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01/ Although it is often BIOS/ ADRIAN GÖLLNER IS AN ARTIST INTERESTED IN JAMES MACGILLIVRAY IS A PRINCIPAL AND FOUNDER described as white, HEIGHTENING THE VIEWER’S SENSE OF SELF THROUGH OF LAMAS. HE HAS PUBLISHED WIDELY ON FILM, snow has an TRANSPOSING ELEMENTS OF SOUND, TIME, AND ARCHITECTURE, AND PROJECTION. HE IS FROM incredible depth MOTION. IN AN ART PRACTICE THAT EMPLOYS A WIDE AND RECEIVED HIS MASTERS IN ARCHITECTURE FROM and range of colours. RANGE OF TECHNIQUES AND MEDIA, GÖLLNER DIVIDES HARVARD’S GRADUATE SCHOOL OF DESIGN AND HIS HIS TIME BETWEEN CREATING SMALL, CONCEPTUAL B.A. IN ARCHITECTURE FROM PRINCETON UNIVERSITY. IMAGE/ Lynnette Postuma WORKS IN THE STUDIO AND IMPLEMENTING PUBLIC PRIOR TO FOUNDING LAMAS, HE WORKED AS A ART COMMISSIONS AT A MUCH LARGER SCALE. DESIGNER AT STEVEN HOLL ARCHITECTS AND AS A GÖLLNER HAS RECEIVED 20 PUBLIC ART COMMISSIONS, PROJECT MANAGER AT PETER GLUCK AND PARTNERS INCLUDING FOR THE VANCOUVER 2010 WINTER ARCHITECTS. ALONGSIDE HIS WORK AT LAMAS, JAMES OLYMPIC GAMES, THE SIXTEEN TOWERS OF CITYPLACE IS ALSO A LECTURER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO. IN TORONTO, AND THE CANADIAN EMBASSY IN BERLIN. GÖLLNER RECEIVED A BFA FROM QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY IN LYNNETTE POSTUMA, OALA, IS A LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT 1987 AND AN MFA FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA WHO DABBLES IN PUBLIC ART. CURRENTLY THE IN 2016. WHILE MAINTAINING HIS ART PRACTICE IN PROJECT MANAGER FOR THE BENTWAY PROJECT AT OTTAWA, HE HAS CONTINUED TO ADVOCATE FOR , SHE HAS ALSO WORKED AT ARTISTS’ RIGHTS AND HAS SERVED ON THE BOARDS OF WEST 8 (EAST BAYSIDE, QUEENS QUAY) AND JANET A NUMBER OF LOCAL GALLERIES. ROSENBERG & STUDIO (GUELPH MARKET SQUARE, PARC ). HER CREATIVE WORKS ERIC KLAVER, OALA, IS CHAIR OF THE GROUND EDITORIAL BRING ATTENTION TO EPHEMERAL MATERIALS SUCH BOARD AND A PARTNER AT PLANT ARCHITECT INC. AS AIR AND WATER, GROWTH AND DECAY, LIGHT AND SHADOW. FOLLOWING A PUBLIC COMPETITION, SHE MARK LAIRD IS AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN THE RECENTLY COMPLETED A 12,000-SQ-FT MURAL ON THE DANIELS FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, . SHE HAS ALSO WORKED ON WHERE HE TEACHES AN UNDERGRADUATE COURSE ON COMMISSIONED MURALS, ART INSTALLATIONS, AND NATURAL AND CULTURAL HERITAGE AND A GRADUATE TEXTILE PROJECTS. COURSE ON PLANTS AND DESIGN. FROM 2001 TO 2015, HE WAS SENIOR LECTURER IN LANDSCAPE HISTORY SARAH TURKENICZ HAS A DOCTORATE IN ANTHROPOLOGY AT THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF DESIGN, HARVARD AND IS A STUDENT IN THE MLA PROGRAM AT THE DANIELS UNIVERSITY. AS A TORONTO-BASED CONSULTANT IN FACULTY, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO. SHE IS A MEMBER OF HISTORIC LANDSCAPE CONSERVATION, HE ADVISES THE GROUND EDITORIAL BOARD. ON SITES IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA. FOR HIS REPLANTING WORK AT PAINSHILL, IN ENGLAND, LAIRD WAS JOINT RECIPIENT OF A 1998 EUROPA NOSTRA MEDAL. HE HAS BEEN ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF PAINSHILL PARK TRUST SINCE 2004. HIS RESEARCH Sarah Turkenicz (ST): How does colour ON 18TH-CENTURY PLANTING IS PRESENTED IN HIS BOOK THE FLOWERING OF THE LANDSCAPE GARDEN bring meaning to and inform your work? (1999). EDUCATED AT THE UNIVERSITIES OF OXFORD, EDINBURGH, AND YORK, HE WAS RESEARCH FELLOW AT CHELSEA PHYSIC GARDEN IN LONDON AND TWICE A FELLOW AT DUMBARTON OAKS, WHERE HE SERVED AS James Macgillivray (JM): Colour is A SENIOR FELLOW (2008-14). AFTER CO-EDITING MRS. DELANY AND HER CIRCLE (2009) FOR A YALE CENTER something our firm is becoming more and FOR BRITISH ART EXHIBITION, AND WITH A SENIOR FELLOWSHIP FROM PAUL MELLON CENTRE IN LONDON, more comfortable working with. Initially, HE COMPLETED HIS NATURAL HISTORY OF ENGLISH GARDENING IN 2015. we rarely used colour, and our work was mostly monochromatic. But then we did a competition entry for MoMA’s Young Architects Program and, at the time, I was teaching studios about op art, so we went overboard and tried our hand composing with colour. Round Table .46 08

Lynnette Postuma (LP): I would call myself a ask you to adopt my more modest rather colour convert. I’ve always been intimidated than your more splendid preference.” by colour, actually. It is only through recent Evidently Fischer came back at Olmsted, projects that I’ve given myself the challenge slightly hurt, saying that he only meant to to wrestle with colour and learn more about show nature in “holy day dress.” colour theory. For Olmsted, flowers were not primary, Adrian Göllner (AG): As a conceptual artist, if especially with the professionalization of I use colour it falls pretty directly from an idea. landscape architecture in urban contexts. There’s a logic to it. The shrubs and the trees would be his enduring legacy—100 years or 200 years Mark Laird (ML): The historical roots of from the design’s inception. landscape architects’ difficulty with colour relate back through the Italian Renaissance, Eric Klaver (EK): The idea of texture and or French Baroque, to surviving English monochromatic planting has become key picturesque landscapes. These landscapes to modern landscape architecture. had lost all the original colour of flowers and shrubs, because such colour was ephemeral, ML: This also has to be put into the context and so it was assumed in the 20th century of the dominance of horticultural thinking, that they were designed with only the 02 in Olmsted’s time, which was about the gradations of green in mind. Yet 18th-century ML: Yes, that is part of it. Frederick Law bright, brash colours of what were called aesthetics dictated that there must be colour Olmsted had a dispute with his horticulturist “bedding plants.” That was the locus of a in the landscape (to correspond to the love about whether ephemeral colour should real dispute between Olmsted (and his of colour in interiors, in textiles, etc.). It has be part of permanence. Olmsted thought followers) and the horticulturists. This is been a challenge for historians to undo the that once his designed landscapes were quite useful background before we even misconceptions that landscape architects established for the long term, supporting get to modernism, and the disappearance developed by their judging what had his vision, then colour was extraneous of the ephemeral when flowers don’t survived in shades of green as true to the and should be eliminated. He viewed last long. original. Moreover, in the 19th century, when colour as just transitional. Perhaps there colour theory came in, all kinds of conceptual is an element in this idea that comes out LP: As landscape architects, we think issues arose for landscape architecture, of a religious viewpoint about the frivolity relationally, and that’s an interesting way because Victorian plantings were garish and, of colour, and I think that Olmsted, being to think about colour. How we perceive as part of horticulture, were anathema to heir to a Puritan tradition, saw colour as colours is influenced by the adjacencies early modernists. troublesome this way. of other colours. Our language of colour is quite limited. We only have a few words for If you think about 17th-century Dutch painting, In her fantastic book Frederick Law it, but the range of perceived colour is so small units of colour were spread across Olmsted and the Boston Park System, much deeper. the canvas, and that’s what baroque and Cynthia Zaitzevsky recounts an 1889 picturesque flower beds looked like. It’s dispute regarding the Overlook area of ML: This ties in with something that only with 19th-century colour theory that you one of Olmsted’s parks in the “emerald is not strictly about colour, and that is get massing and complementary contrast. necklace” of the Boston parks system. ecology. Ecology leads to a different way Obviously, this has its corollary in terms of Olmsted’s horticulturist, Fischer, was of thinking about what is happening in early-20th-century painting, such as colour clinging to his perennial and annual various environments and, as a result fields painting. Artists were not at all bothered flower displays, but Olmsted tried to coax of that, to designers who are obviously by very bold blocks of colour, but modernist him out of that way of thinking: “As to concerned with relationships, systems, landscape architects generally struggled with the question of good taste, we often see and performance. Modeling planting the legacy of a colour massing associated ladies very splendidly dressed with jewels systems according to ecological systems with horticulture, for horticulture was suspect and bright ribbons and flowers and agree may lead to sensibilities that are not so in the eyes of the emerging profession. that it is in good taste. We see other ladies far removed from 18th-century aesthetics. dressed quietly without jewelry or any AG: Historically, when there was a finery of color or material, and we agree 02/ George Brown House replanting, circa 2000 movement away from colour, colour was that they are also dressed in good taste. If IMAGE/ Mark Laird viewed as indulgence. Colour was seen as the difference between us is a difference temporary and, therefore, suspect. between two ideas, each of which is in good taste, then I think I have the right to Round Table .46 09

If you look at the work of designers such JM: There still seems to be a bit of fear as Piet Oudolf, Noel Kingsbury, or the about using colour in projects, though. Sheffield group of designers, you see a return to a mixed palette, or “intermixing,” Sometimes we’ll use a colour that’s very which doesn’t mean there isn’t any trendy. In one of my projects, we’re using colour theory. It is simply that they are pink, which is big now. But in a couple looking to meadows or prairies for one of years, maybe it won’t be. And that’s inspiration just as picturesque theorists interesting in relation to gardens, because began with what they called the natural with horticulture, you can depend on things “embroidery” of meadows and wheat fading away if you don’t attend to them. fields. These designers today see such Everything fades into an all-green garden if fine points of colour almost like pointillism. you’re not careful to maintain the flowers. This corresponds, as it happens, to the aesthetics that existed within design before ML: From an historian’s point of view, landscape architecture, before 19th-century there are colours that are fashionable colour theory, and before Olmsted. 03 one year, but out of fashion the next. mysterious. So, in a sense, what we have Colour can date a work very quickly. But JM: I almost feel as if, in the pointillist is a cultural understanding of colour. And one of the interesting things about working mode, with those individual pieces of we use that in our work. in the heritage sector is that you’re forced colour, there’s not enough of them to get to re-evaluate your prejudices about any momentum to be able to do what AG: Red, as a colour, is culturally quite colour. Something might not be to your colour theory does, which is like a field different, depending on context. Think taste, or might have been criticized in its of orange next to a field of blue. They about North America’s idea of a red-light time period, but it’s very interesting to start to vibrate. district, whereas red in Asian culture is learn to accept other ways of looking often very lucky. But it’s a very active colour at colour rather than accepting what ML: But you can do that by selectively and difficult to use just by itself. The colour comes to you instinctively or through taking California poppy as bright orange, blue, though, is generally very welcome. subjective preferences. and then mixing it in with cornflowers, (Blue is often used to light back alleys in for example, which are a bright blue. So, Vancouver because then people can’t see EK: Paint companies try to connect selectively, you can arrive at effects vibrant their veins and shoot up.) colours to specific things, in the names enough for that momentum to work as a they use…like raccoon fur, or pewter, painterly effect rather than according to JM: I’ve been researching digital film a or things like that. colour theory. lot, and blue is sort of like the underlying colour of all digital media. But that’s why it’s ML: Pink is an interesting example, LP: The English gardens of the 18th century so dangerous to us… There is a receptor because it’s tied to a flower which is called and Piet Oudolf’s designs in recent years in the human eye that goes directly back the pink. But pink is not a word that was really correspond with painting modes and to something that controls your circadian used in 18th-century colour thinking. It was styles, more so than with colour theory. You rhythm, so if you look at your phone before considered a variation on red, or blush, can see the small brush strokes of English bed, it can disrupt your sleep. and so on. gardens versus the broader, longer brush strokes and mass plantings of Piet Oudolf. LP: I’ve been reading Kassia St. Clair’s book EK: Lynnette, could you speak about your And that, to me, is more stylistically akin to The Secret Lives of Color. It’s a wonderful West Toronto Railpath project? painting and the fine-art world. book full of stories about colour over the years. At one point in the 14th century, it LP: The mural project is called Gradation, ST: How does your perception affect was decreed that peasants couldn’t wear and it’s a stylized gradient, essentially, the use of colour in your work? anything but colours of the earth, russets moving from blue to green. The colour etc. And so, the wearing of colour would takes an outline of the existing vegetation JM: It’s hard to confirm that everyone has identify the status of a person. Reds and in order to become a growth marker, so the same perception of colour, that these blues signified royalty. colours we’re talking about are actually the colours we agree they are. The test Today, we’re inundated with colour, 03/ Painshill Park (1738-1773) in Surrey, England, which represents the 18-century is subjective. A lot of the assumptions but I think the rules have opened up, English pleasure ground, is now restored to its original colours. of colour theory have recently been especially culturally. I don’t think there IMAGE/ Mark Laird proven incorrect by MRI technology. The are the cultural stereotypes around mechanics of colour in the brain is quite colour that used to exist. Round Table .46 10

06 surfaces three or four times. The mural becomes an immersive experience along the West Toronto Railpath, and that doesn’t happen all the time.

EK: What about your choice of colour, from green to blue?

LP: The history of the site informed the colour progression. The area has always been a route of conveyance. We know it now as a walking and cycling path, but in the last century or two there was the rail line. And before that, this region was known

04 as the Toronto Carrying-Place Trail—a portage and trading route for Native Peoples and also the early settlers. The Mohawk term “toron-ten,” meaning “the place where the trees grow over the water,” refers to this past and present history by informing the colour progression.

05 In my piece, it’s the trees, the green, above the water, instead of what you would 04-05/ Gradation, a mural project by Lynnette you can see the progress of vegetation as it naturally think of as green vegetation and Postuma, West Toronto Railpath grows on or adjacent to the wall over time. blue sky. I really wanted to invert that, and IMAGES/ Dale Wilcox 06/ Gradation, by Lynnette Postuma contrast the colours of paint against the IMAGE/ Lynnette Postuma I constructed a gradient, digitally, but then existing elements.

07/ Gradation, by Lynnette Postuma it came down to paint chips—a million IMAGE/ Dale Wilcox of them. Through mixing standard paint ST: Is there a space, place, or environment

08/ Warm By Night, by Adrian Göllner, colours, and adding and subtracting, I where the experience of colour is Optima Tower, CityPlace, Toronto, 2004, HID lighting came up with the 37 versions of colour inspirational or exceptional to you? IMAGE/ Adrian Göllner that are on this wall. It is large, about 09/ North (daytime), by Adrian Göllner, 12,000 square feet, and uses the building Canadian Embassy, Berlin, 2005. Suspended below the glass ceiling is an material—the cinder block—as the aluminum and dichroic glass compass rim. The colour seen is dependent on organizing element. the angle of the sun, and shifts from blue to magenta. At night, the glass reflects a gold colour into the space. IMAGE/ Adrian Göllner The best part for me was experiencing this

10/ Stand, by Adrian Göllner, Shenkman view, after the fact. As a landscape architect, Arts Centre, Ottawa, 2009. Using a combination of tinted float glass and I think relationally between buildings or coloured Vanceva glass, the structural glass wall portrays a seasonal objects, but this project surprised me in ways progression from winter through to fall along the southern elevation. I didn’t expect—particularly in the ways that IMAGE/ Adrian Göllner light and colour can bounce off reflective 07 Round Table .46 11

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10 you are in a black-and-white photograph. rigorous process that ends up being visible 09 Anything that isn’t light is turned into a with any crafted thing that you’ve done. So, JM: In architecture and landscape gray scale. thoughtless colour would be the only no- architecture, where our client-based go situation. practice makes it hard for us to express ST: Is there a no-go area when it comes ourselves with colour, most of my inspiration to colour? Are there things you won’t do LP: Le Corbusier was all about form, and comes from the fine arts, particularly with colour? he talked about colour as a distraction. installation artists such as James Turrell, Surface colour is the fad that he warned or painters such as Barnett Newman. AG: This applies to almost any element against. Here we are, a hundred years of the arts: things that are obvious quickly later, and we still want the authenticity of LP: Nature is the obvious choice for become tired. If the colour is relatable our use of colour. It has to have meaning. inspiration. I’m thinking of the colours of the to other elements and has a conceptual seasons, even in winter. Snow, which you relationship, then it tends to last. If the JM: But at the end of the day, you have to think is white, turns blue the deeper you colour is simply decorative, it may be victim be comfortable with subjectivity and with go—it’s just amazing. Or the first tree buds to fashion very, very quickly. the fact that it could all be arbitrary. in springtime—the colour is electric green. Texture and colour, illuminated colour, There’s another aspect to this: can colour AG: I often remark about colour when and being able to provide variety, the simply be about manipulating mood? there’s really poor colour. If I go into an way colour and light can refract off of Sometimes I want to be in a better mood! old building where there’s very poor something—these can add enduring So I’m comfortable with that… fluorescent lighting, and there are whole interest. My experience with the lighting wavelengths of light missing, I know on the City Place project, and in other One thing about colour that I try to be what colour should be there, but there’s projects, has been that we invite reflection sensitive to and yet that I find really hard a dissonant relationship between what off of objects as a way to add variety and to wrap my head around, is that we only I know and what is being represented. interest and shadow, so that the eye has perceive colour in a very small part of You get that with LEDs as well, where something to play off longer. our eyes, and that a lot of what we see sometimes they’re very specific colours is a result of our brains colouring in a and they’ve knocked out other ones. At JM: In our practice, we try to stay away line drawing. The real power of colour is some places in the urban environment, from the idea that there is a no-go area the fact that it’s expensive, neurologically poor colour speaks loudly at times. with colour, because it restricts our speaking. The cones are extremely creativity. But we also try to avoid colour expensive for your eye, and they take a lot JM: There’s an interesting piece by Olafur that has no reason or purpose—for of computing power. Your brain is filling Eliasson in the Museum of Modern Art in example, having an aluminum curtain in the gaps, and that’s the powerful thing New York City, where he took the sodium or façade with green spandrel glass about colour: it is largely constructed by lights that are usually in parking lots, and that doesn’t have a larger purpose. We the brain on an instantaneous basis. he did a whole room with them. Sodium always try to involve colour in some kind THANKS TO KATIE STRANG AND ANDREW TAYLOR FOR THEIR ASSISTANCE IN CONCEPTUALIZING AND lights are very, very pure. They have only of system that we take time to compose. If ORGANIZING THIS ROUND TABLE. one frequency of light they emit. So, in this you put time and decision-making towards room, you have a very strange feeling that any end, usually there’s the gestalt of a