WORKS Alan Waxman
Alan Waxman MLA GSD Harvard BA Whitman Anthropology + Japanese
HANGZHOU SINKING GARDENS BUILT 2012
The Sinking Gardens - a collaborative landscape intervention by Alan Waxman and Nikola Bojic - was built in Hangzhou’s XiXi National Wetland Park. Almost three times larger than New York’s Central Park, XiXi is Hangzhou’s newest green driver of massive urban development. Boats emerge from topographies loaded with erased family memories, carrying earth and grass to form new land to be walked and explored. Each boat honors one family that lived for generations in XiXi.
XiXi National Wetland Park Families in 1917 Wang Shen Zhang Yu Hong Jiang Shan Zhou Families after 1917 Bau Lian Hu Tang Fan Tang Long Yang
Family fathers Hong, Jiang, and Shen dedicate the Sinking Gardens, XiXi National Wetland Park, Hangzhou, China
Section Persp
ective
Remains Found on Site During earthworks, several fragments of everyday objects were found. In 2000 there were four houses with gardens on site. In 2005, with highway construction, houses and fields began to fall into decay. In 2009, the site was naturalized as part of XiXi National Wetland Park and designated to become the site of sculptural interrvention.
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LA VILLETTE STUDIO GSD
A new park aims to stitch together Paris’ long time no-man’s land behind the 19th arrondissement. The arrangmenet of highway edge conditions, marsh drainage, canal promenandes and civic plazas makes a mixture of social and private spaces allowing for continued refuge for edge denizens and new immigrants while simultaneously offering thoroughfares for students, tourists, and residents of the sparkling new Grand Paris.
ECOLOGIES OF SCALE STUDIO GSD
Ecological management on Cape Cod’s Mass Military Reservation is a seasonal network of national, state, local agencies, and biophysical infrastructures. Burning, coppicing, bog bio-degradation of poisonous RDX, and beach restoration become cycles sustaining human engagement in complex ecological implementations.
permeation in January permeation in October
permeation in August
permeation in May
sphagnum layer
repurposed monitoring well
repurposed monitoring well
RDX plume
ECOLOGY ACROSS SCALES
SALT MARSH URBANISM STUDIO GSD
Tidal flows and their resident salt hays are knit into a slow, postextractive urbanism of salt hay industry. Salt hay harvest becomes salt hay cement making, which becomes raised communal structures of housing and commerce with ground level industrial storage. This salt marsh urban system necessitates and facilitates the growth of the biologically rich salt marsh ecosystem anthropocene symbiosis.
INCREASINGLY LAYERED WITH TIME
FLUX CITY FLATBUSH ADJACENT
PLAN OF THE CIVIC COMMERCIAL CENTER NEIGHBORHOOD
B AT FL H US E AV E NU
CONSTRUCTED SALT HAY FIELDS, CONSTRUCTED, NOW USED ONLY FOR CIVIC ACTIVITIES AND AS STORM BARRIER
AT THE CENTER OF THE CIVIC - ISLAND - BLOCK IS THE SALT HAY FIELD, A COMMUNAL GATHERING AREA AND CEREMONIAL FESTIVAL GROUND TO CELEBRATE THE SALT MARSH SEASONS
THE BUILDINGS EMBRACE SURROUND AND ENVELOPE THE WATER HERE - WHERE PEOPLE CAN BOARD THE FERRIES, PLEASURE BOATS, AND RENT SMALL PERSONAL CRAFT
THE CIVIC BUILT COMMERCIAL AND RESIDENTIAL CENTER LIES AT THE INTERSECTION OF ALL THE MAJOR TRANSPORTATION ROUTES - WATERWAYS, FLATBUSH AVENUE, AND FOUR SMALL RAISED PEDESTRIAN ROUTES THAT FAN OUT ACCROSS THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
ADJACENT TO BELT PARKWAY
ON ROCKAWAY INLET
MID DENSITY, RESIDENTIAL AND INDUSTRIAL AREA AT THE OUTSKIRTS
LOW DENSITY, BAYSIDE HOUSING/BOATHOUSE AND SALT HAY INDUSTRIAL AREA
THE PARKING FACILITY IS EASY TO REACH FROM FLATBUSH, BUT LIES DESCRETELY BELOW GRADE AND UNDER THE AT-GRADE PEDESTRIAN ROUTES
A FRESHWATER POND LIES BESIDE FLATBUSH FOR A DIVERSITY OF WATER BIRDS AND FRESH WATER SPECIES
AREA OF HIGH EFFLUENT DENSITY DETAIL OF HIGH EFFLUENT AREA AHECENT TO BELT PARKWAY
BELT PARKWAY
A SMALL RESIDENTIAL AND COMMERCIAL AREA GROWS FROM THE ATTACHMENT TO THE HIGHWAY AND BIKE PATH. AT THE LOWER LEVEL, ACCESS TO AQUATIC TRAFFIC MAINTAINED
FRANKLIN PARK STUDIO GSD
Redesign of Franklin Park is a topographic exploration: a new trolley through clustered trees and houses shows the way to a stone stair, gateway to a broad Playstead vista between grass, stone, and sky. From the Playestead, descent into the arena is dramatic entrance to the Zoo. In these theatrical spaces, the watched become watchers - reflexive liberation. Franklin Park, in Boston, is considered the finest sculptural work of Frederick Law Olmsted. Envisioned as a healing destination for urban factory workers to experience the sublime, intricate topographic re-working forwards this discourse of viewing and liberation, as relevant today as it was over 120 years ago.
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Enter at the STAIRS 1:40
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ARENA TO ZOO - watched to watcher 1:40
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CHARLES RIVER CONSERVANCY INTERNSHIP
The River Street Bridge across the Charles River bisects the greenway between the Charles River Esplanade and Harvard University. Cyclists and pedestrians dart between a constant flow of traffic. The nonprofit Charles River Conservancy commissioned visualizations of an underpass through the bridge that would extend from the shore. Over several months, drawings were done for advocacy support meetings and fundraising - to help visualize the intervention, and to win support for the intervention as a political reality.
IUnderpass as tunnel garden
SCIENCE CENTER PLAZA AND OVERPASS STUDIO GSD
Noise is a rich and varied resource at the Cambridge St. overpass. Drilling two translucent sound and light wells through the overpass reveals the unique nature and sound of the site. Careful study of all the sound creators on the site informs a dynamic grid in which numerous sonic programs play out over the course of the day. “Yellower” sound is created by volunteered use of staitonary spatial features: wind in trees, birdsong in sumac. “Redder” sound is created by programmable features: music, hawking, engine whirs. “Orange,” both voluntary and programmable, is the sounds of people: human voices and footsteps.
existing sound conditions existing sound conditions
proposed sound conditions
proposed sound conditions
OVERPASS WELLS: COLORS OF SOUND
Noise is a rich and varied resource at the Cambridge St. overpass. Drilling two translucent sound and light wells through the overpass reveals the unique nature and sound of the site.
Careful study of all the sound creators on the site informs a dynamic grid in which numerous sonic programs play out over the course of the day. "Yellower" sound is created by volunteered use of stationary spatial features: wind in trees, birdsong in sumac. "Redder" sound is created by programmable features: music, hawking, engine whirs. "Orange," both voluntary and programmable, is the sounds of people: human voices and footsteps.
The image on the front cover is a proposed sound and light well as viewed from the pedestrian zonethe world above.
KYOTO COURTYARD GARDEN BUILT 2010
Built for centuries old Kinse Ryokan Cafe-bar in Kyoto’s famous Shimabara arts and entertainment district, this small interior courtyard garden, or tsuboniwa took shape in Spring of 2010. Shimabara is the oldest arts district in Japan, home to the taiyu, elite geisha. Only a few women still practice as taiyu and serve tea in the Yabunouchi tradition. I lived in Shimabara for over a year, studying tea in Yabe-sensei’s exclusive Yabunouchi tea room.
TEA CEREMONY
I studied Ikebena
IKEBANA