Adriana Lenarczyk MLA year one portfolio

Adriana Lenarczyk

MASTER OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

CITY COLLEGE OF NEW YORK

SPITZER SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

In the vast world of the non-I, the non-I of fields is not the same as the non-I of forests. The forest is a before-me, before-us, whereas for fields and meadows, my dreams and recollections accompany all the different phases of tilling and harvesting. When the dialectics of the I and the non-I grow more flexible, I feel that the fields and meadows are with me, in the with-me, with-us.

- Gaston Bachelard

Cumulus Fields A regenerative earthwork in Central Park

Inspired by Bachelard’s Poetics of Space and Heidegger’s Building, Thinking, Dwelling , I proposed to create earthworks using mound landforms in Central Park’s North Meadow ball fields. The Cumulus Fields are designed to invite play and imagination, provide shelter for humans, insects, and animals, and act as sound barriers to muffle city noise.

Throughout human history, mounds were built as sacred sites by many ancient civilizations and indigenous tribes. Mounds evolved into organic buildings and dwellings, sometimes resembling the dwellings of burrowing animals, insects, and other invertebrates. Thus, they can be regarded as sacred dwellings for temporal beings. They are made of earth yet shaped to reach toward the sky. Their form reflects Heidegger’s philosophy of the Fourfold— the unity of mortals, earth, the sky, and the sacred.

INITIAL PLANTING

Data collection in the meadows starts with tracking plant growth from seed versus plugs and pots in various urban growing conditions.

OVERUSE NO MOW

Overuse of the Cumulus Field mounds can lead to issues like soil compaction and trampled vegetation. Certain areas would be periodically closed off for regeneration or animal mating seasons. Educational signs would inform visitors of the closings and tall grasses at edges of mounds act as a natural barrier.

Tall grass and perennial meadows would increase spaces for wildlife shelter. Bird species such as meadowlarks, wrens, warblers, and finches thrive in grassland habitats. Tall fescue grass grows between the mounds to deter disturbance from mowing. Mowing would only be done twice a year in the first two years, and once per year afterwards.

NATURAL MANAGEMENT METHODS DROUGHT MONITORING

Plant communities adapt to different climate conditions and extreme weather events such as floods and drought. For example, in the event of a drought, the meadows would undergo shifts in plant assemblages in order to build resiliency. Goldenrod, shown below, may become the dominant species.

Practices such as prescribed burns may be used if woody plants begin to grow in the meadow. Burning would allow new growth, and plant succession would restart with new meadow assemblages. Care must be taken to avoid native insect or animal nests. Alternatively, goats may be used to control invasive plants that don’t necessitate a controlled burn.

Field scientists monitor soil health and biodiversity with soil sensor probes. This data includes sound recordings above and below soil. The recordings will be streamed on a website where people can listen for sensory augmentation.

As an interactive, experimental earthwork, the Cumulus Fields are designed to have a sensor network throughout the two sites that will document ecological processes. Small, low-power sensor devices would capture climate, soil, water, and other environmental data, while recording devices would capture audio from the meadows, surrounding trees, and underground. Discreet video recording devices could also be installed in areas that are closed off for regeneration or nesting seasons. This data would be streamed through a website, where people would be able to experience the natural processes at different spatial and temporal scales.

The weedy meadows of the Cumulus Fields are intended to be guided by experimental or low maintenance treatments with little human input in order to allow for ecological succession. Through succession, the species in an ecological community gradually replace one another until the community reaches full maturity or until a disturbance occurs. This ephemeral quality inspired the name for Cumulus Fields.

PERENNIAL MEADOW

WOODLAND UNDERSTORY

Cumulus Fields

Proposed adaptive earthwork in Central Park

Mound structures will be added to create sites of ephemeral meadows. These earthworks are meant to inspire interaction and play with nature that would otherwise be ignored or only used for permitted games.

Unnecessary or destructive paths will be removed or rerouted for simpler flow around structures, and for visitors to choose whether to interact with each mound.

Baseball fields and surrounding monocultured lawn will be removed. Grass will be reseeded to low grass, tall grass, and perennial meadows.

Excessive human input leads to imbalanced nutrients, organic pollutant runoff, and low biodiversity due to monoculture. The mounds would be covered in diverse perennial, tall grass, and low grass meadows that will leave space for weeds to grow as natural soil amenders. Weeds are pioneer species, which are the first plants to appear and grow in perturbed soils, ultimately giving way to healthier assemblages due to their nitrogen fixing capabilities. Thus, the plantings, as well as the soil microbes, would be expected to increase in biodiversity every year.

What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

A Community of Misfits Rethinking “Invasiveness”

Parts of Central Park are built up with human-transported loam, filling in the steep slopes of exposed ancient bedrock. As I walked through a shaded valley in northwest Central Park, I came upon a community of misfit weeds who had taken over the lowest points of the slopes. Pokeweed, smartweed, and white goosefoot humbly thrived as the weedy bottom-feeders, offering fruits and grains to animals while pulling up nutrients through their deep root systems and dispersing them among their neighbors.

Disturbed environments have long been breeding grounds for invasive species and unwanted weeds, but rather than eradicating them, we should consider their benefits. These undesirables grow where few plants want to grow, helping establish more diverse communities by stabilizing and improving their surrounding soil. Weeds are a part of humanity—they grow where we live and hardly anywhere else.

Parent Material Available Water Capacity

Parent material

Till overlying schist and gneissic bedrock

Loamy human-transported fill

Available Water Capacity

*Available water capacity refers to the quantity of water that the soil is capable of storing for use by plants. It is expressed in centimeters of water per centimeter of soil for each soil layer.

<= 0.12

> 0.12 and <= 0.14

> 0.14 and <= 0.17

Robinia pseudoacacia has often been villainized as an invasive weedy species despite the fact that it is native to the mid-Atlantic and southern regions of the United States.

Commonly known as the black locust tree, this species finds opportunities to grow on a variety of disturbed soils along roadsides, forest edges, and spoil banks. Soils in these biomes are poor and often lack nutrients found in undisturbed soil accumulations, but Robinia pseudoacacia is a member of the legume family, which allows it to fix atmospheric nitrogen into forms that plants can consume, such as ammonium (NH4+) and nitrate (NO3-).

With our rapidly changing climate, the idea of “native species” seems to be shortsighted. After all, plants and animals begin to migrate in order to adapt to climate change, and historical ranges are no longer applicable when the native vegetation cannot survive under rapidly changing conditions. Nature is dynamic—we should reconsider the historical standards we apply to our landscapes, and step away from trying to control the earth’s will to evolve.

Here, soil quality has been improved through nitrogen fixation, and native species can be planted for soil stability, biodiversity, or simply for ornamental purposes.

YEAR 1 - SPRING

YEAR 2 AND 3 - SUMMER

YEAR X - FALL

*image created in collaboration with project partner, Cassandra Castano

Rewilding is not about abandoning civilization but about enhancing it. It is to ‘love not man the less, but Nature more’.

- George Monbiot

St. Nicholas Greenway Reimagining Harlem’s streetscapes

According to landscape ecologist Eric Sanderson, St. Nicholas Avenue is what remains of an old Native American trace, winding north towards Inwood, where the Lenape natives would make their way to the Bronx and Westchester to take shelter during winters. Cutting through the blocks overlaid by the 1811 Grid Plan of New York, St. Nicholas remains a defiant, crooked street, its forgotten history buried under pavement.

Our project began with a framework identifying pockets of air pollution in Harlem, which led us to propose a plan to green-up Harlem for habitat value, stormwater management, flood protection, and air pollution mitigation in response to the disproportionate rates of childhood asthma in this area.

The resulting proposal reimagined St. Nicholas Avenue as an open, naturalistic planted park with recreational, ecological, and educational opportunities. The park would be planted in a gradient of native forest assemblages, which would act as an outdoor classroom, starting from Central Park and transitioning into 125th Street. At 125th, the Greenway would connect at a central node that acts as a meeting space, featuring a floodable amphitheater for stormwater management and flood mitigation. The project in its entirety is called Cleaner Routes, but this portfolio features my half of a collaboration with my partner, Cassandra Castaño.

Existing Conditions

AREAS OF INTEREST

This project began as an observation of the neighborhoods within a predetermined precinct encompassing Harlem and Morningside Heights. Starting from the northern edge of Central Park and stretching from the Hudson to the Harlem River, the precinct contains several parks and open spaces which occur at a regular cadence across the area, along with some challenging topographic and infrastructure conditions that sometimes present barriers to safe and convenient open space access.

After identifying pockets of air pollution, high density, and low tree cover, we noticed that a large number of schools were located in these areas. This pushed our project to consider educational opportunities as well as safe access to parks and playgrounds for activities during and after school.

*map image created by project partner, Cassandra Castano

St. Nicholas Greenway

Promenade park with bike lane

St. Nicholas Greenway would turn St. Nicholas Avenue into the walkable trail that it once was, by prioritizing car-free accessibility and mobility. The park’s planting design follows a gradient of native landscape assemblages, both historical and successional, with climate resilience in mind.

The park would lead from Central Park and transition into 125th Street, where it would connect at a central node that acts as a meeting space close to NYCHA buildings, featuring a floodable amphitheater for stormwater management and flood mitigation.

St. Nicholas Greenway

Primary park and secondary car-free streets

Hancock Plaza

Community space with floodable amphitheater at 125th St.

*images created in collaboration with project partner, Cassandra Castano

Field Studies

Drawings and sketches

Technical Drawings

Drafting in AutoCAD

Adriana Lenarczyk

Laser cut contour model

AutoCAD

Grading, materials plan, and construction details

Hosta La Vista 3 Museum Access

Hosta La Vista 7 Museum

Hosta La Vista