Friday, May 21, 2010

The Albany Bulb

The Albany Bulb is a former landfill and a park.  It is near my house, and over the past several years I have gone there many times, largely because it is a compelling, gorgeous, and troublesome landscape, and a charming place for a walk with a dog or a friend.

One of the more interesting conundrums that landscape architecture is forced to reckon with is the simple fact that quite often, non-designed landscapes are often more beautiful and functional their constructed brethren.  The Albany Bulb is a stalwart example of this phenomenon.  It functions as a park, a landfill, a home for the homeless, a wetland, and as a place where plants, both native and non, spar and thrive happily.


The Bulb is as close to an anarchist landscape as I have every come.  It is self-policed, non-maintained, self-perpetuating, and visually and ecologically post-apocalyptic.  It is a hyphen.

It is a landscape that tests what you expect of a park and questions the essence of both beauty and recreation. By bringing together elements that are normally not, it challenges you, psychologically, but also physically, because there are about a million ways you could injure yourself here.

When the tide is low enough, you can just barely navigate across a mostly submerged jetty of rocks.  HOW FUN!

Burner art, flowering meadows, rebar, riprap, the roar of the ocean, and a whipping coastal breeze.  Bring your bong.