Thank you .. ‘Dirt du Jour’ for the glowing review! "Go ask Alice ... where all the best vineyard gardens are. She's an erudite charmer; you'll have fun!"
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Chicago Chicago – Growing Greener and More Vibrant With Each Passing Year
 Millennium Park Jay Pritzker Pavilion © Alice Joyce Gehry Glam! – The Frank Gehry-designed Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park: Gehry’s exuberant architecture seems to have taken the world by storm. I’ll personally vouch for the architect’s design of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. The building proved to have superb acoustics when I heard a string quartet play in the Hall. Even before attending the concert, I’d been won over by Gehry’s exuberant style, impressed by the Concert Hall’s open-air gardens, which are open to the public.
But here the focus is on CHICAGO! In September last year I took in a performance at the Park’s Pritzker Pavilion. Each year during the World Music Festival, venues around the city offer free performances. In the photo above, Tambours San Frontieres is performing one afternoon: A Congolese group now based in Chicago.
 Crown Fountain © Alice Joyce Millennium Park’s Crown Fountain is a crowd pleaser! Upright 50-foot towers deliver a welcoming splash and flow! Jaume Plensa, a Barcelona artist, designed the multi-media water feature.
 Chicago Millennium Park Plantings © Alice Joyce Along the Magnificent Mile – Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, and throughout the landscape of Millennium Park, lush planting beds enliven the scene with the bold forms of grasses, tropical specimens, and brilliant annuals rich with color and texture.
 Crown Fountain © Alice Joyce A shallow pool spans the space between the glass-block towers, their colorful video projections featuring a panoply of faces. 1,000 Chicagoans are featured… their changing expressions create a riveting display.
Green Roofs/Vertical Gardens Patrick Blanc – A Vertical Garden for San Francisco’s Drew School
These photos were taken at a reception in 2009 to celebrate Drew School’s New Roots Project. Construction is underway on the building in San Francisco, which will comprise the high school’s new assembly wing, performing arts space, and classrooms. Renowned creator of vertical gardens – an artist and scientist – Blanc presented a fascinating talk about where he finds inspiration, and how he creates indoor and outdoor living walls, showing completed projects world-wide from Quai Branly in Paris to the Siam Paragon shopping center in Bangkok.
Patrick Blanc Photo © Alice Joyce
I’m looking forward to documenting the installation this summer, when Blanc will be creating a 1,700 square foot vertical garden as part of the new Drew School building’s 30% living surface area: To include a green roof created by Rana Creek – known for the popular roof atop the California Academy of Sciences roof. The Drew addition aims for LEED-Gold certification when completed.
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Pictured below: A mur vegetal Blanc created in Madrid at the Caixa Forum Museum.
 Living Wall - Caixa Forum Museum - Photo courtesy Patrick Blanc
Patrick Blanc .. ever stylish!
 Patrick Blanc Green Gear Photo © Alice Joyce
Chicago
 AIC Pritzker Garden ‘White Curve’ © Alice Joyce The city of Chicago’s lakefront gardens, art and architecture draw locals and tourists, alike, to a year-round destination of cultural and sensual pleasures. May, 2009 heralded the opening of the new wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, designed by architect, Renzo Piano.
 Chicago Millennium Park Footbridge and Rill © Alice Joyce
Although completed behind schedule, Chicago’s Millennium Park opened in 2004 to demonstrate a crowning achievement for the City, and an international success for Mayor Daley, the man responsible for spearheading the effort.
One of the delights of Millennium Park is the 2.5-acre Lurie Garden: Kathryn Gustafson/Piet Ouldolf/Robert Israel design. In 2009 a stunning walkway had recently opened to the public, ….
 Lurie Garden Agastache ….leading from the Lurie Garden directly to the elegant Terzo Piano Restaurant and another entryway to the Art Institute’s new upper level.
 AIC Modern Wing View of Sculpture Terrace © Alice Joyce In the above photo, the Sculpture Terrace provides stunning views, looking out over the Lurie Garden, and beyond to the Jay Pritzker Pavilion designed by architect Frank Gehry.
Below:
Through the sculpture terrace’s glass wall atop the Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing, the view of the Lurie Garden takes in the rill, which culminates in a sedate waterfall.
 Art Institute Terrace View Lurie Garden Footbridge © Alice Joyce
Margo and Thomas Pritzker Garden: One approaches the Pritzker Garden from the museum’s Griffin Court, in the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. Facing Columbus Drive, the space is designed with an elegant simplicity, given a sense of shelter by the flying carpet overhead, so named by architect Renzo Piano.
 Chicago Pritzker Garden E. Kelly White Curve © Alice Joyce
Chartreuse chairs are placed about the crushed stone terrace, the bright enameled seating producing an ambiance that conjures up images of European gardens. Naturalistic plantings of grasses soften the sleek setting, punctuated by the spare placement of trees with peeling bark. White Curve: A work by Ellsworth Kelly glimmers with the changing light on the museum wall. The sculpture’s reflective surface is animated by reflections of the garden’s columns & trees. Specially commissioned in collaboration with the building’s architect, Renzo Piano, the work is the largest to-date in Kelly’s oeuvre.
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