Leah Kahler - MLA Work Sample

A PLACE TO SIT A Disruptive Public Seat For

Lingering TOP: Site photos + Lawrence Halprin Sketches at the Edge BOTTOM: Scott Burton, In Situ Landscape Architecture, Isamu Noguchi, ““, Susan Child, SWA Group [1]whole

The spontaneous spirit inherent to Halprin’s 1973 design has since been violated by the encroachment of private business. Local alcohol codes and racialized fears have resulted in the installment of chains and anti-loitering signage, while poorly sited trash receptacles interrupt Halprin’s sculptural fountain+stair sequence. This seat in Lawrence Halprin’s Downtown Mall is a site for small, humble acts of reconciliation. The fragmented boulder provides a place to linger in direct public view.

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shimmying + movement at the seat

alprin Sketches Members of the public occupy the boulder’s edges in act of spontaneous Split face and Landscape Architecture, Isamudefiance Noguchi,of ““,public-private Susan Child, divisiveness.

SWA Group

sawn granite builds upon the site’s existing material vocabularies, offering a variety of formal sitting and informal scramble-perches.

A singular line of mica inlay connects the boulder’s pieces, enforcing the exploded connection between the parts. The human body serves as the precious material that through movement, mends cracks between the once whole form of the seat, the once whole space of shimmying + movement at the seat Charlottesville’s downtown mall.

Instructor: Beth Meyer

Charlottesville, VA

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Fall 2019

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t the seat

MICA I N L A Y , S E A L A N T C O A T I N G

HONED G R A N I T E S E A T F A C E

BRICK SAND BASE LAYER CONCRETE

MICA INLAY

HONED GRANITE SEAT

crack

otate

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INDUSTRIAL SWAMP SUBLIME Wetland Revitalization and Worker’s Justice in the Crescent City This proposal calls for the revitalization of New Orleans’ peri-urban Central Wetland Unit through wetland assimilation, a process which utilizes treated municipal effluent to treat sewage contaminants and enrich marsh grasses and swamp hardwoods. Through a series of a community-governed, state-partnered work “krewes,” Industrial Swamp Sublime centers the Ninth Ward’s labor class, creating a vision of New Orleans’ future that sees labor rights, racial justice, and thriving wetlands as part and parcel to just urbanism.

When MRGO, nick-named “Hurricane Highway,” was closed following Katrina in 2005, the EPA mandated a $2.9 billion wetland restoration plan. That plan was never built.

Industrial Swamp Sublime responds to historical injustices of infrastructural negligence and uneven racial geographies of flood mitigation through foregrounding the most vulnerable geographies and their residents’ right to life-affirming work.

Instructor: Mary Velez

New Orleans, LA

Fall 2020

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RECONCILING GROUND Alternative Perceptual & Management Frameworks for the Tulare Lake Basin The GRC was established in January 2020 as a subagency of the California Natural Resources Agency, tasked with addressing the economic decline and environmental degradation facing the Tulare Lake Basin. It is specifically attuned to common concerns of local communities about the declining oil industry and shrinking viability of large-scale irrigated agriculture—the two economic pillars for the region.

The GRC’s goal is to work with a wide range of industry stakeholders, community groups, and public and private partners to help the Tulare Lake Basin pivot toward new forms of economy and livelihood.

The GRC has a two-pronged approach: 1) Physical demonstration sites incubate and experiment with regenerative land management practices, while 2) An interactive in-person and online data community generates knowledge and catalyzes a sense of care for the ground.

Collaborators: C. Brennan, L. Needham, J. Lee Instructors: Cantrell, Hansen, Ezban

2020 Spring 2020 VA ASLA Student Award

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FREEZE/THAW POTENTIALS Hacking into Winter Soil Dynamics Groundcover (straw, leaf litter, etc.)

Our team’s curious methods documented the thermal insulation qualities of various ground materials as they affected freeze-thaw cycles in Virginia’s Winter. We conducted site monitoring via plaster casts directly onto the earth that cracked at different rates according to vegetation cover, humidity, and solar radiation.

Cast Plaster Plastic Wrap

Given our findings, we proposed a suite of soil profiles to amplify or diminish freeze-thaw cycles. This suite of tactics, which I explored in model, work to avoid the churning of contaminated soil layers due to cryoturbation.

In collaboration with P. Wang and Z. Liu Instructor: Matthew Seibert

Winter 2019 Charlottesville, VA

Submerged 4” Plastic Tube Rubber Cap Existing Soil Profile

THERMAL CONDUCTOR COEFFICIENT (W*mK)

Materials within the soil profile have a variety of capacities for thermal insulation.

Soil (wet) Concrete Water Plaster Soil (dry) Straw Snow Wood EPS Air

0.6-4.0 0.8-2.5 0.5918 0.5 0.15-0.2 0.15-0.2 0.05-25 0.04-0.17 0.033-0.046 0.00922

Diurnal freeze/thaw cycles expand soil water differentially based on environmental temperatures and insulation.

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FRAMEWORK PLAN Uncovering Concealed Narratives and Landscape Dynamics at a 19th Century Cotton Plantation As the only member of the project team able to access the site, I conducted expert interviews, coordinated with archaeological and site surveyors, and created and delivered client presentations for the first phase of the landscape framework plan. Through a focus on the racialized topography and historical ecology of this 19 th century cotton plantation, our research revealed a fuller history of the site’s occupation by free, enslaving, and enslaved people.

Investigations included a thorough botanical survey, identification and retrieval of archival documents, regional economic dynamics, and spatial practices of enslaved and native peoples of Antebellum Louisiana. Repeated sitewalks revealed a sequences of landscape typologies that structured the major design concepts of the framework plan.

Reed Hilderbrand

West Feliciana Parish (Remote)

Summer 2020

PLANT SYMBOLISM & MEANING BLACK BOTANICAL KNOWLEDGE & ANTEBELLUM PLACE-MAKING

THE PLANTS OF LIVE OAK

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CASH CROPS & MARKERS OF SPACE PLANTS FOR HEALING & CARE

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9 1. LIVE OAK - QUERCUS VIRGININIA marker of formal axes and entrances

7. LE MAMOU - ERYTHRINA HERBACEA roots used to make tea for cough

2. INDIGO - INDIGOFERA SPP.

8. YAM - DIOSCOREA VILLOSA

3. COTTON - Gossypium hirsutum

9. SASSAFRAS - SASSAFRAS ALBIDIUM

textile dye

fiber

4. SUGARCANE - SACCHARUM OFFICINARUM food

bowl ailments

cleansing tea

10. GARLIC- ALLIUM SATIVUM stomach ailments

5. LOBLOLLY PINE - PINUS TAEDA

11. POKEBERRY - PHYTOLACCA AMERICANA

6. EASTERN RED CEDAR - JUNIPERUS VIRGININIA

12. SWEETGUM - LIQUIDAMBAR STYRACIFLUA

lumber & paper pulp

marker of informal roads

REED HILDERBRAND

rheumatism, boils

children’s drink, stomach relief

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