DW Photography

Lake Ontario Waterfront Trail

Friday November 26 2011

H.M.C.S. HAIDA

A 350 kilometre trail along the shores of  Lake Ontario, presently extending from Stoney Creek to Quinte West.  Part of it runs through the City of Hamilton from Stoney Creek alongside Lake Ontario to Burlington.  The Lake Ontario Waterfront Trail links to the Red Hill Valley Trail at Centennial Parkway.  The trail passes through Van Wagers Beach, Confederation Park, Windermere Basin, and the Beach Strip, to the Burlington Canal Lift Bridge, and then through Bayfront and Pier 4 Parks to the Desjardins Canal.

Cootes Paradise

The surface is asphalt with small sections of gravel (by Millen Avenue), and is wheelchair and stroller accessible.

Goslings May 13 2011

Entrance Points

Millen Avenue and Green Road
Frances Avenue and Confederation Park.
Also along residential areas (i.e. Lakegate Drive, Lawrence P. Sayers Park)
Van Wagner’s Beach
Bayfront and Pier 4 Parks
Desjardins Trail.

Dundurn Castle April 22 2011

Parking

Confederation Park
Van Wagner’s Beach beside Lakeland Pool

Architecture

Washrooms

Confederation Park (limited hours)

Distance in Hamilton

Millen Avenue to Confederation Park 2km
Confederation Park to Canal Lift Bridge 10.5km
Bayfront Park to Desjardins Canal 3.4km

RBG fishway April 2011

Bayfront Park, one of Hamilton’s waterfront parks, is located at the foot of Harbourfront Drive east of Bay Street North (by Simcoe Street West).  The park boasts a number of features including a multi-use asphalt pathway 1.482 kilometres in length by 6-metres wide.   The path – popular for roller blading, cycling, walking, and jogging – connects with the nearby Pier 4 Park by the Macassa Bay walkway, and the new Hamilton Harbour Waterfront Trail.  Users enjoy views of the surrounding harbour area and access to the water’s edge, naturalized areas of wildflowers, shrubs and trees, a free public boat launch, numerous benches and picnic tables, a natural grass amphitheatre, a parking lot and public washrooms.  An expansive lawn area makes this park ideal for special events.  Please use the trail responsibly and with caution.  Cyclists and in-line skaters must yield to pedestrians and give audible warning when passing.

Waterfowl getting ready for rebirth

Mute swan successfully had four signets rbg does not oil eggs

Birds March 2011

Lazy Days

Accessibility:  trail, ramp at boat launch, public washrooms across gravel parking lot (limited hours), drop-off area at plaza, drinking fountain.

History

Officially opened on August 20, 1993, Bayfront Park is the result of a remediation of formerly vacant lands, approximately 25 acres of which were landfill, and obtained by the City in 1985.

Hamilton Harbour

Until 1995, this site was known as Harbourfront Park, a name coined by staff during the conceptual and development stages. The Steering Committee of the West Harbourfront Development Study decided to link the naming of the park with the public input process being implemented as part of the study. A “name the park” contest held by the City and the Hamilton Spectator garnered over 900 entries; a 5-member panel reviewed the names and selected “Bayfront Park.” Council approved the renaming of the site on August 29, 1995.

Hayfield

Photographers

Doug Worrall

Steve Loker

Poetry & Architecture

Monday 22 August

The Art Of Architecture

Poetry is in architecture can be created without conscious effort or even human intervention. Abandonment and time can create poetry. The way of the poetic in architecture is similar to but ultimately different from narrative. It works by locating and positioning not merely in physical but emotional, political and cultural space. When standing in front of a building of a rich and specific culture you can sense yourself in relation to the world in which it belongs. When the position given by architecture enables new views that affect what or how you see there can be poetry. See is used in its widest sense: understand, find, project, regard, determine, examine, experience, interpret. Written poetry can also be seen as a place created by the poet. You visit this place when reading the poem. The place of the poem is not the environment it describes but a place from which you can see things you cannot from elsewhere. Every time you visit it is the same place but being a place you find new things by looking in a different direction.

Reflective glass

Poetic devices in architecture

Architecture in the afternoon

The poetic devices such as simile, personification, paradox and rhythm are also the architectural devices that allow a building to communicate.

Simile is quite common in architecture. Buildings or architectural elements are often made to resemble things of another kind. For years now skeletons and textbook visualisation of small scale biology has been popular choices of reference. Some schools of thought are reluctant to accept the figurative devices of architecture. Rhythm not being one of them makes it universally accepted.

Personification, endowing buildings with human qualities or appearance is often tenuous and rarely attempted by architects. Critics see it more readily which would suggest that personification should perhaps be attempted more often in architecture. The paradox is another device in difficulty. Direct clarity is often seen as beautiful but clarity suggests a rigidity that is not poetry.

Downtown

Designed Poetry in Architecture

REFLECTIONS

Churches and other places for contemplation or religion are always special. They are the setting for rituals which in themselves would secure a poetic position in peoples minds regardless of content or subject. They often acknowledge death and to do so today is very rare. Even disbelievers who do not believe in the ritual or the concept of god see the quietness and presence of death as poetic. However simplistic this idea of poetry is it appears to be prevailing. But he architect, or anyone interested in the poetic in architecture, cannot resign to the idea that the poetic is available only for religious buildings. The poetry of architecture would then be one dimensional in comparison to the written counterpart that appear to cover every subject known to man. The idea of poetry as a place from which things appear different. A place richer than the place we stand in without poetry. A place we can return to without exhausting its ability to make us see.

Hamilton

To create a place where things are seen in a different light is ambitious. If the building is to be poetic when the doors open for the first time the designer has to have found a place of sufficient poetry and he must have articulated it in such a way that it is accessible to other people. This is of almost impossible difficulty. Society, client and other actors in construction can be responsible for the poetry through complex and entangled events. Besides struggling to find a view of the world worth communication the designer can always attempt to trick time and change to work in his favour. Techniques and devices from written poetry can be transfered to architecture. But as with all art technique is never enough and could even prevent accidental moments of magic.

Skyway Bridge

BRINGING DOWN EMPTY SPACE

Post office coming down

The Next Images are the beginning of the end for the old postal building on Main st. Hamilton, they have till the end of this week to bring -it – down., More images to follow in coming days:

The Art Of Destruction

Architecture can't fully represent the chaos and turmoil that are part of the human personality, 

but you need to put some of that turmoil into the architecture, or it isn't real.
Frank Stella

KEEPING DUST AT BAY

Keeping the dust at bay

Falling Debris

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Removing debris

An important work of architecture will create polemics.
Richard Meier

Removing debris

References :The Charged Void, Architecture New York, Monacelli Press

More too come

Doug Worrall Photographer 

Vegitation and Farmland

First, there is the bare beauty of the logs themselves with their long lines and firm curves. Then there is the open charm felt of the structural features which are not hidden under plaster and ornament, but are clearly revealed, a charm felt in Japanese architecture.

Gustav Stickley

Red Barn

Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.
Coco Chanel

Shapes-colours-contrast-depth

Architecture is a science arising out of many other sciences, and adorned with much and varied learning; by the help of which a judgment is formed of those works which are the result of other arts.
Marcus V. Pollio
Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves.
Julia Morgan