingly shared!

for those in the Brisbane region...

This coming weekend in Brisbane a brilliantly organised Environmental Expo is bringing together a fascinating diversity of Speakers, Stall-holders, Eco-future initiatives, organisations and individuals all presenting their take on participating in a brighter future. Quite a number of artists and creatives have been asked to participate and the networking between people began weeks ago. This forward thinking, inclusive and dynamic organisational process has had participants wanting to sign on and bringing so much enthusiasm to their planning.Its been a wonderful model for creating and  enhancing community  life.

My participation is listed under S for Sophie below. Earlier posts have referred to this current project of mine  that ties together strong concern for  Seed saving, and awareness and preservation of our world's precious heritage of seeds.... increasingly at threat due to a number of key critical factors, very largely, lack of education. The Manifesto of the Future of Seeds  came through Slow food International in 2006 prompted by the convergence of special interest groups and the critical document 3 years earlier: The Manifesto of the Future of Food. Connecting also with The International UK-based initiative through Kew Gardens  -The Millenium Seed Bank project -which the local Botanical Gardens 'Seeds for Life' project was tied in with- all added to my sense of urgency for this important work. I'm hoping to look further soon into the excellent weblinks I have been discovering of late that marry Art with Ecology. For  a link to  my posts on ecology related topics go to the  categories list and click on ecology there. If you can get down to the Hillbrook Expo on Saturday do come along and say hello! I'd love to chat with you!

Mapping the Marvellous ... and Odder

I love reading Mapping the Marvellous because you generally travel somewhere quite curiously engrossing. The image above is from a place called Odder, a fabulously interesting looking wunderkammer bar in Manchester. Loved the clocks. Todays post titled Facts - July 29th, 09 - is a must if you wish to discover some quirky facts about animals...did you know ants always fall over on their right side when intoxicated! And Elephants are the only animals that cant jump! The links on this blog are also outstanding. Take a peek!

Tully's seeds and the Manifesto on the Future of Seeds

Tully lives in Newcastle, where I just visited this past weekend. I had a wonderful time staying with his family, parents Maureen and Will, and experiencing the ever-expanding permaculture garden, the building of a chook pen, and lots of great shared meals and conversation. One afternoon Tully asked if I'd like to see his magic seed box. What a question... who could refuse! The box actually did have a secret compartment. The top layer opened to reveal seedpods that he's actually crafted into some great boats...like a tiny catamaran. The surprise came when the under layer opened and it contained 100's of very, very light seeds with wings. We had to be careful not to let them float off in the breeze. I loved it...there was something a bit magical about this. Thanks Tully!

Tully's magic seed box

The page above I just put together this evening so I can hand it out with Seed Project work. If you click on the image above you can enlarge and view it properly. It contains information and a weblink to the 2006 document The MANIFESTO ON THE FUTURE OF SEEDS produced through a global consultation held at Terre Madre In Turin, Italy in 2006- a Slow Food International Conference. This response evolved out of  previous document The Manifesto of the Future of Food from the 2003 International Commission on the Future of Food. If you go to the actual Manifesto as directed above you can read the 36 page document. This statement is sobering to say the least:  'Of 80,000 edible plants used for food, only about 150 are being cultivated,and just 8 are traded globally. This implies the irreversable disappearance of seed and crop diversity'. from -  Part I: Diversity of life and Cultures under threat.

Children's pool at the Newcastle Ocean Baths beside the Pacific Ocean

These images of the Children's po0l in winter were taken 2 days ago on my trip to Newcastle. I have drawn and painted here and worked in my studio on this theme so made a point to visit here. The day was so bright and yet few people were around so I had a chance to sit quietly and enjoy the space.

I love the way the moss and algae forms on the side of the pool and pathway...adding this intense green to the view. I find the movement of light on the water completely mesmerising, especially with  the area so quiet on this visit and nothing to distract me from my reverie

revisiting a place of inspiration...

steps at the Newcastle Ocean Baths

Last night I arrived home from Newcastle  (Aust) where I spent the best part of 5 days catching up with friends and what's been happening there. 1 hour by plane and quite a bit cooler than Brisbane...it was a wonderful time full of great reconnnections. More on those soon. In this post I have given a view of the coast and ocean baths where I spent much time in years past swimming, walking, reading and relaxing as well as drinking in the inspiration for my studio and musing over ideas that started here. The sharp, crisp winter light lent itself to these photos uncharacteristically empty of people, being both a weekday and winter. These ocean baths were constructed, I think ,in the 1930's...someone might actually know better than I...and are in the midst of restoration. Its a massive series of 3 pools. One very large pool is divided in to 2 areas really. One smaller section for laps with numbered lanes and one massive pool next to it. Just a little to the right near the rocks with sea crashing over it is is a huge round shallow pool designed for children that once had a large world-map painted on the bottom of it. I will post those images separately.

dividing walkway between 2 large pools facing the Pacific Ocean.

nourish me lives up to its promise!

This is the image that headed the previous blog of Lucinda's at Nourish Me. Sincethe beginning I sense that there has been a consistency to the lovely,  earthy tone of her blog. When I emailed to seek permission to post some of her wonderful images she explained that her training and interest in drawing has been diverted to working with film cameras in recent years. Given my own interest in cooking and food that comes from the earth largely unadulterated I was immediately drawn to the honesty of her photographs of simple foods like fruits, vegetables, grains and so on. The care and soulfulness is all there...a quiet beauty that is easily lost in overly contrived food styling.

This is not contrived...this is a visual and written celebration of everyday bounty that really is quite precious!

beetroot and lemon broth ...in a lovely copper pot. Love the sublime colour in this image!

'right beneath my childhood bedroom window' was the caption with this one from Lucinda's flickr site.

mushroom close up

old window pane...a kind of bubble glass captures the light astonishingly well!

an egg cracked open...exquisite!  Reading this blog left me wanting to head straight to the kitchen. Great recipes too I must add. Thanks  for the inspiration Lucinda!