Cuisine & Empire Multi-Species Care on the American Farm
On the American Farm, Empire reigns.
A power structure that encompasses an ahistorical spatial totality, it creates the conditions for the control of human life and nature. Empire is also a place. It is located in McLean County, Illinois, the top producer of corn in the United States. This corn, no. 2 yellow dent, drives our cuisine, yet we eat almost none of it. Cuisine & Empire intersect in the farm as a problem of land. Cuisine & Empire: Multi-Species Care on the American Farm re-grounds landscape architecture in agrarian practices. By reconceiving the land ordinance, it counters the scalable practices of Empire that reduce multi-species life to yields and quotas. Using non-scalable farm ecologies, infrastructures, economies, and land practices, Cuisine & Empire re-assembles food cultivation and culture.
Cuisine & Empire was completed as a thesis at Harvard GSD, advised by Rose Monacella. It was organized as a meal of five courses. The first two courses, Multi-Faceted Narratives and Species in Situ examined histories through the archives of McLean County Museum of History and drew out how these histories shaped the land and species on farms today. The archival material is presenting in all drawings, as images, data, or annotations, as seen on the drawings on this page. Two films explained the dominant narrative of Empire and the local histories found in archives. They can be found with this link or the QR code below.
Cuisine & Empire / Thesis
/ Professor Rose Monacella / Empire, IL
Cuisine & Empire continues to courses 3, 4 & 5: Respect & Recourse and Collapse & Regeneration. In these courses, new strategies and designs for organizing food landscapes emerge from the study of histories and existing conditions. Each recourse included a stop motion film, walk-through animation, and species drawings. They can be found with this link or the QR code on the previous page.
The Field Plot transforms rigid monocultures into dynamic polycultures that feed humans and others. The wet prairie returns integrated into the productive landscape, and animals and insects are invited into the corridors, rather than poisoned away. Recourse 2: The Compost Corridor reconsiders boundaries, thickening them from lines into flexible resources. Farm material is composted to be shared by all along the corridor, which sometimes opens into occupiable spaces - orchards, hives, dining spaces. The final recourse is The Share Silo. To counter empire, the Shared Silo spatializes the local economy, which is more than just commodities and cash flow. Knowledge is passed through generations and between neighbors in celebration.
In Collapse & Regeneration, the recourses come together to form a new mode of farming, taught at a new model of a landgrant university. This new campus is transformed by the recourses to empire. It continues this transformation by remaking property. For the duration of the school’s tenure in this site, it is a communal property, understood as a shared resource, like the riparian corridors or the shared silos. Hedge spaces erase boundaries, and students and faculty partner with neighbors in trust for mutual benefit.
The project concludes with Eating in Communion - the presentation, where guests sat around a table-landscape to share the thesis. As fellow diners, they were ‘served’ the courses on plates and objects moved around the table. Projections of the site activated the table. The presentation ended with cornbread and a discussion about landscape, empire, and eating together.
Cuisine & Empire
Thesis
Professor
Rose Monacella / Empire, IL
Cuisine & Empire
Thesis
Professor
Rose
Monacella / Empire, IL
Cuisine & Empire
Thesis
Professor
Rose Monacella / Empire, IL
Observatory for (Dis)Entanglement
What emerges in damaged landscapes, after a vision of an ideal society fails? What new modes of relations, of knowledge generation, of habitats and homes grow from the ruins of the carceral state? The Observatory for (Dis)Entanglement offers a speculative plan for New York City that invites researchers and visitors alike to observe habitat formation through repeated encounters and new forms of knowledge production through a more-thanhuman learning process.
As Rikers Prison is deconstructed, the concrete and brick rubble flow to Jamaica Bay, where they are repurposed to support life rather than destroy it. Concrete forms artificial reefs that protect the rapidly-depleting marshes of the bay. As the reefs expand, they become a second site for the Observatory for (Dis)Entanglement that expands over time. Anthropogenic materials are not separated and removed from the landscape - rather, the ODE understands that there is no remediation, no return to a pristine condition. The ‘natural’ and the ‘human’ are intertwined. The plan is a circuit garden taking visitors and researchers through the changing landscapes of Rikers Island and Jamaica Bay. The ruins of the prison become a base upon which different species establish and create new worlds, new future way of being in New York. At the observatories at Rikers are built, the marshes at Jamaica bay are strengthened, becoming a second site for the ODE. Research and observation follies and paths are constructed, again offering new ways of studying the bay. New migrating species arrive, finding temporary, or even permanent homes, as climate changes shift habitat. While the plan is imagined to be realized by 2050, ODE will continue to observe changes far into the future. Habitats are historical phenomena, emerging in relation to what was existing. By studying these phenomena of succession, worlding, and new encounters, ODE is a new way to understand the city, tangling and untangling its histories and futures.
Observatory for (Dis)Entanglement
Professor Francesco
Garofalo / New York City, NY
Benchmark Tower in Jamaica Bay
Rikers Island, 2050
Jamaica Bay, 2051
erosion due to SLR and increased wave action
Deconstructed Concrete Reef 2
restoration phase 2
Deconstructed Concrete Reef 1
restoration phase 1
marsh
marsh
marsh
Sediment
Sediment
Marine Habitat
Slow Water
Climate change is a crisis of time. Our need to move faster and faster every day has ultimately led us to a future where time is running out. The physical construction of our cities reinforce this need for speed; our lives far outpace nature’s course. It only catches up in times of ‘natural disasters’ that we see with more frequency now. Boston is already anticipating a future in which water will take back huge swaths of the city. By 2070, rainfall will likely increase by 25%, overwhelming the current system.
Slow Water understands that time and increased stormwater are connected. By slowing down our cities, we can reconsider the values that shape urban spaces and how to respond to this change. The current system works to dry the city as quickly as possible, as if it had not rained. This is becoming increasingly impossible with larger storms and shifting climate. Rather than drain all water away, Slow Water shows us how to live intimately with it, understanding its cyclical rhythms, beautiful flux, and opportunities for new ways of urban living.
First, a series of rills begin at the tops of the hills of Charlestown. These catch and divert water where it is moving fastest. As the rills move downhill, channels peel off to move water into backyards of each block. The backyard becomes a shared semi-public space. Fences come down, opening up space for swales that the rills drain into. Here, the water slows through the planted space. The swales increase in size the further downhill they are, until the downhill end of the block is completely planted, with sidewalks and access elevated above the flood level. It is a new way of living, inviting residents to slow down and go with the flow.
Vignettes
Slow Water
steep slopes, dense block, park, streets)
Inter-Block
Steep Slopes
Slow Water
Professor
Tomás Folch
Boston, MA
Swale and Rill Section, Inter-block
Slow Water / Spring
2023
/
Professor
Tomás
Folch
/ Boston, MA
Dock Assembly
Docked Dilemmas
In Stockholm, owing a boat is nothing special. An archipelago, the coastline is abundant and filled with recreational docks for public use. Thousands of residents enjoy the warm months sailing on their boats around the city. By area, Stockholm is one third water, but that number is slowly increasing. Rising sea levels will completely reshape the city; all aspects of shore life will require a redesign to support human activity in the unpredictable future. If the city continues to build traditional docks, they will require rebuilding nine times by 2100. This project proposes a simple solution - new connection details within recreational docks to create dynamic infrastructure that responds at the speed of the shifting tides and continues to support aquatic activities.
The dock will be constructed in phases, with posts put in place leading all the way back to the predicted high water line. Sliding connections will allow each unit of the dock to respond individually to changing water level. These mechanical connections are aided with a “natural / non-human” connection: fuzzy marine ropes, attached from the underside of the dock to the ground will provide a space for mussel reefs to grow, which will act as a glue that holds the dock steady while allowing slow growth over the years. Mussels break wave action, creating new protection for the docks in the face of increasing storms driven by climate change. The mussels also act as a first wave of aquatic habitants as the ground transitions from dry to wet, drawing in other species over time. They will also provide food and bolster a stronger sea-side economy within the city. As Matthew Gandy observes, cities are the result of a series of processes played out in a specific geography. Stockholm is no different - the amazing boating culture, supported by docks, would not exist anywhere else. This can continue in the face of future climate shifts, but first, the process must shift as the geography does. By shifting mentalities, Stockholm can embrace the rising tides as an opportunity to promote to promote a healthier, more inclusive (for both human and non-humans) urban life.
Docked
Dilemmas
Professors
H. Frichot, S. Karami, A.
Carbonell
Stockholm, Sweden
Site Collages
New Coasts in Central Stockholm, 2100
Site Collages showing today, a stormy potential, and a brighter future
40 meters
Tantolunden
Tantolunden Today
H.
Tantolunden of Tomorrow
Farm Configuration
Green House Configuration
In the Food Truck Future
Chicago is defined by agriculture - the grid system results from the Land Ordinance of 1785 and many of the angled streets were trails used for the movement of livestock toward the city. The city became an important hub due to the fact that is linked the eastern seaboard with the resources of the Great Plains. But today, if you were to stop a random person on the streets of the city, they will likely have little awareness of the agriculture that developed and sustains the city. The modern world we live in is becoming increasingly groundless - we have refrigerators full of food we don’t know the origin of and only minimal awareness of how it even arrived in the city. We frequently order meals and groceries using apps and choose what to eat based off social media. Technology appears to be destroying our diets. But it can also be the solution - efficient autonomous farming techniques developed over the last decades, provide an opportunity to bring the production of food back into the city. This project re-grounds Chicago’s agricultural inheritance, albeit in a new way - the ground itself becomes mechanized. Movable boards connected by unique hinges allow the ground to move in response to seasonal needs and provide tracks for autonomous farm equipment to tend to the crops. During the spring, more space can be dedicated to growing beds that follow the suns path. As it warms and more food is ready to be harvested and sold, the boards become market stalls. Finally, in the cold winter, enclosures will provide greenhouse space to continue growing food and providing educational opportunities for urban residents to reconnect to their food. Through this new topography, this block in downtown Chicago becomes a space that merges the traditional and the technological, reconnecting the hungry city back to the roots of its food.
Market Configuration
Movable boards with hinge connections
Urban Farm Plots
Greenhouses
Market Stalls
CTA Grand Entry Steps
Rippled Plaza Condition
Loading Traffic Divider
of US Cities to Farmland
In 1900, the US population was still primarily rural. It would take over two decades for most Ameri cans to move to cities
Relation
In the 1970’s, refrigerated shipping containers revolutionize the food chain. “Fresh” food could be delivered anywhere in the word, sparking a constant summer diet.
Japan introduces square fruit, grown to fit into small apartment refrigerators.
In the early 2000’s, some farmers monitor and attend crops using drones. After 2010, drones become more affordable and the market grows.
Vertical Farming becomes a hot topic after a 2010 book promotes it as a smart solution to feeding urban populations.
In 2013, Grubhub and Seamless introduce apps for ordering food from smart phones.
Food delivery is increasingly performed by small deliver bots and drones, cutting out the need for human drivers.
In 2013, Dutch scientists produce the first lab grown burger. As prices go down, lab grown meat will become a viable alternative to traditionally raised beef.
Researchers at MIT are currently working on 3D printed food.
In
Infrastructure Love
Movement in the city occurs through different timescapes. Therefore, infrastructure must support these disconnected yet parallel experiences. It may be as simple as a pedestrian sidewalk (5 km/hr) and a metro track (80 km/hr) sharing a bridge. It may be as complex as a the daily use of a public fountain draining an aquifer over centuries and destroying the foundations of buildings nearby. This project proposes to look at infrastructure through these different lenses of time in order to discover how they do (and don’t) support city life. By drawing a section, representing a 10 kilometer journey through the city, we study the history of the city, the geology of the landscape, and current use trends. Interventions at critical points along the section journey reveal ways to manipulate these influences of time. We can look back to history, or we can introduce new actors that radically shift how a space is experienced. After multiple journeys, we have come to the conclusion that infrastructure is not in the name, but in the use. If no one crosses a bridge, is it infrastructure? At the same time, with careful application and thought, perhaps with some love, we believe anything has the potential to become infrastructural in nature.
Scope of Work:
Most work was done collaboratively - as a group, we determined the path and completed journeys together. We each shared portions of the section and intervention to draw.
Infrastructure
Love / Fall 2018
/ Professors H. Frichot, S. Karami, A. Carbonell / with Feng Yang & Linnéa Ågren / Stockholm, Sweden
Pin-Up
The panelized presentation allowed us to hang the presentation where necessary to match the route. The section and supporting information was pinned up horizontally to create a continuous drawing, while interventions (presented in the next section) lined up vertically to match their location on the drawing.
Drawing Key
The drawing has been completed across four separate journeys along the route. Journey 1: Experience is drawn in pink. Locations that seemed most important to us on the first journey are scaled up 3 times. Secondary infrastructures we observed are noted through drawings under the main section. Journey 2: Unexpected Guests, is green and includes 5 cross sections. Journey 3: Failures is blue, and Journey 4: Systems and Flows is teal.
Karami,
Feng Yang & Linnéa
Ågren
Stockholm, Sweden
Intervention 01 - Unexpected Guests
No city is perfectly zoned between uses, but a dynamic mix - restaurants on the same block as workshops, parks within government complexes. Unexpected guests also intrude the city’s infrastructure, working with, against, and changing their function. One such guest is the common street tree. Due to sudden topography changes across Stockholm, trees are encounted above, below, next to, and across great distances. They become their own system of infrastructure - street trees, always running alongside. We expect them there, but what happens in a direct encounter - what if a tree is in our path?
To shift views, we propose to plant a Common European Beech tree (Fagus sylvanica) in the center of the street at Fridhemsplan. Rather than passively being the tool of the urban planner trying to beautify the space, the tree is the main actor and redesigns the city itself. Through its growth, the tree will dictate the growth and change of the city around it. The Beech, rarely used as a street tree due to strong roots that tear up sidewalks, will destroy the street over its lifetime. This is not a negative, but rather a new opportunity. Predictably, as cars lose the ability to drive through, pedestrians will take this space back. It will move from a fast, car-dominated zone to one that moves slowly, at the pace of nature and people. This intervention relishes in the slow design process, one we do not notice everyday, or even every year, but ultimately alters the way we think about what it means to design a city and invite new guests into the mix.
Stortorgsbrunnen, 1778, “The earliest manhole cover”
Intervention 03 - Systems & Flows
Water flows next to Stockholm, but also below. Extensive networks of ground water lay beneath the surface of many of the islands. The municipal water system is a man-made, mechanical network, with its original basis in the aquifers. The desire to control water in all states drove development. Now, it is as simple as turning a tap, activating a highly controlled invisible network. Streets offer a chance to reveal the underground flow - reading manhole covers announces what is flowing beneath our feet, a network of pipes and wells, mirroring our city in the earth below.
Traditionally, water in Stockholm was supplied through central wells, shared by all inhabitants in walking distance. The old fountain, Stortorgsbrunnen, in Gamla Stan is actually the oldest well and manhole cover. Accessing water was not just about infrastructure and utilities running through the city - it was a major social experience. People gathered around Stortorgsbrunnen to partake in city life together. Now, it is a hidden, individual experience. To return the social aspect to the water network, we propose to daylight this network in the streets. Manhole covers become small windows into the subterranean flow. The covers will be made of structural glass. Walking down the streets will be a much more exciting experience when the city below is visible. In public squares, the covers will be raised up, to create seating around them. Although we no longer have the need to go outside our homes to gather water, we are still social creatures. These interventions create spaces, small, but repeated throughout the city, that support gathering in a way that allows residents to be more aware of both their water sources and each other.
Karami, A. Carbonell
with Feng Yang & Linnéa
Ågren
Stockholm, Sweden
A typical manhole cover with structural glass
Seating around a manhole
Pairing the Paisajes
Penny White Project Fund
Does colonization have a terroir? Historically, terroir, a French term, has been simply defined as “earth through the view of agriculture.” This is incomplete, ignoring historic and cultural forces that have shaped the earth into its current state. Pairing the Paisajes broadens the definition of terroir to better reflect the lived and embodied reality of agricultural production and understand the impacts that European colonization has on the taste of the planet. Wine production in Argentina embodies such complication of terroir. Before colonization, no grapes or wine beverages were produced in South America. Wine grapes, Vitis vinifera, were introduced in the sixteenth century by Spanish missionaries. Now, it is inseparable from the national palate.
To understand Argentine wine, Pairing the Paisajes cuts a transect across Argentina from south to north. There are seven wine regions in Argentina, lining the Andes mountains. Three regions were selected to offer the most diverse overview: Neuquen, a southern newer region; Mendoza, the iconic Argentine wine region; and Salta, la linda, a historic region where traces of Spanish colonialism and Catholicism are very present. Over a three week research trip, we visited each region, touring vineyards, local institutions, and surrounding landscapes, and interviewed locals involved in the process of making wine. Our research acknowledges that Argentine viticulture is not a singular culture, but a mixture, a fermentation, of many agents, traditions, environmental limitation, and ecological niches. Argentina’s history of viticulture and wine production reveals a much more complex story of transferring and layering multiple influences, species, and people from around the world in specific locales. This is illustrated by the transect we traveled through the country: each region is distinct yet all represent the complicated narratives of Modern Argentina. Scope of Work:
Research, Drawing, Writing, Collaging, and Management was split equally between Rocio and Elaine throughout the project.
Pairing the Paisajes
/ with Rocio Alonso
/ Harvard
GSD Penny White Project Grant
/ Neuquen, Mendoza, & Salta, Argentina
Neuquén
Neuquén is in the southernmost wine-producing areas of Argentina, just east of Patagonia. It is one of the youngest but fastest-growing productive regions. The cold weather, low precipitation, and light but constant winds create a harsh growing environment that results in strong fruit. Before wine production scaled up, apples and pears were (and still are) the dominant industry. Canals and dams control water flow and irrigation in the river valley, but just beyond their reach, the landscape is an arid scrubland focused on oil production. The growing wine industry reflects this strange melding of moneyproducing industries - it is focused on producing grapes popular around the world, including Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, with a focus on exporting. In the city of Neuquen, there is little celebration of wine production. If one wasn’t aware it was there, they would never even notice it.
Bodega Amalaya +1,742 m
Esteco +1,596
Punilla
Bodega Bonfanti +922 m
Bodega Catena Zapata +948 m
Bodega Alpamanta +944 m
Domaine Bousquet +1,126 m
Bodega Andeluna +1,162 m
Bodega Salentein +1,185m
Bodega Malma +386 m
Bodega Familia Schroeder +368 m
Mendoza
Mendoza is Argentine wine. While not the oldest wineregion in Argentina, it is the most famous internationally. Visitors arriving at the airport are greeted with wine shops and find their cars in lots organized by grape varieties. Mendoza is a desert with limited water supply from the Andes, delivered by canals originally constructed by the Mapuche and Incans. Summers are hot and dry, while winters are relatively mild. Strong winds, known as the Zonda, rise up on the Chilean side of the Andes, deposit snow, then come crashing down over the region, sometimes destroying vines. Indigenous mythologies connect the wind to Pachamama, the earth goddess, protecting nature from human greed. Mendoza’s wine production was heavily influenced by Italian immigrants, many starting large vineyards. In the late twentieth century, economic changes began to impact the wineries. Then, the Judgment of Paris happened, opening up the world of fine wines. This revelation was a revolution in Argentine wine-making. Winemakers quickly introduced French techniques to their production and began focusing on single-varietal wines. Argentine Malbec was born, becoming one of the most popular grapes in the world, putting Argentina on the international wine map.
Salta
Furthest north is Salta, where Argentina’s early colonial and national history still feels very much alive in the architecture, dance, art, and cuisine, all strongly influenced by indigenous cultures. Known as “Salta, la Linda” or Salta, the Beautiful, there is great pride and poetry when speaking of the unique land. Historically, Salta was the gateway to Argentina from the Spanish capital of Peru. From Peru, missionaries brought grapes for sacramental wine to convert the indigenous population. Today in Salta, wine is primarily grown in the Calchaqui Valley, centered around the town of Cafayate. Here, the sun shines 340 days a year, its strong rays burning into the high-altitude vineyards (over 6,000 feet above sea level). As it is a valley, it is surrounded by mountains on all sides, creating a very dry desert climate with cool nights. This creates the perfect conditions for Torrontés grapes, which prefer cool nights. Unlike other regions, the parral method of planting (a high pergola), is still commonly used, as it shades the grapes from extreme sun.
GSD
Penny
White Project Grant
/ Neuquen,
Mendoza, & Salta, Argentina
Photos provided by different members of Open Sheds
Open Sheds Used for What?
Damen Silos
Open Sheds Used for What? is an experiment in the open construction of space. Located across the south side of Chicago, the project was started in 2020 by a group of artists. It features an octagonal metal frame (the “shed”), acting as a prompt for artistic interventions, events, installations, and happenings in locations deemed ‘vacant’ by the city.
In June 2021, the shed was located on the side of the Damen Silos. Joining the team for the silos site, I used the shed as a springboard for understanding the site as a mirror of Chicago’s growth and industrial history. The larger artist team activated the shed and larger site through events, such as meals prepared on site. Even though it’s technically closed to the public, we discovered huge interested in the site - even the security guards wanted to show off their knowledge of tunnels and graffiti. In September, the team partnered with the Chicago Architectural Biennial to host a public event focused on the site history and imagining its future. It included a small publication featuring my writing on the site’s history and the timeline to the left. In September, we joined The Backwards River Festival and the Tender House Project to broadcast our work during a special radio show hosted in a Chicago River Bridgehouse. The shed continued to be a locus for close observation and learning, then form imagination and intervention. Inhabitation becomes a form of learning through weekly visits, collective work days, and installations made from materials found on site. http://openshedsusedforwhat.com/
Scope of Work:
Open Sheds: Used for What?
Damen
Silos
/ 2021
/ with M. Resende, C. Resende, P. Volpata, E. Osterland and T. Valdez
/ Chicago, IL
