Hidden Kitchens: a parallel quest

The other day, I was listening the Fresh Air on NPR, and the host interviewed two women, known as the "Kitchen Sisters," who produce a series of segments called Hidden Kitchens. The point of the series is to document local and community-based foodways that fly beneath the radar of most palates. One splendid example was a story about the value of a common, inexpensive appliance, the George Foreman Grill, in the lives of people who would otherwise have no kitchen: homeless folk, residents of SRO housing, etc.

The approach of the Hidden Kitchens series is a touchstone for what I want to achieve with regard to landscape, that is to discuss, document and make gardens, parks, plazas or pavilions that are otherwise unexamined. Lo-Cale will be a tool in that quest, I hope, a notepad where I can record what I see and speculate about what might be built.

claim staked, plans to follow

This is my initial post on a blog I think about while pulling weeds and laying mulch in the parking lot of a well-to-do commercial district in Cincinnati, Ohio. Here's hoping I remember the things that cross my mind when I get home.

I will deal with numerous topics related to landscape design, history and study, particularly about the type of place-making that results from the application of limited means; the blog title is an attempt to meld the ethos of lo-tech or lo-fi movements in other arts with the practice of exterior spatial manipulation that is professionally codified as Landscape Architecture. This post is really a place-holder to get the thing up and running, so I'll cut it short. I likely won't tell anyone about this until I have 13 or so posts in the bag, so if anyone gets this far, congratulations.