Arizona Trail Perception Devices // Independent Architecture Project by Cole O'Brien

ASU Design School Independent Final Project Faculty Advisor // Juan Felipe Mesa Rico MArch Student // Cole O’Brien

ARIZONA

TRAIL PERCEPTION DEVICES + O U R R E L AT I O N S H I P WITH WILD SPACES

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CONTENTS ABSTRACT

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RESEARCH A R I Z O N A N AT I O N A L S C E N I C T R A I L

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STRUCTURE

HOW WE EXPERIENCE WILD PLACES

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ROMANTICISM

THE PICTURESQUE

PUBLIC LANDS + ARCHITECTURE

E N V I R O N M E N TA L A R T

WILD REALITY

PUBLIC PERCEPTION Arizona State University // The Design School

MAPPING THE ARIZONA TRAIL

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR INTERVIEW

THESIS

S T R AT E G I E S A N D S T O R Y T E L L I N G

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16 18 26

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PERCEPTION DEVICES

S I T E 1 // M E A D O W V A L L E Y T A N K

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S I T E 2 // R O S E M O N T M I N E B O U N D A R Y

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S I T E 3 // I T A L I A N T R A P T A N K

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S I T E 4 // B L A C K H I L L S S T A T E T R U S T

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S I T E 5 // R A Y M I N E O V E R L O O K

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S I T E 6 // R O O S E V E L T L A K E

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S I T E 7 // B L U E R I D G E R E S E R V O I R

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S I T E 8 // S A N F R A N C I S C O C R A T E R S

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S I T E 9 // R O C K C A N Y O N

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Juan Felipe Mesa // Cole O’Brien

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ABSTRACT The American West has been historically characterized by romantic images of the great frontier as created by traveling painters of the day. These representations focused on visual stimulation by landscapes that threatened to overwhelm through foreign colors, creatures, and an unimaginable scale that suggested perpetuity and invulnerability.

However, this perceived invincibility was accomplished through a clear tendency to avoid the portrayal of the man made – dating from the hypocrisy of Cole’s Oxbow.

Such portrayals of the “romantic sublime” were the match that lit westward expansion towards a new, seemingly limitless frontier. However, in only a few short decades, the devastating impacts of man’s conquest became clear as landscapes witnessed unprecedented damage and change.

The picturesque paintings of this fading world, once employed as expansion propaganda, were now instead reimagined as the symbols of a great new idea – land conservation in the form of National Parks and federal lands. The U.S. National Park System declares its mission is “to conserve scenery… for the enjoyment in such manner”, a proclamation of the nation’s decision to actively protect through accessibility, the lands once only publicly available through postcards. This effort initiated the development of ‘parkitecture’ – the catalyst for a philosophical struggle between accessibility of the picturesque and the conservation of the natural systems within. This battle manifest itself through infrastructure. From visitors centers to roads, natural lands were abused to promote scenic views in the name of conservation.

Arizona State University // The Design School

From this point onwards, the nation’s public lands were inherently tied to transportation infrastructure necessary to promptly ferry onlookers from one immersive postcard to the next. Today, a much slower form of transportation through these lands, the National Scenic Trail System, is similarly approaching the crossroads of infrastructure and conservation. The newest of these designated long-distance trails, the Arizona Trail, plays host to the movement of llama packers, mountain bikers, ‘thru-hikers’, cross country skiers, and horseback riders. The trail weaves 800 miles across the state. During this length, it features some of the most abundant biodiversity in North America.

New infrastructure in these fragile Arizona ecosystems is an inevitability. Trail officials cite the necessity for infrastructure that can collect water, provide shade, and mitigate human impact to concentrated areas. These pressing concerns exist as the direct result of climate change. However, they are exacerbated by the rise of a new ‘picturesque’ movement, made possible by the proliferation of social media and smart phone photography. The result is an online public lands culture prioritizing appeal to rapid visual stimulation, over-saturation, and influence. The effects of this overuse and lack of education are well-documented are only likely to increase on the Arizona Trail in the decade to come. However, it must be asked if the resulting infrastructure can aspire to more than just neutrality in terms of its impact on how users view the landscape of Arizona.

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Such a shift in narrative would bring architecture up to date with other mediums, such as painting, that have long since shifted their relationship with landscape. The focus has evolved from the picturesque to the results of human intervention and the lens through which humans view these natural systems. Similarly, might architecture be reimagined so that it is no longer about creating an object, but about creating a lens through which our view of landscape might shift?

This project proposes that the new infrastructure along the Arizona Trail embraces this question. Thus, infrastructure would exist as a series of small-format interventions along the length of the trail, seeking to change the perception of land – from visually sublime and picturesque landscapes to the systems that make them. Through the careful identification of the trail’s twenty-three unique ecosystems, this intervention architecture will be located to distill and exaggerate the characteristics of each while still performing the necessary roles of performative shelter. This concurrent achievement will provide a new framework for infrastructure that begins to bridge the philosophical gap between nature and culture that began with ‘parkitecture.’

In a sense, this will be a return to the lost ideals of the sublime being experienced through phenomena, as described by philosophers Martin Heidegger and Gaston Bachelard. These interventions, through the form of a tower, bridge, or other structure will accomplish this through exposing users to a new perspectives, microclimates and sensory experiences. Unlike the hypocrisy of early picturesque representations, these seemingly out-of-place interventions embrace the man-made as tool to celebrate and create the sublime. As Burke describes, “[natural] beauty is some quality in bodies, acting mechanically upon the human mind by the intervention of the senses.” This interaction addresses the myth of inside and outside, of being and non-being as experienced through architectural form. On the Arizona Trail, often miles from civilization, users can best experience this “horrible outside-inside” in the vast, as they become part of the surrounding space and system, as opposed to overwhelming it.

Juan Felipe Mesa // Cole O’Brien

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ARIZONA N AT I O N A L S C E N I C T R A I L

Arizona State University // The Design School

The Arizona Trail was the brainchild of Dale Shewalter in the 1970’s.

A Flagstaff schoolteacher, Shewalter walked from Nogales, Arizona to the Utah state line in order to prove the feasibility of a south-to-north national scenic trail spanning the length of the state. Following his completion, Shewalter became the trail’s sole and biggest advocate – giving presentations across the state detailing his vision of a trail interconnecting various state gateway communities, wilderness areas, topography, forests, ecosystems and more. The idea for the trail was quickly embraced by stakeholders across the state – especially those within the Arizona State Parks system, the Kaibab, Coronado, Coconino and Tonto National Forests, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Parks Service.

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The following years throughout the 80’s and early 90’s were spent doing inventory work determining how existing trails could be interconnected in a manner to be designated as part of the Arizona Trail and how to best highlight Arizona’s diverse landscapes. This largely existed as individual efforts across various federal agencies as they began work towards completing their sections of the Arizona Trail.

In 1990, the need for a formal partnership across these various agencies became apparent to best coordinate efforts and communication.

Likewise, a non-profit organization was necessary. And thus, in 1994, the Arizona Trail Association was officially incorporated as a 501(c)(3) and became a statewide advocate for the trail – bringing together the passions of day hikers, backpackers, equestrians, mountain bicyclists, runners, trail builders, nature enthusiasts, cross-country skiers, and llama packers.

This organization has been critical in the allocating resources used for the collective benefit of trail users and providing trail maintenance, rerouting, advocacy, map creation, gps tracking, water source identification and tracking, supplies maintenance and raising money and awareness for the trail itself. Perhaps most importantly, the community has grown in the form of a passionate group of trail angels who aid the trail users themselves – helping to make accomplishments such as a ‘Fastest Known Time’ or ‘FKT’ thru-hike possible.

However, the trail has also continues to see threats that have threaten its existence. These include the construction of a southern border wall cutting off the original southern terminus, increasingly long-lasting wildfire seasons devastating huge amounts of land, and climate change threatening the availability of crucial resources such as water and shade, and the increase of trail use leading to potential ecological damage to the trail itself.

Juan Felipe Mesa // Cole O’Brien

In the last two decades, significant milestones for the Arizona Trail have been reached – helping to cement its permanence for years to come. These include achieving official National Scenic Trail status, building the trail on State Trust Lands, reestablishing areas of the trail decimated by wildfires, weaving the trail through the topography of the Gila River.

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Arizona State University // The Design School

My initial interest in the Arizona National Scenic Trail lie in the various man-made structures and ruins that lie along its path. The existence of these old mines, farms, water tanks, windmills and more led me to question the effect art and structure might have on our spatial experience and relationship with the surrounding landscape.

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STRUCTURE HOW WE EXPERIENCE OUR WILD SPACES

Likewise, I was infinitely curious about the history of these structures in regards to the development of public space in the American West. These structures span from promotion of outdoor recreation accessibility to the erection of infrastructure to support 19th century westward expansion and resource extraction. They seemed to signal moments of both conservation and destruction - nature and man made.

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The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone by Thomas Moran, 1872

Valley of the Yosemite by Albert Bierstadt, 1864

Arizona State University // The Design School

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ROMANTICISM THE PICTURESQUE

To explore these questions, I researched the historic relationship between art, structure and our natural landscape. The story begins with Romanticism’s 19th century portrayals of the American West. by the day’s best painters. These artists portrayed the pastoral, the picturesque, and the sublime – each a different facet of man’s dominion over wild spaces.

Each also displays a different level of hypocrisy as well. Thomas Cole’s ‘The Oxbow” for example, purposefully leaves out the adjacent hotel structure and minimizes the size or presence of structures across the landscape. As a result, he presents a picture of harmony between man and nature that suggests a false symbiotic relationship.

Juan Felipe Mesa // Cole O’Brien

Similarly, paintings of Yosemite Valley portray images of an untouched, invulnerable landscape. The might of mountains and presence of wildlife appear in a way that would later draw in visitors by the millions. However, the reality of the valley is a land inhabited by the Ahwahnechee, Native American people who inhabited the sacred land. The pictures of this untouched, sublime land were crucial in the forced evacuation of these people in the name of National Park conservation.

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ROMANTICISM PUBLIC LANDS + ARCHITECTURE

Juan Felipe Mesa // Cole O’Brien

It is this mindset of conservation portrayed by Romanticism that directly influences the attitudes of architecture in the American West’s wild spaces. This begins with the creation of National Parks and ‘Parkitecture’ that provided access to these new lands without regard to their volatility. Previously untouched spaces saw mines and hotels, railroads and bridges. These contrasting 19th century infrastructures embodied our relationship with land and conservation. As a result, their vernaculars are tied to negative connotations of westward expansion and environmental damage.

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Fallen Bierstadt by Valerie Hegarty, 2007

Arizona State University // The Design School

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WILD REALITY E N V I R O N M E N TA L A RT

Show Me the Monet by Banksy, 2005

These artists effectively used a preexisting vernacular littered with connotations of hypocrisy and destruction to instead highlight human impact and the reality of our natural landscapes. They showed that the world is now full of ‘half-wild’ landscapes that have all been touched by humans in some form.

Juan Felipe Mesa // Cole O’Brien

The reality of our natural spaces however, is much different than the invulnerable expectations of the 19th century. While architecture failed to acknowledge this, art embraced it. Through a movement known as “environmental art” artists began to focus not on the sublime, but on the contrasting relationship between man made objects and historical portrayals of the picturesque and pastoral.

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Grand Canyon National Park Unfortunately, today’s public perception of the Arizona landscape is still heavily linked to romantic portrayals of sublime beauty and an indestructible wilderness. After all, most Arizonans only witness these landscapes at protected sites such as the Grand Canyon and Saguaro National Park. As a result, it’s difficult to convince them that this perception isn’t the reality for the vast majority of the state’s wilderness.

Arizona State University // The Design School

They don’t have the opportunity to encounter the ruins of old mines and houses. They purposely aren’t shown the vast footprint of pit mines and urban sprawl. Our built environment and trail system designs purposely deny or hide vantage points as opportunities to recognize the scale of human damage on these landscapes.

Saguaro National Park

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WILD REALITY PUBLIC PERCEPTION

Petrified Forest National Park

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Data collection for the Arizona Trail required using a variety of different sources. This was especially critical when attempting to establish change over the course of the trail in regards to ecosystems and climate.

Climate data was pulled from NOAA using a custom grasshopper script. This script identified the closest NOAA weather station to the midpoint of each passage of the AZT that would hold the required data available. The data pulled included global averages for every single month from January 1st, 2014 to December 31st, 2019. This allowed for the use of five year averages of monthly data as well as the ability to see change over time. These averages were then extracted and applied to a 10 mile radius around the trail.

To the right, one can see the variety of stations utilized in order to create different data maps for temperature, precipitation and wind.

As can be seen, significantly more stations held access to temperature and precipitation data, providing more accurate results. These stations were also typically closer to the trail, providing more accurate results, elevation differences and micro-climates notwithstanding.

Arizona State University // The Design School

For ecoregion mapping, data was exported from ArcGIS (sourced from the Arizona Trail Association and USGS) and applied to the same 10 mile radius map. All relevant data regarding an ecoregion’s precipitation, elevation, etc. was pulled from the USGS report on Arizona’s Ecoregions from 2014. As a result, there is likely to be changes in the six years that have passed, specifically as the result of climate change. The weather station data above helps to give us a more accurate view of aspects such as precipitation, that occur more specifically in locations nearby the trail, and not averaged across the giant expanse that is some of Arizona’s ecoregions.

Finally, publicly available GIS data was utilized to compile maps of old mines, wilderness areas and wildfire boundaries along the trail.

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WILD REALITY MAPPING THE ARIZONA TRAIL

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WILD REALITY MAPPING THE ARIZONA TRAIL

20c 20i 22x 22w 22z 22aa 23b 23c 23d 23e 23h 23i 23j 23k 23l 81k 81l 81n

79a 79b 79c 79e

AZT Ecoregion Mapping by Trail Sections

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81o

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Trail Temperature Mapping Annually and by Season

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WILD REALITY MAPPING THE ARIZONA TRAIL

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Trail Precipitation Mapping Annually and by Season

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Trail Wind Mapping Annually and by Season

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WILD REALITY MAPPING THE ARIZONA TRAIL

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Trail Mines, Wilderness Areas, Wildfires and Trail Towns Mapping

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Arizona State University // The Design School

Matthew Nelson // Arizona Trail Executive Director

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WILD REALITY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR INTERVIEW

So while these locations of pristine wilderness certainly exist along the 800 miles of the trail, they are overwhelmingly the exception.

Through time spent personally mapping, trail running and biking less-popular parts of the trail, I discovered a very different reality. The reality of Arizona’s landscapes, however, is a vast patchwork of scars caused by ranching, resource extraction and human-caused climate change. Instead of acknowledging this destruction however, today’s Arizona Trail purposefully masks or outright avoids it.

To further understand the relationship between the Arizona Trail, the structures along it, and human threats to its landscape, I met with Executive Director Matthew Nelson. What became clear is that the trail today is on the verge of new critical water, energy and shade-providing infrastructure necessary to support future life on the trail.

Juan Felipe Mesa // Cole O’Brien

We also discussed the moments where the Arizona Trail interacts with three of Arizona’s claims to fame – agriculture, resource extraction and climate. Each is a crucial narrative in how humans have forever changed the landscape of the state. Ranching’s vast footprint has come to decimate regions of major biodiversity. Resource extraction has torn apart critical habitats and continues to expand. And a changing climate is causing countless fires that scorch our landscapes.

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THESIS S T R AT E G I E S + S TO RY T E L L I N G

Typologies

Human Impact Narratives

Necessary Infrastructure

Arizona State University // The Design School

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HOW CAN THIS NECESSARY INFRASTRUCTURE EXIST AS AN ARCHITECTURAL FORM OF STORYTELLING TO REVEAL THESE T H R E E N A R R AT I V E S O F H U M A N I M PAC T O N A R I ZO N A’ S L A N D S C A P E ?

Following this discussion, my path became clear. My independent project explores how this inevitable infrastructure might exist as an architectural form of storytelling to reveal the narratives of human impact on Arizona’s landscape.

As a system, these nine perception devices weave together three narratives of human impact on Arizona’s landscapes into one story. With our remaining time, we will briefly dive into each site.

Juan Felipe Mesa // Cole O’Brien

My proposal is to locate three types of perception devices – towers, bridges and hybrids – at key locations along the Arizona Trail that display a need for infrastructure, a history of human impact, and distinct boundary conditions. The three perception devices will exist in each of the trail’s three sections – north, central and southern, as they provide moments to highlight human impact on the trail instead of hiding from it.

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THESIS S T R AT E G I E S + S TO RY T E L L I N G

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SITE 1 M E A D O W VA L L E Y TA N K

Reaching above the plains of the sky islands ecosystem, the tower at site one is reminiscent of the many windmills of the ranching-filled landscape. Located at the edge of the green canyons that the trail primarily inhabits; the tower’s vertically provides a previously hidden viewpoint. It overlooks a desiccated valley of cow tanks and grazing land that once played host to the most biologically diverse ecosystem in North America. Here, the tower’s verticality provides a moment of pause to reflect upon this stark contrast from the landscape users just spent time in. The structure also provides wind power – so that it might be used as a staging site for research scientists. Or users might charge their devices in order to access apps like Guthook that provide data on trail water access.

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SITE 2 ROSEMONT BOUNDARY

Site 2, by contrast, is a moment of travel as the user traverses a bridge over the landscape. Along its path, one can see the future site of the Rosemont Pit Mine – a giant copper mine that will lay waste to a critical jaguar and tropical bird habitat. The bridge is a monumental structure, but also one with a minimal footprint on its landscape.

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SITE 3 I TA L I A N T R A P TA N K

At site 3, we have a hybrid – a shard extending out of the jagged hills of the mountainside as it looks over the agricultural destruction of the valley below. Here, one can witness a cow tank at the center of this baren landscape. The structure, while orthogonal, exists as a synthesis of the scaffolding seen in mining ruins’ scaffolding, and the natural extension of the landscape below. The hybrid is a moment for both rest and movement, for charging SOS devices, or traveling along the landscape.

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SITE 4 BLACK HILLS AZ TRUST

Another hybrid, site 4 is the location of further agricultural impact, where it provides a view of abandoned farming houses, a windmill, and a water storage tank surrounded by hills of cow manure. It is also an excellent moment to sit up above the desert floor and experience one of the few dark-scapes that exist far from the glow of Arizona’s city centers. It also as a rainwater collector in a location without a water source for dozens of miles in either direction. It was previously only made possible by an ever-shrinking number of volunteers providing unreliable water caches.

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SITE LOCATION

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SITE 5 R AY M I N E OV E R LO O K

The bridge at site 5 has a perfect of the Ray Mine – a blight on the local landscape. While the trail previously dipped behind the mountainside – blocking any views of the mine – the bridge instead embraces the moment as a lesson on the importance of protecting the remaining natural landscape to the east of the structure.

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SITE 6 R O O S E V E LT L A K E

Site 6 lies at different kind of resource extraction – that of everprecious water in the desert – at Roosevelt Lake Reservoir. Towering above the surrounding Saguaros, the tower acts as a pond in the sky. Despite the vast water visible below, the tower is at the end of a miles-long dry stretch for south-bound trail users and is crucial for safety. It also acts as a moment to look out over the massive damage done by the changing climate – existing in the ashes of the 2020 Bush Fire – the fifth largest fire in Arizona history.

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SITE 7 BLUE RIDGE RESERVOIR

Site 7 at Blue Ridge Reservoir plays host to a fog harvesting bridge that might at first appear to be unnecessary. However, with the reservoir hitting a high of only 22% capacity in 2018, its existence is fleeting.

The bridge will provide a new, crucial source of water for future trail users, while also acting as monument to the dead reservoir that lies below. The bridge is also the dividing line of the 2017 Ranger Fire, with dead trees along the reservoir’s bank acting as reminder of a threat that managed to stop at the Arizona Trail’s boundary.

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SITE 8 S A N F R A N . C R AT E R S

Located at the site of one of the numerous San Francisco craters, the Northern fog harvesting hybrid is another moment of climate-induced reflection in its forest ecosystem. Sitting on the crater’s rim, the top of the tower reaches just high enough to look out over the acres of dead landscape from the Seep, Boundary, and Wildhorse Fires of years past. This view of the fire’s remains is complimented by an eastern view of private residences that the trail had previously hidden from view.

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SITE 9 ROCK CANYON

Finally, at Rock Canyon, Site 9’s fog mesh tower is a crucial water resource along the trail that exists at the edge of the Magnum Fire. The mesh surrounds the skeletal remains of a tree victim to the 70,000acre fire. As the user walks up among its charred branches,¬¬¬ they can look out over the fire that lay waste to the rest of the forest.

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COLE O’BRIEN