EXTENTS 2019: Void

extents /void/

adjective

1. not valid or legally binding 2. completely empty noun 1. a completely empty space 2. an unfilled space in a wall, building, or other structure 3. an emptiness caused by the loss of something 4. (in bridge and whist) a suit in which a player is dealt no cards verb 1. declare that (something) is not valid or legally binding 2. discharge or drain away (water, gases, etc.) abandoned, bare, barren, clear, deprived, drained, emptied, free, lacking, scant, short, shy, bereft, destitute, devoid, tenantless, unfilled, unoccupied, vacant, vacuous, without

This student publication was made possible through the support of the University of Washington Department of Landscape Architecture and the UW Chapter of the ASLA

ISSUE III 2019

void PUBLICATION MANAGER Asya Snejnevski

LEAD EDITORS Jake Minden Jocine Velasco EDITORIAL TEAM Rebecca Bachman Heather Parker Peter Samuels LEAD LAYOUT Krista Doersch Lauren Iversen LAYOUT TEAM Jackie Donovan Hope Freije Jake Minden Asya Snejnevski WEB + FUNDRAISING Jackie Donovan Hope Freije Matt Grosser OUTREACH Alexandra Burgos Rhiannon Neuville COVER ART Hope Freije FACULTY ADVISOR Jeff Hou FACULTY + PROFESSIONAL CONTRIBUTORS Jackson Blalock Catherine De Almeida Jean Ni Susie Philipsen ThaĂ?sa Way

table of contents starting points 02 LETTER FROM THE EDITORS 04 JAKE MINDEN + JOCINE VELASCO

HOT TAKES 06

JACKIE DONOVAN + ALICIA KELLOGG + JAKE MINDEN + SARAH BARTOSH

edgelessness 10 ON BETWEEN-NESS 12

PROFESSOR CATHERINE DE ALMEIDA

studio work:

WEAVING THE WEB 20 PETER SAMUELS

RE-IMAGINING FAILURE 24 SARAH BARTOSH + SOPHIE KRAUSE

PROBABLE l PLAUSIBLE l POSSIBLE 28 RICH DESANTO + ASYA SNEJNEVSKI + LAUREN WONG

EMERGENT RESPONSIBILITY 34 CLAUDIA SACKETT HENNUM

URBAN TIDAL 38

KRISTA DOERSCH + ASYA SNEJNEVSKI

AGGREGATING REPARATIONS 42 JULIA BRASCH + MATT GROSSER

REKINDLE 46 NICK ZURLINI

INTERLACING OTHELLO 50 OLIVIA LOTT

COMMUNITY COOKHOUSE 54 NINA MROSS

58 invisible sites 60 THICK SECTIONS

PROFESSOR THAÏSA WAY + STUDENT CONTRIBUTORS

independent art work:

70 ISLANDS + PATHS

KASIA CASSIDY

72 SPACE/FIGURE JEN KRIEGEL

74 VISUALIZING SEA LEVEL RISE ASYA SNEJNEVSKI

76 LISTENING TO OTHELLO SARAH WALLACE

78 breaking binaries 80 IN THE ABSENCE OF SPATIAL POLITICS: AN INTERVIEW WITH SARA JACOBS JOCINE VELASCO

capstone work:

86 EMOTIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE LAURA DURGERIAN

94 SOILCRAFT STEVIE KOEPP

100 CULTIVATING URBAN NATURE

JULIANA HOM

104 FLOOD, FIX, REPEAT

JESSICA VETRANO

110 of concrete, of water, of human 112 EPHEMERAL VOIDS: LESSONS FROM STUDYING IN IQUITOS, PERU RHIANNON NEUVILLE

118 ALUMNI PROFILES

SUSIE PHILIPSEN + JACKSON BLALOCK + JEAN NI

120 MAKING THE COVER HOPE FREIJE + EXTENTS TEAM

FROM WHAT OCEAN IN WHOSE BELLY DID WE EMERGE? WHERE DO WE STAND? WHERE ON THE PAGE DO WE MARRY PENCIL AND PAPER? WE START WITH AN EXPLORATION OF VOID. WE START FROM WITHIN. WE START WITH OUR PRECONCEIVED NOTIONS, WITH OUR HISTORIES, AND THE FIRE IN OUR LUNGS. IN STARTING POINTS WE CLARIFY OUR MESSAGE THROUGH THE LETTER FROM THE EDITORS, AND DIVERSIFY OUR VOICES IN THE STUDENT OP-ED SECTION, HOT TAKES.

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Starting points 3

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LETTER from

the

EDITORS

We at EXTENTS recognize that we are at this very moment standing on unceded land of the Coast Salish people, specifically the Duwamish people who are still here.

We cannot speak about land, landscape and the built environment unless we start from this acknowledgment.

Void is the space between. Void is the gap, the chasm the absence (seemingly). Void is the space created through extraction: of concrete, of water, of human labor and of value. It is simultaneously that which we criticize in the narratives of landscapes and the impetus for building more honest narratives. We critique the voids landscape architecture has both filled and left unfilled—the gulf separating what we do and what we think we do. But the void is expansive, too, and not necessarily defined in relation to its boundaries. Instead, it can be a wide and deep starting point that offers potentialities still unknown to us and to the identities and roles of our profession.

We are proud to present to you the third installment of EXTENTS. The University of Washington’s student-led publication of the Department of Landscape Architecture in the College of Built Environments. Inside you will find graphic and written work that we hope exemplifies the mercurial aspects of the void: undergraduate and graduate student work from studios, capstones, thesis and individual art pieces from the 2018-2019 school year. This issue also includes essays from and interviews with students, faculty and professionals within the field that address the issue’s theme.

EXTENTS would like to thank our panel of landscape architecture professionals in Seattle for earnestly reviewing the student submissions for our publication. Without their support, this issue would not have been possible. We are grateful for Christine Abbott, Azzurra Cox, Davin Dawson, Sandy Fischer, Rikerrious Geter, Myles Harvey, Hailey Mackay, Audrey Maloney, Callie Roberts, Andrew Rosas, Shawn Stankewich, Rhys van Bemmel, Phil Van Devanter and Matt Vasquez.

On behalf of the EXTENTS Editorial Team, Jake Minden + Jocine Velasco

letter from the Editors 5

hot Hot Takes is EXTENTS’ letters to the editor column. In this section, University of Washington Landscape Architecture students are free to speak their minds about pressing issues and matters close to their hearts concerning the built environment, the field of landscape architecture, and their experiences as students. These views are not reflective of the University of Washington Department of Landscape Architecture or EXTENTS.

O

ur symbol for the College of Built Environments is a bee. Not sure why it’s a bee, no one ever took the time to explain it other than the fact that the bee is similar to the initials CBE. Yet, our mascot has faded into the background of our collective memory. As a college we no longer question why that might still be our living symbol besides a mere play on words. Then I started to ask myself, where are the fucking bees on campus? More specifically, where are the pollinators surrounding Gould Hall? Populations of bees—native bees—have been rapidly declining for years in Washington and our campus is no exception.

We need more pollinators here at Gould. We have the space and ability to plant and grow year round, yet we treat our space as an underutilized apartment complex. According to the US Forest Service, “of the 1,400 crop plants grown around the world, i.e., those that produce all of our food and plant-based industrial products, almost 80% require pollination by animals.” Pollinators are essential for our ecosystem.

This request to plant native plants to attract pollinators is a simple investment, it would be a small step toward feeling like we give back rather than constantly taking.

Where exactly at Gould would we plant all of these pollinator gardens, you ask? We could plant a huge bed of flowering plants in the patch of grass of the lightwell. It would give the mower a break during the summer time and we could take out that archaic and stuffy Hedera helix and put in some Ranunculus occidentatlis (the western buttercup) during the summer. You might be thinking, what’s the point when we could just as well NOT do that since the world is probably going to end anyways. You got a point there, but it’s these third spaces that are often overlooked that landscape designers should account for—there are so many forgotten fragments of growing spaces that their sum total is actually bigger than we realize. And in any case, flowers are pretty and it would be nice to stare at something beautiful while everything else is burning around us.

JAckie donovan, MLA Candidate, 2020

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takes I

understand the allure of white women who

sexism, and they are two forms of oppression that

rally for gender equity. They champion a historically

cannot be disentangled. If you rightfully believe that

progressive cause that is very palatable by modern-

race and gender are fundamentally intertwined

day standards: equal pay for women, equal

components of one’s experienced oppression, it

representation for women.

follows that race must be a part of the conversation

In October 2018, a petition calling for gender equity

when discussing gender equity.

circulated around the landscape architecture

Classically feminist issues have always prioritized

community, including our department at the University

of

Washington.

It

was

published

on Change.org and promoted in Landscape Architecture Magazine. It was widely disseminated and widely supported; as of this writing, it has over 3,300 signatures, and that figure is rising still. The authors were Rebecca Leonard, Jamie Maslyn, Steven Spears, Cinda Gilliland and Gina Ford. Four white women and one white man.

The petition states: “We acknowledge that diversity means including the voices of underrepresented groups of all types; however, this resolution focuses on women and their unique situation.”

This kind of statement presupposes that things like sexism, homophobia, ableism, ageism, and racism (just to name a few) are all discrete prejudices, independent from one another. The implication is that all women are affected by sexism equally. We know this to be untrue, especially when it comes to the most reliable predictor of things like wealth,

white women before (and often at the expense of) women of color. The history of white feminism is fraught with openly racist antagonism toward people of color. Today, the racism of white feminism is more subtle, but it is still there. When we fail to acknowledge race in discussions about gender equity, we continue to support white feminism, and therefore, white supremacy. We continue to be racist.

We can do better. I look forward to a day when issues of racism and sexism are acknowledged as undeniably intertwined. When the voices of women of color are heard and disseminated with the same enthusiasm and support as white women. When race isn’t seen as some disconnected, other issue.

I urge us all—as landscape architects, but also as friends, community members, and fellow human beings—to question narratives of gender equity that do not address race. We can do better.

education, and mortality: race. Women of color

“In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist,

suffer the combined marginalizations of racism and

we must be anti-racist.”

- Angela Davis

alicia kellogg, MLA Candidate, 2021

hot takes 7

S

eattle continues to be inundated by looming cranes and sidewalk-swallowing construction sites at what feels like a quickening pace. How much of this new design employs a peoplefirst paradigm, which has aided the development of some of the most livable, healthy and public realm-oriented cities in the world?

Specifically, I’m thinking of the massive housing development adjacent to the northwest corner of Cal Anderson Park in Capitol Hill.

This construction site surrounding the Capitol Hill light rail station marks the footprint of five new mixed-use buildings with many housing units (approximately 38% affordable), commercial spaces and a community center, all adorned with green roofs, as well as a Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Plaza that lies narrowly between the seven-ish story buildings.

The TOD plaza was designed to be the new home of a year-round farmer’s market in Capitol Hill and is supposed to accommodate gatherings of various sizes for different programming, including open-air movie nights. I wonder, however, how well these intended programs fit within the cultural context of Capitol Hill. In what ways does this shiny new plaza respond to increasing homelessness? How will it affect skateboarding trans youth who struggle to find spaces that don’t criminalize or harm them? Will it perform well in a 100-year rainfall event? Does this plaza do more to gentrify the neighborhood than to curb displacement? What is our role as landscape architects to negotiate the accelerated neighborhood change often associated with

Transit Oriented Development? I feel this plaza accomplishes a couple neighborhood goals, but certainly not as many as it could.

This people-first thing is tricky.

It is a philosophy that is counter to traditional American urban design, in which we decide where buildings go and the leftover spaces between those buildings are designated as public space. A people first approach, however, is contextual. It does not necessarily value landscape over buildings.

Capitol Hill is one of the densest residential areas in Washington, and Seattle, like many west coast cities, is experiencing a severe and worsening homelessness crisis.

Our urban development must address these needs and the rapid construction of housing units can be argued as the most people-first strategy in urban design.

What we need in contemporary urban design is multifunctionality.

Our new development strategies must accomplish as many goals as possible. Our buildings should blend with our landscapes and our landscapes should blend with our ecologies. When we create habitat for humans we should be creating habitat for plants, birds, insects and water. Our designs must address the most vulnerable communities intentionally and they must not detract from public space, which, in this paradigm should truly accommodate all users and their uses. People must come first in the process of urban design. Without strong public life design, communities, neighborhoods, and cities will suffer and our most vulnerable urban communities will most immediately feel those impacts.

JAKe minden, MLA Candidate, 2021 8 eXTENTS

W

e need to rethink how we design for children in cities. In increasingly urban environments, how do we create authentic connections between children and nature? As landscape architects, we are constantly adapting the way we design the built environment to respond to evolving challenges. Yet, when faced with complex legal barriers associated with exposing children to dynamic nature experiences in urban spaces, we end up settling. We add a few “natural” logs into a park and call it “nature play.” Though well intentioned, our capacity to provide opportunities for children to connect to nature isn’t enough to bridge a widening disconnect.

Our relationships with nature can be explored through a spectrum of domestic to wild experiences. In their 2013 book, The Rediscovery of the Wild eco-psychologists Peter H. Kahn and Patricia H. Hasbach explain these two ideas, which can be translated into design. They suggest: Many people who currently advocate for the importance of nature in human lives focus on what’s close at hand: domestic, nearby, everyday nature ... the other part is wild nature. Wildness often involves that which is big, untamed, unmanaged, not encompassed, and self-organizing, and unencumbered and unmediated by technological artifice.

Not all nature experiences are of equal value for children. When we experience ‘wild nature,’ it is easier to gain perspective and see ourselves as a part of something bigger. When we experience wild, we feel awe in its most pure form.

Wild experiences allow relationship-building with nature in ways that can engender empathy and stewardship. By providing a wilder urban environment, we push what is possible for children interacting with nature in cities. Considering this spectrum of domestic and wild experiences in design will empower landscape architects to provide experiences that may lead to deeper connections and understanding for young users in their designs.

I recognize that “wild urban” feels somewhat like an oxymoron. To counter this limiting wild/domestic narrative, we need to start asking questions. Is organized play the best way for children to foster a connection? Does balancing on a log or playing in sand allow children to understand their place in our world? How would a child’s relationship with nature change if everyday urban spaces provided them with safe opportunities to be immersed in an urban wild?

When we approach the design of children’s spaces by thinking more like children, by asking big questions and allowing our imaginations to be unrestrained from legal concerns, we can create spaces that connect children to nature in meaningful and lasting ways.

SARAH BARTOSH, MLA Candidate, 2019

hot takes 9

IN THIS CHAPTER WE EXPLORE EDGES, BOUNDARIES, AND BORDERS. WE RECOGNIZE EDGES THAT ARE IMPENETRABLE ON PAPER ARE POROUS IN SPACE. AND WE SEE EDGES FOR WHAT THEY ARE, INHERENT, SIGNIFICANT AND IMAGINED. WE EXPLORE EDGES WITH THE HELP OF OUR NEWEST FACULTY MEMBER, CATHERINE DE ALMEIDA, THROUGH HER PIECE, ON BETWEENNESS. WE ENGAGE THE LIMITS OF OUR PROFESSION AND ASSESS EDGES OF THE VOIDS THAT WE RELATE TO, PARTICIPATE IN, BENEFIT FROM, ARE OPPRESSED BY, OR WORK TO CHANGE. THROUGH OUR STUDIO WORK, WE EXPLORE THE PRICKLY EDGE CONDITIONS AND THE BOUNDARIES OF DESIGN EDUCATION.

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edgelessness 11

ON BETWEEN BETWEEN THINGS Voids imply emptiness. They are the white space in a figureground drawing, the space between these words and the margins on this page. The passing of a loved one can leave a void in your everyday life. Social voids include the pay gap between male and female professionals performing the same duties, or the lack of diverse voices in leadership roles. In built environments, voids are necessary. They are the rich, occupiable, horizontal and vertical spaces with views to the sky, the gaps between and within objects. Voids provide relief but are far from empty.

Every time I fly out of New York City, I look forward to the moment we soar over Manhattan. Individual buildings framed by interstitial negative space create a textural vocabulary of urbanity. This negative space is necessary in the occupation and reading of a city’s “wave of verticals.” 1 Central Park is a void in this text, interrupting the vertical patterns of objects with horizontal relief—a pause in New York’s modulated, fast-paced cacophonic development that is constantly in flux. The stark contrast between topographies created by elevated rooftops and open space conditions at ground level reveals and frames the park as the focal point to this visual “texturology.”

2 As a void, Central Park is interconnected with the interstices between building structures. These thick grounds are where operational procedures occur, generating relationships between people and place by determining the conditions of social life.

Voids are memories and residues of something that once was. The careful 1 de Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 91.

2 Ibid.

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Central Park in New York City.

(Anthony Quintano, Creative Commons.)

NESS Catherine de Almeida

Section of Alaskan Way Viaduct in downtown Seattle during removal.

Nolli Map of Rome, 1748.

dismantling of the Alaskan Way Viaduct in downtown Seattle is revealing a void in the urban fabric—a linear imprint of mobility that once traversed the city. Buildings constructed to the edge of this structure have now been interrupted by space. Perpendicular view corridors framed by the city’s urban fabric reemerge in the absence of this physical barrier, providing visual access to Elliott Bay that has been inaccessible for half a century. This newly uncovered and re-framed void is now occupiable public space with opportunities for greater access and connection to the bay.

This unveiling represents the next phase in the lifecycle of urban waterfronts as they are reconceived as social spaces.

Voids stitch our world together.

They may be seen as the absence of material things, or as negative space but are much more complex than the white to the black. As spaces between things, voids exist as the variations of two opposing extremes, the invisible qualities that sometimes go unnoticed. Nolli’s figure-ground plan of Rome from the mid-1700s was particularly focused on the public social spaces that stitch the city’s fabric together.

Not only are exterior spaces framed by buildings, but these continuous thick and thin spaces also weave in and out of structures, revealing an interconnected network of public space.

Filled with promise and awaiting reinterpretation, voids are exciting, abundant spaces ripe with opportunity that require our attention. They are diverse conditions that require lenses able to see beneath the surface and read information that may not be readily apparent. When we create things, spaces and places for one purpose, we miss an opportunity to untap the full potential of something. Single-stream, linear thinking leads to an over-emphasis of one aspect of built environments, the thing itself, rather than the relationship between things, people, spaces, landscapes, processes and time. Whether physical or conceptual, the space in between is where my work resides. I seek to not only understand how and why these gaps are created, but also how we can purposefully engage with, activate and reimagine them.

On between-ness 13

BETWEEN SURFACES My fascination with voids and their potential began during my undergraduate education in architecture. We were given housing as a program and my starting point for the project was to study, document and diagram an adaptable surface. I selected the pin-based impression board for its ability to abstract and translate a three-dimensional object onto a surface. It is a rigid yet flexible system that can project various objects and activities. A field of evenly distributed pins slide perpendicular to a central surface, translating an activity on one end into the same activity represented as an undulating surface of points—a rudimentary point cloud.

The activity reads as negative space on one side OUTSIDE of the surface and positive space on the other.

It exercises principles of Gestalt theory—even though there are gaps in visual information, the mind recognizes, reconstructs and completes the figure.

This study evolved into an exploration of how a wall can be inhabitable. I interpreted the central surface of the pin board as having a thickness that enables the translation of activities between spaces. This inspired my investigation of how the wall can be reframed from a monofunctional boundary to a multifunctional space. By designing across multiple scales—from the individual programmatic elements to housing units to the overall structure—I explored the details and overall potentials of adding a variety of programs associated with rest, light, and storage to an underutilized, marginal architectural space. The inhabitable wall changes according to users’ needs at any given time of the day, creating an everchanging façade with infinite possibilities.

This initial exploration has informed my work as I’ve continued to develop ideas about multifunctionality in landscape.

Detailed model photograph of inhabitable wall.

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Diagram of pin-based impression toy.

INSIDE

ACTIVITY/OBJECT

IMAGE

SUPPORT SYSTEM

BETWEEN STRUCTURES I have always been fascinated by optical illusions, particularly the idea that something can simultaneously be multiple things.

Shigeo Fukuda exploits optical perceptions such as figures and objects and figure-ground reversals in his shadow sculptures.3 He creates sculptures with found detritus from everyday life such as bottles, glasses, openers, scissors, forks, knives and spoons. In this work, the shadow reveals something that the object cannot—a recognizable form. Light passes through the voids of these structures, projecting shadows, or the absence of light.

While Fukuda explores the physical substance of shadows, Rachel Whiteread documents voids as spaces with physical substance.4 Her castings of stairs, library bookshelves and interior spaces flip our reading of voids as a spacepositive representation. In casting the spaces between structures, she refocuses our attention to the invisible voids created by structural boundaries. The cast is simultaneously an object, an imprint and a representation of the space between physical structures.

Shigeo Fukuda’s shadow art. Left, “Bonjour, Mademoiselle,” 1982 Right, “One Cannot Cut the Sea,” 1988. (Masters of Deception, pp. 101; 104.)

Rachel Whiteread.

“Untitled (Stairs),” 2001. (Tate Images.)

Voids also exist between social, economic and professional structures.

Structural voids represent aspects of our world that are suppressed or leftover from social and economic processes driven by singular identities and outcomes. Patriarchal and colonial structures have dictated the formulation and organization of western societies, which in turn influences the makeup and governance of our professions. It exists in how we design with implicit and explicit biases, ultimately creating segregated spaces, landscapes and cities. As designers of built environments, we often unknowingly participate in the creation and maintenance of these structures in professional 3 Seckel, A. (2007). Masters of Deception: Escher, Dali, & the Artists of Optical Illusion. New York: Sterling Press. pp. 95-113.

4 Kraus, R., Mari, B., Morgan, S., & Tarantino, M. (1996). Rachel Whiteread: Shedding Life. New York: Thames and Hudson.

On between-ness 15

practice, academic environments and the social spaces we design. The challenge is taking responsibility to develop intentional practices that counter hegemonic structures. The pay gap between male and female employees performing the same tasks and the low percentage of prospective and licensed landscape architects from underrepresented groups are indicative of structural challenges. Our discipline suffers from a lack of diverse voices, and without multiple points of view, the voids within our professional structures grow.

Design is political. Our current political climate is forcing us to see, be mindful of, and confront racial and cultural divides.

Although these conditions have always been present, they are particularly palpable today. The resurgence of these latent political conditions has generated a sense of urgency to combat and counter harmful dialogues and actions. We can choose to ignore it, acknowledge it, participate in it or take on leadership roles to change it. These voids have always been present but are becoming increasingly visible.

BETWEEN PROCESSES Structures of gender inequality, racism and discrimination correlate with cultural processes that generate waste. Singlestream thinking and lack of foresight in material lifecycles and design processes create physical (waste) and spatial (waste landscapes) voids that represent gaps in our recovery systems.

Waste landscapes left over from cultural, economic, and design processes consist of, but are not limited to, vacant lots, brownfield sites, landfills and mines.

Disciplinary spin-offs in the sciences and engineering that approach reuse as a circular economy, such as Cradle to Cradle and Lifecycle Assessment, aspire to a system that infinitely reuses materials, but fail to acknowledge the lands on which these processes occur and rely.

My landscape lifecycles work builds upon and seeks to engage with this gap in waste reuse studies and philosophies.

Waste compounds waste. Disciplines of built environments actively participate in processes of material production that ultimately lead to the creation of spatial voids as both landscapes of extraction and landscapes of accumulation. As Jane Hutton writes, “Material specification

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for the design of new landscapes inadvertently and invisibly transforms other landscapes,” and materials used in the design fields are “physical fragments of remote quarries, factories and forests, [whose] production is responsible for landscape transformation elsewhere.” 5 Singularly focused on the project and site at hand, our profession leaves an ethical void in engaging with and reimagining the sacrificial landscapes that exist between consumptive and disposal processes, imprinted with technological processes of material manipulation. Although the amount of material this would require is unfathomable, what would a Rachel Whiteread cast of an open pit mine reveal about the spatial voids we are creating and the quantity of mined materials that have been dispersed?

An Tai Bao Coal Mine in China’s Shanxi province, largest open pit coal mine in the world.

Dieter Offenhuber describes waste as material information that is lost due to the opaque systems that make these conditions invisible.6 Waste generating and management processes are illegible and making them visible is a critical component in reconsidering these processes. As the profession has developed to tackle these landscapes, approaches have become outcome -driven to create traditional parks. In this sense, all diverse waste conditions result in a singular outcome. However, these landscapes warrant diverse and nuanced approaches that provide frameworks for decentralized outcomes. As individualized threads that begin and end, material and landscape processes possess the potential to be interwoven in key moments, allowing us to shift from mono- to multi-functional systems. In recalibrating these processes, waste may become a resourceful void.

BETWEEN MONO- AND MULTIFUNCTIONALITY The absence of foresight and holistic thinking omits opportunities for multifunctionality, which leads to a loss in the potential for adaptable, flexible and resilient designs. As an activating void, waste has the capacity to close perceptual, operative, and programmatic gaps. The Leslie Street Spit in Toronto, Canada is now one of the top bird sanctuaries in the world, but it grew out of, and remains, an active construction debris landfill. Waste in this case is the impetus for merging programs together that would normally not exist in the same space. Waste often elicits undesirable emotional responses, but here people have begun to see opportunity.

Multifunctionality and hybridity can not only shift how we think about programming space, but also in how we approach our representation of landscape. Landscapes are multilayered 5 Hutton, J. (2013). “Reciprocal Landscapes: Material Portraits in New York City and Elsewhere,” Journal of Landscape Architecture, 8:1, p. 40.

6 Offenhuber, D. (2017). Waste is Information. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

On between-ness 17

with physical, political, operational, ephemeral and experiential qualities. Landscape architecture is inherently a hybrid practice that straddles the gap between science and art by understanding the physicality of landscape and its ephemeral and spatial encounters. Therefore, challenging students to make temporal processes of landscapes more visible—from marginalized lands to infrastructural systems to ephemera like temperature, light and humidity—is a critical component to my pedagogy.

How we represent and communicate the complexities of landscape phenomena is an ever-growing gap in the profession, largely fueled by the exponential pace of technological change that is beginning to outpace our ability to master the tools. It is therefore critical that we begin with the basics—drawing media and paper. Developing the necessary skills and thinking to effectively communicate and represent information and intent through hand drawing and modeling ultimately influences the ways in which digital media may be leveraged, no matter how quickly they might evolve.

I have had the pleasure of co-teaching the Design Foundations Studio and Landscape Representation I with Senior Lecturer Julie Parrett this Autumn. Our studio projects are multilayered in which processes of landscape inquiry are stacked on top of one another—both conceptually and through drawing.

Students begin with the documentation of physical attributes of a landscape, such as material qualities and dimensions of terrain. Layers of speculation are then applied. These layers represent projections of future change, wetness and dryness, or movement, and pace. While the products are the outcome of a continual, multilayered process of documentation, the drawings themselves are multifunctional, hybrid conditions that seek to uncover and correlate the physical with the ephemeral.

Documenting qualities we cannot see is incredibly challenging, but doing so dramatically influences our understanding and conception of landscapes as messy, blurry and hybrid conditions. These projects seek to equip students with the tools and frameworks for how one might dive deeply into exploring, documenting and designing with the complexities of landscape.

The socio-economic, cultural and physical structures that make up our world define our processes of consumption and design, the products of which include landscapes, spaces and materials.

The quality of the void matters. Voids differ across time and space, between physical and cultural structures, and within professional disciplines. Some voids are temporary imprints of sites in transition, while others provide contrasting relief to dense urban fabrics. There will always be gaps in our understanding of the world. Through curiosity and discovery we can drive the fulfillment of these voids and embed further meaning into their open possibilities.

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AUTHOR BIO Catherine De Almeida is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington. Trained as a landscape architect and building architect, her research and teaching investigate the materiality and performance of waste landscapes through exploratory methods in design research and practice. Her work, landscape lifecycles, has been supported by numerous grants and recognized in national and international publications and media outlets.

On between-ness 19

WEAVING THE WEB:

A Green Corridor on 15th Ave East PETER SAMUELS

East Thomas Street spaces invite neighborhood residents and visitors across age groups, day and night.

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As the 15th Avenue East neighborhood of Seattle develops, there are opportunities to build a green corridor across the neighborhood and into the rest of Capitol Hill for more engaged communities, cleaner water and better connected habitats. There is also a need and desire in the neighborhood for more public spaces focused on play and community gardening. At this lightly trafficked block where East Thomas Street meets 15th

Avenue East, the streetscape becomes a place for residents and visitors alike to connect over these activities while animating hydrological and biological processes, making visible urban ecologies that usually go unseen. For example, stormwater from on-site and adjacent roofs becomes part of play, then is cleaned via biofiltration and UV treatment, and is used for irrigation during drought periods.

Studio 21

Legend:

5. cistern P-patch, community café and play 1. community garden 6. pergola weave together at East Thomas Street 2. bioinfiltration garden 7. community cafe 3. nature play

8. garden supply store

4. pollinator garden

9. ceramics studio

Legend 1. community garden 2. bioinfiltration garden 3. nature play 4. pollinator garden

Malden Ave E

SITE PLAN

5. cistern

1

6. pergola 7. community cafe 8. garden supply store 9. ceramics studio

E Thomas St

B

2 A

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10’ 20’

40’

Volunteer Park

15th & E Republican

Broadway Hill Park

15th & E Harrison

Miller Park

15th & E Thomas

stay / eat

garden

play

proposed sites

play

garden

stay / eat

existing sites

15th & E Denny Way

Williams Place Park

A green network begins in and extends from 15th Avenue, and includes functions that complement and build on those of existing public open spaces in the neighborhood. Stormwater comes to life through play on trampolines and in runnels, through illumination while being pumped from the cistern and in the non-human habitat it supports.

Seven Hills Park

Cal Anderson Park

sections

SECTION AA’

AA’:

playground biofiltration garden

runnel 20’

7

8

5

9 4

3

6

B’ A’

15th Ave E

10’

trampoline + play mounds

Studio 23

RE-IMAGINING FAILURE:

from feeder bluff to tidal marsh SARAH BARTOSH + SOPHIE KRAUSE Discovery Park has been marked by two key failures concerning the human management of its wastewater treatment facility and its landscape: a disastrous combined sewer overflow event and a significantly eroding bluff line. Considering the erosion, what happens when we question what we define as failure? When we re-examine erosion as a geologic and shoreline necessity, can bluffs really fail? Could harnessing the materiality of these on-site feeder bluffs be incorporated into

Map of the topographical features of the West Point Wastewater Treatment Plant, Discovery Park, and Fort Lawton

24 eXTENTS

a naturalized shoreline intervention along the adjacent and aging wastewater treatment plant? This project speculates the ability to harness the “failing� Discovery Park bluff erosion as a sediment source for reshaping the shoreline and restoring the historical tidepool along the nearby West Point Wastewater Treatment Plant that has been severely impacted by colonization and development.

studio 25

Construction and growth of the ecosystem of the softened shore edge at macro and micro scales

The relationship between human intervention and failure over time at the West Point Wastewater Treatment Plant

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studio 27

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benzo [a]p yre ne

PCBs | ino rga c | zin nic

opper | c

carcino gen ic PA H

|

nic se

s

lead ) | aP (B

zinc

water temperature can exceed 74oF in summer: a lethal temperature for salmon. tides fluctuate daily, on average 10ft difference.

alluvium

0000 Poverty Hill is a glacial remnant, older than Mount Rainier.

Native American legend of the North Wind Weir speaks to the formation of Beaver Hill [Poverty Hill], adjacent to the Duwamish River.

1882 Prime farmland within the valley area, gardens and a tightly knit social community start to define this neighborhood.

PROBABLE PLAUSIBLE POSSIBLE Resilience, Pluralism, & the Futures of Allentown RICH DESANTO + ASYA SNEJNEVSKI + LAUREN WONG 28 eXTENTS

1902 Duwamish Interurban Station was built, connecting the neighborhood to Seattle.

vashon glacial till

1908 Most of the Duwamish people who had previously called the valley home were transplanted to a reservation near Auburn.

Imagine 50 years from now, what has changed?

Imagine 100 years from now, what has been adapted?

Imagine 500 years from now, what has persevered?

Imagine sea levels have risen 50 feet...

Imagine air quality has become so bad that everyone must use an inhaler when they step outside...

Imagine a neighborhood bands together and successfully petitions to have their community center moved to the top of a seismically sound hill...

bedrock

- 500 ft : private airspace

| fl uo ra nt

yrene | p

tru ck ex

c chemical compo un toxi ds |

car and

t| us ha

s soot nt | pai ay pr

ne he

l

+ 500 ft : navigable airspace

an air quality monitoring station at duwamish park includes a pm2.5 reading, tracking the number of particles per cubic meter of air that can penetrate the lungs and enter the bloodstream.

contaminants from vehicles are washed off roads and roadsides when it rains. a large amount of this pollution is carried directly to water bodies through groundwater and runoff which deposits trace contaminants as they move through the soil.

2000

1928

1967

Pacific Highway (Highway 99) and Boeing Field are constructed. Population reaches 652—most of whom are immigrants from Europe.

2006-10

With adjacency to a machine storage company, land owner Mr. White announced intentions to dynamite Poverty Hill for more heavy-industry parking.

I-5 is constructed; Allentown found itself surrounded by concrete roadways on all sides.

Duwamish Hill Preserve land was acquired.

Six years later, Duwamish Hill Preserve officially opened to the public.

A partnership formed between Forterra, City of Tukwila, and Friends of the Hill to preserve a 10.5 acre parcel slated for industrial development.

2001 The Duwamish River was also designated as a SuperFund site by the EPA.

k

Allentown is a neighborhood of Tukwila along the Duwamish River: a residential island obscured by a sea of highways and industrial infrastructure. Recognizing that place history is told and remembered differently depending on perspective, we applied this multiplicity in proposing speculative futures for Allentown. Through a generative process of imagining and storytelling, we challenged our own ideas of what is possible

and contemplated the overused, under-considered concept of resilience—something that, like place history, has a variety of interpretations and implications. From our own process of research and design, we imagined a multifaceted series of future-components and asked our reviewers to participate in cogenerating new futures for Allentown.

FINE ATMOSPHERIC PARTICULATE MATTER (PM2.5) HARVESTING SYSTEM

THRIVING COMMUNITY

CAR AND TRUCK EXHAUST TOXIC CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS SPRAY PAINT DROPLETS SOOT

ON�ISLAND FARMING AND FOOD PRODUCTION NEW ALLENTOWN: A SELF�SUSTAINABLE, OFF�THE�GRID COMMUNITY OF THE FUTURE

Call 1 800 D RIVER P

FILTER REQUIRES CHANGING WHEN 53% CAPACITY IS ATTAINED

NET�POSITIVE ENERGY LOOP

WATER RECYCLING, SURPLUS, AND SAVING

HARVESTING SYSTEMS TO BE DISTRIBUTED AT ALL DESIGNATED LOCATIONS NEAR MAJOR TRANSPORTATION REGARDLESS OF EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE ON SITE.

POVERTY HILL

WARM AIR

INVERSION LAYER

ALLENTOWN

PROJECTED SEA LEVEL RISE AT 5O F WARMING

COOL AIR MIXING DEPTH

DUWAMISH RIVER P�PATCH

WATER FILTRATION AND COOLING COLUMNS

studio 29

CLIMBING FOR AIR

WARM AIR

INVERSION LAYER

COOL AIR MIXING DEPTH

30 eXTENTS

Allentown residents are determined to find ways to stay in place despite increasingly poor air quality and state infringement via air mining infrastructure. Many residents decide to lift their houses on stilts in an attempt to transcend this pollution, recognizing that property rights arguably extend vertically into the airspace.

Conveniently, they also capitalize on coveted views.

EXPANSE After numerous rounds of grant writing, Allentown finally has enough money to cap I-5, containing the pollution and expanding the landscape. After securing the air rights from the state, a massive land bridge, which spans the entire eastern edge of the neighborhood, is constructed above the adjacent railyard and highway. As part of the agreement to turn over the air rights, the state insists on testing their PM2.5 air mining prototypes as part of the newly constructed tunnel. What was planned as a densely forested woodland habitat is quickly settled by the now connected neighborhoods of Allentown and Rainier View.

studio 31

32 eXTENTS

Once context and concept were explained, viewers were invited to become collaborators in thinking through potential futures for Allentown. Every new collage framed potential realities through their layering of conditions.

studio 33

EMERGENT RESPONSE-ABILITY CLAUDIA SACKETT HENNUM As designers in the era of climate change and mass extinction, we are called to confront an imminent future in which many endemic species will no longer be resilient in their native landscapes. The resulting void could accelerate habitat degradation and loss of ecosystem function associated with invasive species and barren landscapes. Rather than allowing for the extinction of plants that could thrive through future changes and making herculean efforts to nurse “native� plants that are no longer locally adaptive, I propose an approach to designing for biodiversity that acknowledges that we are in a time of regime shift rather than ecological crisis. We need to design for response-ability rather than resiliency, and we

34 eXTENTS

need to recognize our kinship with near-native species rather than restrict ecological design to specialities defined by the Holocene. This redesign of the Union Bay Natural Area (UBNA) on the UW campus utilizes a living seed bank to propagate both native Pacific Northwest plants and narrowly endemic species native to the California Floristic Province, which has been designated a global biodiversity hotspot.

Above: 500 years in the future, Seattleites enjoy a different UBNA, one where subsidence has shifted the topography and massive sea level rise has led to saltwater incursion.

UBC

Puget Sound/San Juan Islands

PACIFIC OCEAN

UBNA

High Rates of Endemic Species

Anisocarpus madioides Antennaria microphylla Cerastium arvense ssp. strictum Chimaphila menziesii Claytonia perfoliata Collomia heterophylla Corallorhiza mertensiana Daucus pusillus Eriophyllum lanatum Erythranthe guttata Galium aparine Linnaea borealis ssp. longiflora Lonicera ciliosa Lysichiton americanus Marah oreganus Physocarpus capitatus Ribes lacustre Rosa nutkana Salix lasiandra Sedum oreganum Stachys cooleyae

Eastern Washington Amsinckia lycopsoides Artemisia tridentata Balsamorhiza sagittata Calochortus lyallii Crepis barbigera Hydrophyllum capitatum Lithophragma glabrum Lithospermum ruderale Lomatium nudicaule Mertensia longiflora Pseudoroegneria spicata Purshia tridentata Pyrrocoma carthamoides

Northern Sierras Arabis rigidissima var. demota Arabis rigidissima var. simulans Astragalus austinae Astragalus whitneyi var. lenophyllus Berberis sonnei Elatine gracilis Eriogonum robustum Ivesia aperta var. canina Rorippa subumbellata Tonestus eximus Upper Sacramento River Basin Calystegia atriplicifolia ssp. buttensis Rupertia hallii Plagiobothrys glyptocarpus var. modestus Sidalcea stipularis

Coastal Northern California

California Floristic Province Global Biodiversity Hotspot

Arctostaphylos bakeri ssp. sublaevis Arctostaphylos densiflora Blennosperma bakeri Calochortus raichei Clarkia imbricata Cordylanthus tenuis ssp.capillaris Erigeron serpentinus Lilium pardalinum ssp. pitkinense Sidalcea oregana ssp. valida Streptanthus glandulosus ssp. hoffmanii Zone 1

Zone 2

Zone 3

Zone 4

Zone 5

Zone 6

Zone 7

Zone 8

Zone 9

N

Using data about rates of endemism and climate change predictions, suites of species are selected and brought to UBNA for propagation, demonstration and local distribution.

A network of public universities across the North American continent engage in similar programs, ushering climate threatened species into appropriate geographical zones.

studio 35

An expanded urban farm, nursery and food forest are accessible to the public. Along the ship canal, space for prairie, wetland and vernal pool ecosystems is prioritized.

ZONE 1~ FARM

C ID U O U S F OREST

ZO VE NE R N 5~ AL PO

15

00

OL

FE

ET

Z O N E 3~ D E

ZONE 4 ~ SHRUBS

ZONE 6 ~ HARDY PRAIRIE

R

RI A IP

AN

CO

I RR

DO

ZONE 7~ SEASONAL WETLAND

R

ZONE 8~ SENSITIVE PRAIRIE ZO NE 9 ~ WE TL AN D

ZONE 8~ SENSITIVE PRAIRIE

36 eXTENTS

ZONE 1~ NURSERY & CENTER FOR URBAN HORTICULTURE ZON E 2~ FOO D FO RI RES PA T RI AN CO RR ID OR

RIPARIAN CORRIDOR

ZO

NE

9~

W

ET

LA

ZONE 6 ~ HARDY PRAIRIE

ND

ZONE 8~ SENSITIVE PRAIRIE

Zone 1 (35’ - 37’) Nursery, Center for Urban Horticulture, Organic Farm Zone 2 (32’ - 35’) Permaculture food forest This illustrative section shows habitat zones created by regrading the UBNA site in a terrace-type system. Each zone is associated with a particular ecosystem typology.

As the terraces move away from the plant nursery, human access to the site is increasingly controlled or restricted to protect the sensitive wetland and prairie species targeted for assisted migration and preservation.

Zone 3 (29’ - 32’) Deciduous forest and vernal pools Zone 4 (26’ - 29’) Shrub border Zone 5 (25’ - 26’) Exposed vernal pools Zone 6 (22’ - 25’) Hardy prairie

N

Zone 7 (22’) Seasonal wetland Zone 8 (22’) Sensitive prairie Zone 9 (18’ - 22’) Wetland

studio 37

URBAN TIDAL KRISTA DOERSCH + ASYA SNEJNEVSKI Pier 48 has been a gap in the teeth of the waterfront since the last building was demolished in 2010. Structurally unsound and slowly taking a beating from Puget Sound, the pier is both types of void: completely empty and no longer valid. Urban Tidal aims to reconnect the water to the land. This site was important for aquatic life in thriving tide flats. It was also

significant as a fishing and settlement site for the Duwamish and other Indigenous Coast Salish people. Through various ways of getting close to the Puget Sound, this design will inspire Seattleites and visitors to explore the history of Pier 48 and Ballast Island, and reestablish the relationship between water and land.

upland intertidal

mean high high tide : +12ft mean low low tide : -1ft

subtidal max depth under pier : 55ft

Site context through various lenses

38 eXTENTS

STUDIO 39

From Ballast Island to the Puget Sound

40 eXTENTS

WATER ACCESS

net seats

plant mounds

fountain

terraced steps

WAVE SURFACE

swim steps

boathouse

viewing steps

REEF + SEAWALL

HISTORIC FRAME

PROPOSED DESIGN

N

E

STUDIO 41

Aggregating Reparations JULIA BRASCH + MATT GROSSER

Recalling the structure of the former mine, terracing begins in the upland portion of the site where stormwater is channeled through traditional phytoremediation practices into a central basin that collects the runoff. The water is released from this multipurpose floodable space into remedial tidepools where aggregating anemones process the heavy metal contaminants in situ.

42 eXTENTS

Arsenic and Aggregate Material Flow Diagram

As a design exploration motivated by the notion of “ecological reparations,� the proposed interventions are intended to fill the void created by the industrial legacy of Maury Island through environmental remediation and augmentation of existing natural processes and forms. Developed through ecological knowledge in combination with engineering strategies, this proposal aims to give the local ecology its own voice while simultaneously alluding to past anthropogenic impacts and catalyzing a remedial network between other sites within the lower Puget Sound that have been ravaged by a similar industrial history. The combination of the smelter that once sat across the sound and the gravel extraction processes that

took place on the island have resulted in elevated levels of heavy metals, primarily Arsenic, contained in the island’s topsoil. Though the sites of these former mines have been reclaimed by vegetation, remediation is still direly needed.

studio 43

The Remedial Tidepools are where the majority of remediation takes place.

Polluted runoff mixed with saltwater cascades through the terraced tidal ponds where aggregating anemones metabolize the arsenic, rendering it inert while also serving as a cornerstone species in this novel ecosystem.

The Floodable Space is where the contaminated stormwater runoff from the site is collected and supplemented with saltwater to create the briny solution that anemones crave. Due to the high degree of seasonality tied to rain events in the Puget Sound, this allows for the use of this structure as a usable public event space during the summer months. The space also lends itself to an even more intriguing use once remediated: a large hot spring where all can soak while enjoying views of the sound.

The Sediment Building Reef Structures (SBRS) seek to replicate the sedimentary actions of the feeder bluffs that once stood on the site of the gravel mine. This sediment is vital to the establishment of eelgrass habitat that shelters salmonids and feeder fish. The interior of the SBRS are accessible to visitors to the site, allowing them to become more intimately acquainted with both local reef and eelgrass habitats as well as the species that inhabit them.

44 eXTENTS

studio 45

Shadows cast from painted glass animate koi fish swimming up and down the North Alley. Lotus lanterns overhead and ripple rings below immerse passersby into a space that feels more like a serene pond than an urban alleyway.

REKINDLE NICK ZURLINI

46 eXTENTS

Alleys are the intentional voids within cities.

Designed for the convenience of delivery trucks and the residence of dumpsters, they are often inert and derelict, used only as a shortcut between blocks or as a place to conduct activities out of plain sight.

Maynard Alley in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District (CID) is no different. Yet with support from the community, it was time for Maynard Alley to be envisioned as a space that people wanted rather than avoided.

walkability and safety between businesses and

With a focus on lighting, REKINDLE embraces the daily operations within the alley and enhances the

so often define a Chinatown and explores what can

public spaces within the CID. Just as the alley must function during the day, it can become animated at night, adopting the ephemeral nature of light and time. By creating a dynamic juxtaposition between the two halves of Maynard Alley, the diverse individuals living in the CID will both find a part of the alley that they connect with and a part with which they may be unfamiliar. In this way, REKINDLE pushes both the traditional designs that be done in spaces forgotten by the city.

studio 47

The South Alley, between King and Weller Streets, transforms the walls and ground into the night sky. Astrological figures such as Chang’e, the goddess of the Moon, and Qinglong, the Azure Dragon, appear both in form (walls) and constellation (ground).

The South Alley becomes a welcoming space for the Chinatown International District (CID)’s night markets and frequent community events.

The North Alley, between Jackson and King Streets, creates a dramatic procession of shadows and lights. This space is intended to be used by local businesses, such as the Theater Off Jackson and the dance studio, Massive Monkees.

48 eXTENTS

Black light radiates from steel glow clouds, and UV murals reveal themselves on the buildings’ facades.

Adopting forms from Chinese astronomy, the South Alley illuminates history in a cyberpunk aesthetic.

studio 49

interlacing othello OLIVIA LOTT

50 eXTENTS

The Othello neighborhood in southeast Seattle is a vibrant community with rich immigrant and refugee histories. Othello Square is the community’s grassroots movement through which they are embracing change while maintaining diversity and opportunity within their unique neighborhood. Residents and community groups joined together to imagine empty parcels at the intersection of MLK Jr. Way and Othello Street as a community “opportunity center� and the resulting Othello Square is a mixture of neighborhood housing, educational facilities, and community services representing a wide range of stakeholders, cultures and demographics.

A variety of cultures and ethnicities are represented in the neighborhood businesses in the Othello neighborhood.

LEGEND red - restaurants pink - grocery stores orange - food trucks purple - public art institutions blue - community centers light green - music centers dark green - news outlets yellow - annual festival locations

STUDIO 51

How does one authentically represent multiple cultures and ethnic backgrounds within the public built environment? One way to do so is through color. The final color scheme for the design reflects traditional textile color patterns from Somali, Vietnamese, Mexican, Duwamish, Japanese and Middle Eastern cultures. The patterning explores weaving as a means of physically and symbolically linking cultures together.

TINY TOTS

ODESSA BROWN CHILDREN’S CLINIC

SPICE RVLA

public sidewalk

PRIMARY CROSSING

52 eXTENTS

1

2

3

N

MULTI-CULTURAL COALITION (MCC)

Textiles from cultures represented in the Othello neighborhood inspire the color palette for design elements.

STUDIO 53

COMMUNITY COOKHOUSE NINA MROSS

The BLOCK Project is an innovative program created by architects Jenn and her father Rex. Built on the idea that inequality and mistrust are exacerbated by physical and emotional separation, the BLOCK Project introduces an integrated, communitydriven solution for homelessness.

Jenn and Rex’s vision is to build a BLOCK Home in the backyard of one single-family lot on every residentially zoned block within the City of Seattle.

54 eXTENTS

The sustainable, dignified homes are 125 square feet, off-grid and efficient. They are built by volunteers with donated materials and expertise, panelized and then constructed on site over about two weeks.

In this model, everyone has skills or resources they can contribute.

So, what are our skills we can contribute? How can we give back?

studio 55

TABLE CART

KITCHEN CART

What the BLOCK Project needs is a mobile, pop-up set that can be used for volunteer parties, outreach and events. The site can be almost anywhere in Seattle—a backyard, a right-of-way, a parking spot—so it should move easily by people power. It will have a gathering table, a shelter, a cook and prep space, and interactive outreach and storytelling elements.

To meet this need, we created COOKOUT. COOKOUT is a simple, lightweight, mobile kitchen set that creates connections across boundaries by supporting the BLOCK Project’s events and mission. COOKOUT is easy, clever and fun to use, and raises awareness about the BLOCK Project through messaging and interaction. It creates and strengthens community ties through cooking, eating and gathering together in dispersed locations.

56 eXTENTS

studio 57

HOW DO WE SEE WHAT IS UNSEEABLE? HOW DO WE DETECT, ANALYZE, INTERVENE OR REPRESENT SITES AND STORIES THAT ARE BURIED, OMITTED OR ERASED? IN THIS CHAPTER WE DELVE INTO THE THICK SECTIONS, A REFRAMING OF THE SITE ANALYSIS PROCESS THAT UNEARTHS MATERIAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY AND GOES BEYOND A SURFICIAL UNDERSTANDING OF PLACE. OUR EXPLORATION CONTINUES THROUGH INDEPENDENT ART WORK BY STUDENTS AS THEY ASK BIG QUESTIONS AND SEEK CLARITY AND VISIBILITY THROUGH DIFFERENT FORMS OF REPRESENTATION.

58 eXTENTS

Invisible sites 59

thick sections THÄISA WAY + STUDENT CONTRIBUTORS

University of Washington Professor of Landscape Architecture ThaÏsa Way, on thick sections: “The shapes of knowledge are always ineluctably local, indivisible from their instruments and their encasements.”

-Clifford Geertz1 The tabula rasa is the site on which previous traces are erased. In the “thick section” we seek to re-identify and locate these traces, to bring the full site to the foreground. A thick section seeks to lift the top layer of a site to read what is below and between and among. This approach requires tackling the complex relationships of a place, or as anthropologist Clifford Geertz notes, moving away from “thin descriptions,” and replacing them with “thick descriptions” that engage a “multiplicity of complex conceptual stories, many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, inexplicit.” 2 A thick section does more than record the topographic and cross-sectional data of a site or landscape as in a landscape architect’s typical section rendering. It goes beyond fact and surface to present the layers of history embedded and tangled within a site, suggesting a thick web of forces and consequence. Thick sections present the surface as merely that which is at the top of a rich history of morphologies, natural and human. This section draws on thickness to develop a visual study of a place, comprised of that which can be seen and that which cannot; that which is in harmony and that which is in conflict. It is not easy to draw any more than thick descriptions are easy to write—but we suggest that through the act of simultaneously drawing and writing we can describe a place’s thick history in a more dynamic, authentic, and generative practice.

The student projects exhibited here suggest the breadth and depth of exploration of thickness through drawing in section, and thus drawing as a way of thinking about site, history, and place. This concept has been explored in seminars and studies taught by Ken Yocom, Julie Parrett, and myself at the University of Washington over the past decade.

ThaÏsa Way is an urban landscape historian and Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington. She currently serves as Program Director of Landscape and Garden Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.

1 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures; Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 4.

2 “Description: Toward and Interpretive Theory of Culture” The Interpretation of Cultures; Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 10.

60 EXTENTS

JEN KRIEGEL + NICCOLĂ’ PIACENTINI This drawing is a depiction of the past, present and future of Pier 48 on the Seattle waterfront. Thousands of years ago, this site was buried under miles of glacier.

Over millennia, sediment accumulated from the Duwamish River to create extensive mudflats. As European settlers arrived, they deposited sediment from mills and ballast from ships coming from around the world. Each period contributed to layers of physical artifacts that came together to form Ballast Island, a site that became significant to the Indigenous Coast Salish people in their struggle against colonization. For our studio, we envisioned Pier 48 becoming a nursery targeted at growing flora and fauna to be used for estuarine restoration across the Pacific Northwest in order to reverse centuries of resource exploitation and create a future of environmental restoration.

THICK SECTIONS 61

62 EXTENTS

JOCINE VELASCO This thick section showcases the ancestral lands, and an important watershed in the Philippines, of the T’boli tribeswomen who weave designs from their dreams and visions. The T’boli tribe is one of many Lumad tribes, federally recognized Indigenous peoples of the Philippine archipelago. They were once fully embedded in and dependent on their surroundings to practice their Indigenous lifeways. However, the Philippine government, multi-national corporations, the People’s Army, and militant Islamic groups have waged wars on Lumad lands that have caused mass expulsion and murders of Lumad tribespeople.

THICK SECTIONS 63

RACHEL YAHN This section serves as a timeline, tracing a history of resource extraction by foreign actors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) starting in the nineteenth century with colonialism and continuing today through neocolonialism, paradoxically rendering one of the most resource-rich countries to be one of the poorest in the world. Following the DRC’s independence, foreign companies have continued to profit from the exploitation of the country’s resources, from palm oil to mineral mining; more than 60% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the DRC. Cobalt is necessary for lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, present in everything from smartphones to laptops to electric cars and is increasing in demand for high-tech gadgets and green energy. However, despite the techno-optimism that fuels its demand, cobalt mining in the DRC is done by hand and is linked to human rights abuses, child labor, debt bondage, conflict, pollution and devastating health problems.

64 EXTENTS

“How do histories of exploitation, extraction, and disease shape built environments and their ecologies in the urbanizing Amazon?”

REBECCA BACHMAN Set in Iquitos, Peru, this map collage explores relationships between the historic rubber boom, introduction of productive species to feed enslaved Indigenous people cheaply, “vector-borne” diseases, and current tourism and forest management industries and the ways that they shape a thick section line cut through the city and its environs.

THICK SECTIONS 65

RAPHAEL MONTOYA Utilizing the Rio Grande as the section cut, this thick section focuses on the relationship between Pueblo Indians and Hispanos in Northern New Mexico. The two communities live along either side of the Rio Grande Valley. Although the two cultures have lived adjacent to one another for over three centuries, their relationship to the land and the river has at times been contentious. Within the last century, external colonization of the river has encroached upon the cultural dependence on the river. Despite these challenges, inhabitants hold on to their values and fight for the water that has shaped and intertwined their traditions, identities, and fates.

el

aqua

es

66 EXTENTS

la

vida

THICK SECTIONS 67

JAMIE MERRIMAN-COHEN The Noble Sanctuary/Dome of the Rock/Temple Mount in Jerusalem is a sacred space for the world’s three Abrahamic faiths. It is considered to be the locus of many of the most significant and holiest events for the Islamic, Christian and Jewish religions, including the creation of Adam, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, the Jewish Temple, Jesus’ crucifixion and Mohammed’s night journey.

The Thick Section displays fractured images of these religious events interspersed with images of the current political context, displayed in an atemporal mosaic pattern to represent the layers of history, ideology, story, emotion, joy, pain, fear, rage and exultation that people experience in relationship to this contested landscape.

68 EXTENTS

ZOE KASPERZYK The fragment of Ravenna Creek is a jarring reminder of the complex water system that existed before Seattle’s urban grid. It is easy to forget that what now flows in buried pipe, was once a dynamic system of rivers, creeks and springs that connected and nourished the region. This thick section contrasts the rigidity of the urban grid with the wild meandering flows of water and encourages the viewer to consider the impacts of those contradictory mechanisms. Our fragmented, buried and angular water infrastructure preserves the colonized landscape and continues to choke wild rivers. Greater awareness of both natural and cultural history is an important part of our fight to end the erasure of water.

THICK SECTIONS 69

Islands + Paths

We create these islands socially, culturally or otherwise and we find passage through our islands to connect with others. These islands are molded in voids to fill them, to allow a path, some space needs to be moved.

Each block has a different texture and should be arranged and rearranged to form a through passage. Sometimes you get a clear path through; sometimes there’s a dead end.

Kasia Cassidy 70 eXTENTS

plaster, earth

art 71

72 eXTENTS

Space / Figure Jen Kriegel This work began with the question “how can we represent space as figure?” It became an exploration of our perception of positive and negative space. We call the figure positive space as if it were more important, but it is the negative space, the emptiness, the void, that we actually occupy and utilize. As humans we obsess over surfaces: how things look and feel. We forget that it

is only through emptiness that we are able to look at and feel the things that catch our eye. This is the void we all live in, the void we need to survive, and the void that, as designers, we hope to successfully shape. Yet this void can only ever be perceived as the space between objects.

For this series of photographic collages, I took the surfaces of each space—the sky, the grass, the road, the mountains—transposed them, desaturated them, and inverted them, all to attempt to demonstrate the importance of surface qualities to our comprehension of space. I found that the landscape became less comprehensible, but the human at its center did not. As the surfaces became less expected and more confusing, the human figure becomes clearer, illustrating how we are always recognizable to each other, even if you strip away the surfaces and enter the void.

photographic collage

art 73

visualizing sea level rise Asya Snejnevski

EROSION

INUNDATION

Sea level rise is encroaching on this land at a devastatingly fast rate. Though erosion can create fascinating designs, it is happening fast. What can we do to prepare? Can we/ should we fortify our coastlines?

The ĹŒtÄ karo Avon River in Christchurch is lined with weeping willows. Willows love to have their feet a bit wet but will not be able to handle the influx of saltwater inundation that will creep further up the river. As time goes on, the trees will die.

74 eXTENTS

What is empty can be filled. These pieces focus on how sea level rise is affecting or will affect different coastal areas around New Zealand. Instead of using maps and charts, this research, done as a part of an independent study, was interpreted and visualized through a series of art pieces. As the ocean’s water level increases, it will fill any nook and cranny, any gap, any low point, any void

that can be found, taking more of what is now land and making it water. These drawings are made to question what will happen, what can be done, and where the future lies. The void is the space that water will fill, but also the unknown, what lies ahead for these coastal areas, and how it will affect the rest of the land.

MIGRATION

OPPORTUNITIES

Over 60% of New Zealand residents live in areas that are already prone to flooding. Without any protective measures, water will cover the streets. Will this area have to be abandoned? What will happen when living here is no longer sustainable? Where will people go?

Though sea level rise will cause a multitude of problems for humans, we are not the only ones who need to be considered. The influx of saltwater may be beneficial to other species by creating new habitat. Are there benefits to the natural world because of sea level rise?

watercolor, colored pencil, pastel, pen

art 75

Listening to

Othello Village

of contro l tiny s e d y m

da

dt ob ea liv e

Sarah Wallace 76 eXTENTS

The Spring 2019 Design + Justice Studio was a partnership between University of Washington students and various community groups within the Othello neighborhood. This project was formed based on an interview conducted with the Othello Village Tiny Home Community. We asked community members what made them feel happy, sad and secure, and what would make their lives better.

Each poster is a visual collection of their responses. Through this project, I wanted to create a voice and visual tool for the community members to use that could help them to create a collective identity for themselves.

digital collage

ng losi ty i san

fr

be

ing

ien

ho

me

ds

le

e

arguing

WHAT MAKES US FEEL SAD?

WHAT MAKES US FEEL SECURE?

Art 77

WE EXIST IN SPECTRUMS. WE LIVE ALONG AXES OF IDENTITY, INFORMATION AND SPACE. NATURALLY SO DOES OUR WORK. EXPOSING AND DISRUPTING BINARIES IS IMPORTANT IN REVEALING THE POWER IN DESIGN. ITERATION, REPETITION, INNOVATION AND SCALAR THINKING HELP US TO THINK BEYOND BINARIES. EDITOR JOCINE VELASCO, IN CONVERSATION WITH SARA JACOBS, DISCUSSES WHAT HAPPENS IN THE ABSENCE OF SPATIAL POLITICS, AS A DEPARTURE FROM THE PROFESSION’S TRADITIONAL ROOTS. WE ALSO SEE THE FINAL PROJECTS OF FOUR 3RD YEAR STUDENTS IN THEIR CAPSTONE WORK.

78 eXTENTS

Breaking binaries 79

in the absence of spatial politics AN INTERVIEW WITH SARA JACOBS BY JOCINE VELASCO Sara Jacobs is a designer and researcher trained in landscape architecture, history and geography. Her work investigates historic social and political circulations of nature, science and power to recenter landscape architecture as an inclusive project of contemporary social and political transformation. She emphasizes the need for landscape architecture to be an intellectual practice and grounds her work in feminist concepts of relationality and science and technology studies.

Jocine: Our theme for this issue is the void, which brings to mind material extraction as a literal manifestation of this theme. You taught a 2018 fall studio on extracted sites. Can you tell the EXTENTS readers about it? Where was it, and why did you choose these sites specifically? What specific methodologies or theoretical framework were you asking students to utilize in order to land on the sites? What did void look like within the context of this studio?

Sara: [The studio] was focused on extractive sites only partially. I was less interested in how we could redesign extractive sites as post-industrial landscapes but rather how sites of extraction operate as broader socio-ecological networks or assemblages constructed through relations that occur beyond the borders of what we might traditionally understand as an extractive site. The studio became a way of thinking about what the landscape could become beyond the boundaries of a site itself. For example, how do the conditions of ruin and ruination create possibilities for unearthing new types of spaces and new understandings of what a designed landscape could be? I am interested in how we might think about new—not necessarily in that they haven’t existed before—but newly seen or newly understood forms of urban life in the broadest sense possible. We’re at a point where we hear so much about extinction and we understand the loss of biodiversity, these horrific, dark, alarming places we’re going to go. Yet I think that there are so many ways that we can understand life as different from just “humans” and “nature”

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and “city.” If we actually break down those distinct sites and see them across that expanded idea of landscape, it might engender new understandings of what life means. That’s what I was interested in exploring through the extracted sites.

Jocine: What was the studio called?

Sara:

It

was

Decolonizing

called

Nature

Becoming for

Lively

Landscape: Futures.

My

teaching and research draws from science and technology

studies

and

geography.

Thinking

about a “decolonized nature” means rethinking what counts as natural, from a non-normative or counter-hegemonic mode of thinking. We understand something is “natural” because we have been taught there is a binary of what counts as natural or unnatural. And the “lively futures” part also comes out of political ecology as well as science and technology studies: if we don’t have a colonized binary of nature, human and non-human, then how can we think about life itself differently?

How can we think about not just what counts as natural but how human life counts differently? How can this thinking help us understand how and why particular human bodies have counted differently throughout history, and how does that form more inclusive understandings of human life as well as non-human life?

Relationality is central to the work I do. This actually gets at the question of void in that sites coalesce and crystallize through and come into being through relations that occur beyond the physical bounds of a space. Relationality is not just that

there is an exchange. It’s not just you take and

it makes [the scope] a little wider.

you give; it’s never equal. Space comes into being

Sara: Yes, it’s been useful for me as a starting place

through uneven and disproportionate structures of power. But within that, there’s this immense void, actually, or space of unknown about the effects and affects of various power structures.

Feminist science scholars writing about relationality always have this idea of an “openness to surprise.”

An essential part of being open to surprise is accepting what might come about and then taking responsibility for those possibilities. This is actually very much a design question, right? We’re imagining things that don’t yet exist: surprises and possibilities.

These environmental frameworks have allowed me to think about social justice issues differently. If we think about environmental justice—ultimately who and what counts as human or natural—that same thinking can extend to social questions, as well.

in that way. Then, of course, recognizing how that manifests in very uneven and unequal ways. But it is a starting place.

Jocine: Students who may not have that framework or are operating more on a phenomenological sense, what they know comes from their academic experience. How do you get them to formulate their own sense of relational thinking?

Sara: In terms of practices and assignments, I’m a big believer that to see differently is to think differently. And to think differently is to then act differently. So if we put relational structures into a visual form, that’s the first step to making it actually [real]. And in that way, it is not too different from phenomenological practices, which are also concerned with understanding the world as it exists through experience. In both views, experiences

Jocine: That framework then becomes more

become real as soon as they’re put out into the

universal. The idea of what is human and what is

world. And that’s an incredibly powerful tool that

nature is obviously racialized and we can’t separate

designers have: this ability to make new worlds and

that history, but the fact that you can start from

experiences possible through drawing. Even if they

[environmental justice or environmental thinking],

only exist in that drawing and you see them and

Buried waste and geological layers shift and morph to create multiple and contested landscapes within one site on indigenous land in Western Utah.

in the absence of spatial politics 81

maybe other people see them, they’re still real.

I also use a lot of mapping in my studios. I have students investigate socio-ecological entanglements, and I have them map those both through traditional, normative GIS and through counter-cartography. What is missing? What do you know to be true that is not found in GIS? What were you not able to map? Again, I don’t think this approach is that different from a phenomenological approach; both ask students to feel, sense, identify how it feels to be in the world. A relational approach also asks, “how are your experiences and subjectivities shaped through broader socio-ecological structures?”

Jocine: Can you speak about your current research, if and how it relates to this issue’s theme?

Jocine: I feel like academia and critical theory, more specifically, offer a lot of analysis without offering much in the realm of actual possibilities.

Sara: Yeah, and I continue to come back to design for that very reason. I don’t want to just critique.

I have always wanted to do research in a way that suggests a new possibility. But at the same time, there’s still relatively little historical scholarship within landscape architecture. I think we’ve had very troubling moments in history that haven’t been addressed. We have to deal with that to address questions today.

“Space comes into being through uneven and disproportionate structures of power.”

Sara: I’m interested in how historic scholarship and visual representation can be a method and then a medium for exploring underrepresented stories of landscape. That means I look at socio-ecological or nature-society relations in historical contexts and try to unravel how past examples have shaped contemporary understandings of what counts as urban nature.

Overall, I am interested in how environmental knowledge is produced and then deployed within landscape architecture. One of the case studies looks at the ways that environmental knowledge in the early 20th century was leveraged for landscape practice and the ways racial difference was erased and in that process produced racial segregation. I focus on practices of standardization in landscape architecture, the ways we have leaned on the ability to quantify and produce statistics about the environment, or cities, and what that does in terms of creating racialized landscapes.

Understanding how environmental knowledge was used historically to categorize people and land still matters because we continue to depend on certain ideas about how land is produced through property. But climate change is shifting everything that we understand about land and landscape.

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The ways we’ve understood and controlled land historically no longer [apply]. If land is moving, then the notion of static property doesn’t make sense anymore. And you could argue that historically it also didn’t make sense but I think in this moment, we can actually see it happening.

Jocine: Let’s talk about the role of research in landscape design. Can you tell us about your professional work with SCAPE, a firm known for their deep dives into place contextualization, or OPSYS Landscape? What are the benefits of emphasizing a research-based landscape practice?

Sara: Research is fundamental to how I approach landscape architecture, and I guess I’d start by saying I think of landscape architecture as a philosophical and ideas-driven discipline as much as it is a profession. Although we largely train and educate for a professional outcome, I think our impact can be much broader if we can frame ourselves as an intellectual discipline first and foremost. That comes out of research. Research allows us to ask questions, to push what the margins are and keep pushing out, really keep pushing into that void. To just be a service-oriented profession doesn’t allow you to ask research questions. So the field can’t be critical without research.

SCAPE is obviously known for its research work, and I think more so even than research, what SCAPE does is it pursues and goes after projects

that it is intellectually interested in. Sometimes that means pursuing projects that don’t pay very well or projects without a client to advance your own design and research interests. It also means doing projects that pay well and using those to fund the other types of projects. SCAPE focuses on publishing and promoting a certain type of project, but it also does a whole body of work with a different pay structure.

The projects that I worked on at SCAPE always started with a long research phase. I was talking with someone recently about how firms write projects, and SCAPE always writes into its contracts large concept design phases, which is fairly unique.

Jocine: The other phases didn’t suffer having less time than the concept phase of the projects?

land in the US, it’s actually been shrinking that land as militarization becomes more digitized and the [military] footprint expands abroad. These are spatial landscape questions.

Jocine: What are some of the benefits of emphasizing your research-based landscape practice?

Sara: The benefits to me are that research allows for a way to ask questions. I hope that as we continue to ask hard research questions in academia, graduates help shift the field professionally.

I come to landscape architecture as a way of understanding, viewing, and being in the world. I think that’s the only way that the profession and discipline is going to be relevant. I’m not convinced that professional landscape architecture as a service-oriented, monetized career path can be

Sara: No, because we spent that time really understanding the place and really understanding the history. And for me, it was those research and concept design periods that made me want to pursue research full-time. In one case, I spent weeks looking into the history of the upper Mississippi River, doing archival work with industrial urban development and its links with hydrology and geology.

socially and politically relevant. There are cases

OPSYS is a research practice. I worked on projects around military landscapes. The Department of Defense (DOD) controls around 28 million acres in the continental US, which is less than the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management, but it’s still a significant percentage of the country.

As DOD controls such a large amount of physical

studies have influenced landscape architecture

Tracing radioactive waste and effects between three transboundary disposal sites in Western Utah.

where it proves wrong or incorrect.

Jocine:

Academically

speaking,

landscape

architecture is going through a cultural shift.

Landscape

architecture

programs

including

UW seem to pose progressive and sometimes radical questions coming from underrepresented voices within the field. Feminist, Indigenous, environmental, Black, queer, and other social courses in ways that have made the conversation dynamic and nuanced. This impacts students especially in informing their personal ideologies, but I want to know, have these contributions shifted landscape architects’ thinking once they leave school?

in the absence of spatial politics 83

The Vashon Gravel Pit on Maury Island, Washington. The topsoil at the pit was contaminated with arsenic and lead from the Asarco smelter from 1890-1985. (Sara Jacobs)

ways that we draw things, the ways that we map things. Mapping has a huge history in terms of the ways it’s been used as a project of domination and colonialism. It doesn’t just have to do with digital technology, there is a void with analog drawing and mapping [too]. I think there’s a responsibility that we have in it, and there is power in the kinds of decisions that we make with digital, but really any, technology.

At the same time, there is a huge potential in digital technology in terms of accessibility or availability.

So going back to examples of mapping, the topdown God’s eye view of traditional mapping has this history coming out of Western Europe that’s very closely tied to colonial expansion, but there’s also so many counter-mapping projects where it’s really been used as a tool of community resistance. And so the ability of anyone to pull out a smartphone and make a map and share it is an incredible power that digital technology provides.

Jocine: Do you see landscape architects and future Sara: I think that it is shifting. It’s shifting really fast.

Conversations that are happening professionally around understandings of equity and the role landscape architecture has played in engendering social inequity and its complicity in, if not explicitly producing, social inequity, those conversations feels like they’ve only happened in the past few years.

landscape architects responding to the call to

Jocine: Technology is a crucial tool in landscape architecture—from mapping to rendering 3D models. We can’t deny its power and yet, I have found, there’s been a void in terms of a deeper and more critical lens in how we use it in landscape architecture. Or is there a void?

of violence. Violence against particular places

Sara: I absolutely think there’s a void, but I would say it’s more around how we use representation generally. We can’t use digital tools passively in the same way we can’t use any sort of representational tool passively. There are histories connected to the

84 eXTENTS

address climate change in their research and design with immediacy? If so, how?

Sara: Yes, and I think that landscape architects can’t do a project now that doesn’t address climate change in some way. But also climate change is a socio-ecological process that is really an act and people and environments. It ties back to the technology question, too. I think that landscape architecture has to be more political. Climate change is a political question. It’s political in that it’s connected to structures of power and it affects different places and people differently.

When I went through school it was at the tail end of when people were talking about sustainability, but it was sort of like, “Should landscape architects be dealing with sustainability? Should it be sustainable?”

Our main tools that we design and build with [are] inherently sustainable. Climate change is the same: some projects are going to be more explicit in how they address climate change. Anything that we’re doing out in the physical world, in the biophysical environment, is going to address climate change.

But the more interesting question is, “If so, how?”

For that one, it always comes back to this reframing of landscape architecture as a political and intellectual discipline. That’s the only way we are going to have social relevance. I don’t even know if it’s a question of taking greater leadership, or if it’s just being engaged in the political process.

Places, “Design and the Green New Deal”? If so, what are your thoughts on his assumption that our profession has not adequately placed itself into a leadership role in addressing climate change?

Sara: I think I agree with 99% of it, and I do agree with him that landscape architects have been largely

apolitical

and

largely

service-oriented

and make grandiose claims around climate change and environmental change. I do think that physical design has an important role to play in that. Where I disagree is that he discredits the role of representation and visual production—I think he has a line where

Jocine: Doing it collectively.

he says we don’t need any

Sara: Yes, and I don’t think that’s necessarily in a leadership role. I think it’s more in forming collaborations. Going back to the GIS question, what designers are so good at is taking disparate ways of understanding and linking them to real, physical places.

The more that we can do that—engage different types of folks, types of organizations, scales and types of projects—that is where I see more of an impact happening than a single project trying to have a zillion bioswales.

“I have always wanted to do research in a way that suggests a new possibility.”

more

“silly

renderings.”

I

think we actually need to really how

critically we

reimagine

understand

our

world. Drawing and visual representation are that first step that allows us to see something in a new way. We need to develop more radical ways

of

understanding

property in relation to land.

Visual

representation

is

a huge part of that, and we can look at different examples of Indigenous art or Afrofuturism or these other worldmakings that have started to imagine what that would be.

[Climate change is] going to take a collective effort to figure out. Maybe the trickier part is how do we take a collective effort that still acknowledges that not everyone is responsible for climate change in the same way. I’ve been reading A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None by Kathryn Yusoff, a political ecologist and geologist. She argues that if you are an Indigenous person, if you are a Black person, if you are a colonized person, you have already gone through [Anthropocenes]. There’s five percent of the remaining population of Indigenous folks in North America. Climate change has already happened in a different way. How are we framing questions of climate change? Who and what has already been affected by climate change? What are the possibilities, and who is surviving already?

It is a project of radical liberation and abolition. That

Jocine: Right, who can we learn from. Have you read the recent article by Billy Fleming in the publication

ourselves a disservice when we don’t talk about

is not a small ask, but that’s what I’m interested in.

If we educate people to be landscape architects who are thinking about design as both a project of creation but also as a project of undesigning and remaking, then I think the profession will shift.

I feel frustrated when I hear landscape architecture discussed as a profession of privilege or as not relevant to a wide population. We are talking about the land itself, and that is not a question of privilege.

It is the most important thing that allows us to think about collective liberation.

Jocine: It’s also where violence is meted out and where you can address that violence.

Sara: Exactly. It matters who controls land. We do land.

in the absence of spatial politics 85

emotional infrastructure: through time, place and disruption, fostering a culture of care in post-earthquake Christchurch, New Zealand

LAURA DURGERIAN invisibility

As climate change fuels the unsettling forces of disturbance and displacement, designers and planners face the urgent task of re-imagining our approaches to city (re)making. With better understanding of people’s attachments to place, we can identify, value and foster the emotional infrastructure that will support increasingly diverse communities through upheaval and change. This project defines emotional infrastructure as the social and spatial aspects of place that support emotional processing, sense of belonging and a collective capacity for care. Emotional infrastructure is a critical component of resilience because it helps combat invisibility, vulnerability and uncertainty in the context of place change. It fills a void in design processes by centering place attachments and meanings, and including multiple place narratives to foster belonging and stability through disruption.

This case study of recovery and resilience in postearthquake Christchurch, New Zealand demonstrates the critical role of emotional infrastructure and informs design and planning for disturbance more broadly.

Numbers following quotes correspond to enumerated identifiers for interviewed participants.

The 2010 (7.1M) and 2011 (6.3M) earthquakes changed the city of Christchurch dramatically: nearly 200 people were killed, reference points were lost, and longstanding attachments to place and community were abruptly interrupted. This research examines how

86 eXTENTS

We are limited by what we can easily see and map. How can we shift our design methods, frameworks and processes to everyday environments supported healing, grounding, account for the invisible?

and emotional re-settling for residents of Christchurch, New Zealand, following the earthquakes. It proposes a conceptual framework for emotional infrastructure that is grounded in 16 in-depth qualitative interviews that yielded four key themes: stability, reference, understanding and agency, each emerging from residents’ descriptions of their post-earthquake experiences. Together, these four themes assist in the location of self in time and place when disturbance has ruptured attachments and prompted a loss of footing. With application beyond the context of the Christchurch earthquakes, this framework offers insight into processes of “unsettlement” and “re-settlement,” and associated emotional needs more broadly.

Recognizing that the earthquakes disrupted what could be considered a damaging normal, this research highlights disturbance as a potential opportunity for a re-evaluation of values and priorities, a re-assertion of Indigenous identity, an infusion of creativity and intentionality in city-making, and a sense of shared purpose. Ultimately, this thesis advocates for a process of emotional infrastructuring that centers on fostering cultures of care, offering insight into the role of design and planning in reconciling the past, welcoming the future, and reframing disturbance as an opportunity for adaptation to a dynamic new normal.

infrastructure and informs design and planning for disturbance more broadly.

vulnerability

uncertainty

Oppressive systems determine who gets a voice in the city. How do we embrace a multiplicity of narratives through time & place to make all feel seen & at home?

Increasing disturbance threatens losses to physical infrastructure, more climate refugees, and more stress on collective resources. How do we find opportunity in adapting to a dynamic new normal?

N

“What we were left with was basically the grid pattern... And in a way, the features of the natural environment, like the Avon River. They were actually the constants, I think.” (#13) Residential Red Zone

Otakaro/Avon River

Botanic Gardens

Hagley Park

CBD Cordon

“That's where resilience happens—at that neighborhood level I reckon. You know, there's nobody else.” (#4) capstone 87

Each participant received a gift: three personalized cards displaying images of a canoe that I handmade with my father.

Explaining my Tūrangawaewae (“place to stand”) and whakapapa (genealogy) to Indigenous participants, these cards were a personal way to show gratitude for each participant’s gift of time, sharing of personal narratives and expenditure of emotional energy.

88 eXTENTS

ons

g for Design

ipants ve, city. One mmarized: ccelerated the city.” nous power

“It’s never been just one city.

I mean, that’s a statement about power...

That’s Christchurch but it’s also Ōtautahi.

But at this stage, we only see the dominant city.

There’s another name for it.

We’ve actually got to drill in a bit.

See the different cities within.” (#13)

at occurred

kes. As an “normal” escribed h” and uakes rovided an what the obvious

ssary normal, ur own

rmal— City’s

Participants were adult residents of Christchurch or surrounding suburbs, recruited via social networks. Initial connections were made within academic and design communities and sampling prioritized those who displayed interest, openness and trust. Recognizing the further colonization of Indigenous peoples through research and the importance of inclusion and representation, Indigenous Māori voices were sought out, while

re-thinking how research could be conducted as a two-way exchange. As an enormous disruption to the “normal” Christchurch—what was described as “conservative,” “English” and “institutional”—the earthquakes prompted a re-think and provided an opportunity to re-imagine what the city could be.

This begs the obvious question: Is an earthquake necessary to disrupt a damaging normal, or can we co-create our own positive disruptions?

capstone 89

Manaakitanga

Kaitiakitanga

ecognized for their ability to organize and check-in on people door to door, Indigenous respondents expressed that this was not hquake, but a “way of life.” Manaakitanga [hospitality] and kaitiakitanga [stewardship] are central to Tikanga Māori, or the Māori s.

Themes in post-earthquake experience included: a loss of footing, the immediate importance of one’s role as a temporary breakdown of societal barriers, anddisturbance, the task of welcoming functioncaretaker, of emotional Designing for living and evolving s helpingshared to locate culturesimpacts transcends behaviors. Rippling were physical also described: thenew immigrants and refugees is place—nurturing design of sites, encompassing equally complex and critical. Defining survival of green infrastructure amidst built ruins, increased nging, care, empathy, actions, policies, processes emotional infrastructure thus involves connection to the Port through opened sightlines,both the social and spatial aspects of while reinforcing and andHills ways of life.newly Reconciliation rse identities. entails not only changing lack ofTherefore, access as a disconnecting force and theour ultimate lossplace that are supportive, as well as lan for resilience built environments to reflect those aspects that disempower, erase, of pre-earthquake connections.

ssing present inequity, Indigenous identities, histories or marginalize, to inform how cities A central emotional infrastructure is helping tocan reconcile oppressive histories, es, and the lasting function of and ways of life, but also altering nialism that determine associated processes to empower locate self in time and place—nurturing feelings of belonging,embrace diversity in the present, and

ferent groups to find

Indigenous people to shape their

invest in co-creating a future city

care, empathy and inclusion, while reinforcing and validating own futures. Similarly, in the that celebrates diversity in the face of Therefore, to design andfrequent plan for resilienceuncertainty. wake of increasingly requires addressing present inequity, power structures and the lasting impacts of colonialism that determine the ability of different groups to find stability, reference, understanding and agency in their environments. Designing for living and evolving cultures transcends physical design of sites, encompassing actions, policies, processes and ways of life. While Māori were recognized for their ability to organize and check-in on people door to door, Indigenous respondents expressed that this was not specific to the earthquake, but a “way of life.”

Manaakitanga [hospitality] and kaitiakitanga [stewardship] are central to Tikanga Māori, or the Māori way of doing things.

nce, understanding diverse identities. their environments.

Expressions of love, loss, solidarity and resolve as Christchurch mourns the March 15, 2019 terror attacks.

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Data Analys

All inte

Highlighting a history of oral tradition, and content a ti qualitative findings were communicated through This analysis video, using participants’ voices (with of critical the permission). While the written thesis experience a communicates to designers and emotional inf planners, the video is collaborative, concept and summary we accessible and reflective of the diverse before inform and authentic processes that this others to invi Scan QR code to watch the emotional infrastructure videoencourages. on research or clarificatio YouTube to hear firsthand from the voices of Christchurch

history of ora

communicate participants’ as well as a w

“This tragedy is rocking Christchurch to its very core in a way very different to the earthquakes. Not a natural disaster but a human inflicted one that was created out of an absence of empathy, compassion and inclusivity but can only be resolved through a reinclusion of those very same qualities. Both recoveries—earthquake and terrorism are now on similar trajectories... as you and I both know, they are connected because ultimately they are both about the same qualities needed.” (#13)

Left: Personalize

capstone 91

soilcraft STEVIE KOEPP

Everyday activities feed or starve soil systems supporting more-than-human cities. Machines, humans, and microscopic critters are the unwitting collaborative makers of urban soil, termed “technosols� by the World Reference Base for Soils (2014). If technosols are the post-industrial outcome of the built environment, soilcraft investigates what kinds of soils could be constructed intentionally

by reimagining waste. Five vacant, toxic cleanup sites within the urbanized Duwamish River provide ground for fiction. Each was selected for its distinctive soil qualities and storied industrial pasts. From there, the project becomes a handson process in shifting narratives of decline towards transformation.

Qualifiers for technosols that could be used to describe soils in the urbanized Duwamish landscape, within 5 contaminated post-industrial sites: yard, mine, substation, plant, and shop.

92 eXTENTS

“Technology is not neutral. We’re inside of what we make, and it’s inside of us. We’re living in a world of connections – and it matters which ones get made and unmade.”

Donna Haraway, 1997

capstone 93

How could urban soils be constructed and what should they be named? At the scale of the soil microbiology, who are the builders and what are the apparatuses of production?

The outcome of this inquiry is five speculative horizons feeding a carbon-cycle dependent, multispecies Duwamish. Drawings, maquettes, and a near-future Operations and Manual for the Cultivation of Damaged Soils build a necessary fiction around imaginary soil types. The manual begins to construct a grunge-brown world rich with fecundity and intermingling life at its margins.

Synthesizing tetraforms concretize from algae and biopolymeric membranes to aggregate symterric soils. Cloth specularia breathe with the rhizosphere to regulate atmospheric carbon in pneuplaggic soils.

Meanwhile, earthbots—deployable units for the additive manufacturing of fertile substrates—roam, artfully distributing biosolids.

Biodiversity, technology and waste are increasingly critical topics in design. Telling stories through design artifacts, soilcraft opens up the wasteland narrative to invite an audience of educators, artists, and professionals to reconsider the possibilities of soil in the era of mass extinction. Design is employed as a medium to compel care through prototypes for mutually beneficial ways of life on earth.

Soil core from the Georgetown steam plant site, showing an ekranic, or sealed technosol. (Right) Transect through 5 sites proposing the production of bio-technic soil horizons to support a diversity of microscopic urban life. (Far right)

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capstone 95

operations + maintenance

HOW TO USE THIS MANUAL This is an operations manual providing guidance towards the productive and beneficial function of soil-human assemblages. Motivated by the transformation of waste by soil, an urban insurgency

for the cultivation of damaged soils

has coalesced to reclaim and revive exploited soils.

To subvert the oppression, sterility and exclusivity of the capitalist city they' ve made alliances with the tiny awkward unseen urbanites-microbial synthesizers, fixers, mutualists, decomposers, and grazers.

Literature and stories about soilcraft -- the skilled science, art, and practice of cultivation-- continue to grow, and the slogan "build soil not towers" has initiated a multi-species collaboration in the construction of urban topsoil. Diverse and creative practices in agriculture combined and soil science have informed a practice of soil building, a much faster process than biogeophysical weathering. New technologies and devices evolving from traditional implements catalyze the process, incubating critical lifeforms and facilitating the guardianship of expendable material, space, and bodies. Utilize this manual to cultivate damaged soils from wastescape in the reproduction of novel urban soil types.

QUALIFIER:

HOW TO BUILD VERMANTHRAQUIC SOILS

VERMANTHRAQUIC verm- worm, anthro- human a surface horizon modified by rainwater and worm-to-human communication networks RELATED QUALIFIERS: anthraquicQUALIFIER: (anthrosols), reductic (reducing fluid or gaseous conditions)

BIOPRETIC

INPUTS: urban rainwater (particulate carbon, sewage, debris), Trichloroethylene (TCE) + other volatile organic compounds

bio- life, pret- rich

DEFINITION:TCE DARK EARTH OF BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCED WASTE

fibers (varied)

conductive graphene

NEMAKNITS: particulates

RELATED QUALIFIERS: pretic (anthrosols, dark, amazonian terra preta of manureQUALIFIER: and charcoal), ekranic (technosols, paved)

SYMTERRIC

INPUTS: urban biodegradables (discarded food, biological waste/excreta), Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons sym- greek) together, terr- earth (PAHs), petroleum products

Position NEMAKNITS to map nematode populations in response to rainwater infiltration and particulates.

Organic residuals will feed HOW TO BUILD the microworms while toxins BIOPRETIC SOILS indicated by nematode species will be targeted for phytovolatization thorugh nemaknitCollect and digest raw material in holding tanks, heat up and seeding and customization. polymerize with filler. Feed smart geotextiles retaining moisture and organic extruded material into an to track and nourish grazing nematode diversity EARTHBOT printing mechanism to distribute widely and artfully.

Asphalt and petrochemicals connect will be degraded by persisting mutualistic anaerobes. actuate

definition: symbiotically formed mineral layer from marsh

charcoal + asphalt

rainwater runoff

concrete

sludge

hydrocarbons

knit

RELATED QUALIFIERS: terric (anthrosols), tidalic, subaquatic (technosols) QUALIFIER:

EARTHBOT: additive manufacturing device for the deposition of anaerobically digested, nutrient-rich green waste + biosolids

PNEUPLAGGIC

INPUTS: urban sediments, dissolved carbonates, inert materials (sand, concrete, industrial wastes), and persistent organic pollutants like PCBs

10

extrude

11

pneu- air, plaggen - fibrous roots and humus plastics

Seed TETRAFORM in newly formed tidelands to encourage microbes. As filtering mechanisms respond to tidal turbidity, biofilms will grow to transform river sediments into silicaceous and calcacious materials, building shoreline, balancing wetland pH, and isolating PCBs.

code

DEFINITION: constructed through the bacterial transformation of air + cellulose RELATED QUALIFIERS: plaggic (anthrosols produced by the addition of grass and fiber to poor mineral soils), spolic (technosol, contaminated mine soils)

green waste

HOW TO BUILD SYMTERRIC SOILS

QUALIFIER:

TETRAFORM: biofilter collecting dissolved carbonates and inert sediments to feed algae + cyanobacterial synthesizers locate

MYCOHORTIC

8

inert residuals

PCBs

INPUTS: urban carbon dioxide (transportation, construction, land-use emissions), plant + bacterial based cellulose, heavy metals (ie. arsenic)

9

cast

myco- relating to fungi, hort- horticultural

def: resulting from the saprophytic transformation of household waste cultivate textiles

arsenic

RELATED QUALIFIERS: hortic (anthrosol, kitchen soils), urbic (technosols containing the rubble of human environments)

sediments

AGENT: 2FIXER

SPECULARIA: cloth structures harvesting urban emissions to support microbe-plant interactionsitewith bacteria fixers 3

INPUTS: discarded objects (packaging, post-consumer waste, furniture, building materials), carcinogen materials (ie. asbestos )

FRANKIA: BACTERIUM FROM THE ORDER ACTINOMYCETALES

Erect breathing, nested grow structures to regulate atmospheric exchanges and multiply pro-biotic bacteria in response to root zone temperatures; as inoculated canopies expire, they will aerate, mulch and fertilize sandy soils.

weave

PROBIOTIC SYMBIOTIC

HOW TO BUILD PNEUPLAGGIC SOILS

HOW TO BUILD MYCOHORTIC SOILS Fill and bail MUSHMESH forms with carbonaceous refuse and mycelium spawn to fuel mushroom growth; sort/stack/ fill modules and maneuver as saprophyte or human requires.

Toxins such as asbestos will be metabolized in the process.

grow wood

AGENT: SYNTHESIZER

MUSHMESH: structural modules containing carbon-rich waste to feed microbial decomposers

plants

erect

DIATOMS + CYANOBACTERIA SPECIES carbon dioxide

AGENT: DECOMPOSER 4

5

spawn

aspestos

SAPROTROPHIC FUNGI SPECIES

fill

car-

6

AGENT: GRAZER \

UBIQUITOUS FREE-LIVING NEMATODES

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AGENT:

MUTUALIST

EXTREMOPHILE ARCHAEA, IE METHANOGEN

carbon 7

capstone 97

cultivating urban nature: recontextualizing perceptions of nature in the everyday urban experience

JULIANA HOM Nature is often seen as something found outside the confines of urban settings. However, this view is dependent on how one perceives nature. Though it is commonly understood as the undisturbed natural world, can it also include the nearby, mundane nature that often exists as an unnoticed part of our environment? Using design as a catalyst for re-examining our perceptions of nature, we can more critically evaluate what nature exists unnoticed within the voids formed by the built environment. Though urban areas may seem to be devoid of “real” nature, it may actually be a matter of taking a closer look and recontextualizing what already exists.

This thesis explores how perceptions of nature can be cultivated in everyday urban experiences through design. By developing and utilizing the Nature Perception Design Framework based on Rachel and Stephen Kaplan’s Reasonable Person Model (RPM) and nature perception categories, I develop a diagrammatic master plan and more detailed site plan for an electrical utility right-ofway transecting nine blocks in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. The proposal highlights the different forms that urban nature can take in people’s perceptions. The designs developed for this site explore the design process through multiple scales and functions. They model how the framework is utilized and could be implemented

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beyond the confines of this case study.

The idea of “cracks” is used as a conceptual framework for the site design proposals because it addresses the idea of connecting spaces and draws attention to things that already exist. Cracks manifest themselves much like nature does in urban environments–they are an inevitable and natural process, a display of resilience in breaking through the urban fabric. They create physical connections and are a record of time and events.

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Plants and topographic changes in Block 7 provide a variety of sensory experiences. As people walk along the trails, they’ll pass through plant sections dedicated to the five sensory interactions we have with the environment.

Block 8 is dedicated to phytoremediation with plant choices reflecting their ability to remove certain contaminants from the soil.

studio 101

“Long ago, floods were described as Acts of God. Today, these are known quite often to be consequences of the acts of man.”

—Ian McHarg (1964)

Full installation of river channel migration map, colonial intervention timeline, speculative reality reels and flood magnitudes taped to their full scale along gallery walls and ceiling.

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flood, fix, repeat

JESSICA VETRANO

This project explores the connection between flooding and colonial intervention within the Skagit River Valley through both historical and speculative lenses, with the goal of uncovering whether humans have been successful in reducing the magnitude and frequency of the valley’s flood events, or if the permanent alterations of the Skagit River are resulting in the inverse effect.

While humans have been shaping the landscape of the Skagit Valley for centuries, this exploration focuses on the impact of colonial culture on natural systems.

Timeline of colonial intervention on the Skagit River, highlighting major infrastructural investments as well as relevant development proposals and events.

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Layering human activity, hydrologic data and representational techniques helped suggest how to portray the conditions of the Skagit River Valley.

With the flood magnitudes taped to their full scale across the gallery, those interacting with the display were able to directly compare their own stature with the heights of the valley’s major flood events.

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The speculative reality timeline was represented through a ViewMaster, which situated the storyline in the past and allowed static images to overlay in ways that highlighted sequential changes.

Eight intertwined eras of social and natural history are represented using three temporal methodologies.

The full-scale magnitude of each era’s highest flood is taped out along the y-axis, and together begin to highlight how the flood levels have evolved over the past 150 years. The x-axis contains an interactive and illustrative narrative of colonial activities that have affected the form of the Skagit River. These two axes are then grounded in the mapped historic migration of the Skagit River channel. These three representations together help illustrate a river system that is altered and defined by the two seemingly disconnected activities of flooding and human intervention.

Five reels explore the alterations in the valley due to the river’s realignment.

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The Skagit Valley exists because of the Skagit River. A long history of frequent floods depositing sediment and nutrients has resulted in the valley’s rich soil and prosperous agricultural industry. The answer is not to tame this powerful landscape, but to acknowledge its rightful place in the valley and amplify its potential to sustain natural and human environments alike.

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The Skagit River’s main channel has changed over the past 150 years, primarily in response to human interventions. This graphic illustrates the channel migration.

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THE FINAL CHAPTER CONSIDERS FABRICATION. WHAT ARE WE MADE OF? WHAT ARE THE BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS OF OUR ANATOMIES, OUR BUILDINGS, OR CITIES AND OUR SPACES? HOW DO WE CONSTRUCT STRUCTURES? NARRATIVES? ART? VOIDS? THIS CHAPTER EXPLORES THE MAKING OF THINGS THROUGH RESEARCH AND EXPERIENCE. AN EXPERIENTIAL PIECE ON DESIGN WORK IN CULTURALLY DISSIMILAR CONTEXTS EPHEMERAL VOIDS: LESSONS FROM STUDYING IN IQUITOS, PERU, INVESTIGATES THE DESIGN AND MAKING OF LANDSCAPE RESEARCH IN THE AMAZON. LAST WE FOLLOW GRADUATES OF OUR PROGRAM TO DETERMINE WHAT LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS ARE MADE OF IN OUR ALUMNI PROFILES.

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of concrete, of human, of water 109

ephemeral voids: lessons from studying in Iquitos, Peru

RHIANNON NEUVILLE

Low water season in the flooded forests along the banks of Iquitos

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Iquitos, surrounded by dense forests and waterways. (Google Maps)

Iquitos, Peru is an urban island.

It is a swath of developed land, paved by a colonial history, in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest. It is a brown scar in a sea of green. The city sits at the confluence of three rivers: the Itaya, Nanay, and Amazon, whose embrace grips the city from the east, west and north. Even when the rivers run low, they are still the only means of transportation into and out of the city. A domestic airport flies people in from Lima and Cusco, but there are no roads that connect Iquitos to any other urban area. The city is an island. Despite its spatial isolation, there are approximately half a million people living in the city who bring the streets to life. Street vendors sell everything from popcorn to watches. Mototaxies stop at every corner to offer you a ride. The elderly crowds plant themselves on their front stoops in their colorful plastic chairs to observe the frenzy of activity and chat with passers-by.

This urban area has gobbled up nearly all of the ecological vibrancy that once existed in that space. A meager 2.1 square meters per person of green space exists within the city, which is not enough to support a healthy human or non-human population. The Amazon Rainforest is the most biologically diverse ecosystem in the world, and the development of Iquitos has radiating impacts on the Amazon’s ability to thrive. My chance to work in this unique environment came along after learning about a non-profit working in Iquitos called Traction. Traction is a research-based design group, unique in the landscape architecture world because they work for multiple years with the same community developing landscape interventions based on quantitative and qualitative human and environmental health data.

I learned from the experience and experimentation of my mentors in Traction. Leann Andrews and

ephemeral voids 111

Coco Alacrรณn head the Clavarito roject in Iquitos, where they are researching the effects of the built environment on human and ecological health. For five years, they have been working with Clavarito, a floating informal settlement not recognized by the city of Iquitos. In that time they have run several community input events, gathered several rounds of health metric data and engaged with local professionals to learn all they can about the history of the community and the larger context of Iquitos in the Amazon. Through this learning they have also implemented several designbuild projects and studied the successes and failures of these insertions into the landscape. They work with the understandings that the first thing they design to address a need is not always going to succeed and that as needs change and evolve, so must what is designed to address the gaps in equality and safe spaces: the voids.

These layers of history and land use became a driving force behind my own research in Iquitos. The right-of-way spaces hold some of the few remaining reminders that this is a city in the rainforest. Many of the streets in Iquitos have a strip of land separating the sidewalk and the road.

These spaces were often a strip of concrete punctuated by a solitary island of grass and dirt. Other times, the green spaces would be

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strung together to create a welcome separation between the sidewalk and the noisy street. Working with two classmates, Rebecca Bachman and Hope Freije, we identified a potential to improve the quantity and quality of green space in Iquitos by elevating the ecological and social function of these strips. We collected information and public opinion related to the potential development of these spaces, including on urban pollinators, stormwater management improvements, economic uses and cultural significance. Collecting all the information was relatively easy compared to figuring out how all these interconnected layers should come together.

Being in the landscape and around the people in Iquitos challenged me to re-evaluate how I make design decisions. As a landscape architecture student, I have been taught to acknowledge my biases before diving into the design process.

However, the problem with simply knowing that biases exist is that it does not change how I design. I have learned from western development to first identify what is missing, what the place is lacking, the void; then look to precedents based on the conditions observed to try and understand what should fill the void. I observe and interpret conditions based on my own understanding of the world, but these biases have never been obvious close to home. Traveling to a place where the history, culture and ecology are completely different, I was forced to come face-to-face with my biases. I wanted to learn from the process used

by Traction to make sense of all the data we had collected because I admire the layers of research and connection they achieve in a place foreign to themselves. I thought it would be a way to shed my own biases of the unknown as a designer.

I visited the rainforest and found that the Amazon is the master of the spatial void. Every piece is purposeful and every void considered. When I had the opportunity to walk through the thick understory of the jungle, I began to understand just how much an urban lifestyle disrupts what is a well-oiled ecological system. For instance, termites are sophisticated creatures. They build giant

Left: Newly cleared and paved road in Iquitos.

Right and bottom: Wild vegetation takes over the less traveled side of the street in Iquitos.

ephemeral voids 113

Above: Looking up at the dense canopy of a secondary forest in the Peruvian Amazon.

Left: Walking through the Peruvian Amazon.

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Looking back at Iquitos from the river Itaya.

tumorous nests on the trunks of trees close to the water’s edge. These nests are built upward of 30 to 40 feet off the ground because the termites need to stay dry when the rainy season comes and the water levels rise. It was the dry season now, but the blackened waterline traced on the tree trunks was the evidence that we were traveling through an ephemeral void. During the rainy season, the water will rise again, at least 20 feet, to meet the blackened line it left on the tree trunks last year.

And the termites stay dry. I noticed the termite nest above me had two round holes the size of baseballs. It turns out woodpeckers enjoy snacking on the termites, and after their feast, they leave behind the voids at their points of entry; tarantulasized burrows. Tarantulas live in the holes in termite nests, temporarily filling the void when they need to rest, suggesting a symbiotic relationship with the termites. We continued to squeeze through the forest, slowly struggling to move through the dense air, thick with foliage and humidity and mosquitoes.

Our guide used a machete to clear a path for us

and I looked over my shoulder to see the temporary void we left in our wake.

Back in Iquitos, it doesn’t take long to forget that I was surrounded by lush jungle. Urban voids are less dynamic than those in the rainforest. They are more permanent than ephemeral. The hard pavement and the chaotic roar of the mototaxies dominate my thoughts as I walk down the street.

Moments of greenery interrupt the urban context and remind me of where I am. The natural world is a rich resource not only in terms of material and biodiversity, but also in terms of its beautifully synchronized systems. We can learn valuable practices from our mentors and the people who occupy a given space, but we also need to go back to the roots of what wants to occur naturally. The urbanity of Iquitos is lacking the seasonal and ephemeral cycles that keep the Amazon alive.

One solution to making sense of the complexity of human activity and needs in Iquitos is to bring a little wilderness back into the city.

ephemeral voids 115

alumni profiles

UW//LA alumni reflect on their academic and professional experiences

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Susie Philipsen MLA ‘08

Public Relations Specialist, City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods

As a student, I loved learning about the plants and creating illustrations, diagrams and boards! I earned my degree in 2008, a year when landscape and other design firms were shrinking and unable to take on new staff, let alone keep their current staff. So I found work on STAR Communities where I had a crash course in local government policy and group facilitation while we developed performance metrics to help cities and counties measure

their progress across all areas. My LA education helped me get that job and helped me embrace a role as a generalist working with committees of experts.

Since then I have worked at many different jobs but have never practiced landscape architecture. To be totally honest, I may have been hasty in choosing that path, even though I really enjoyed my three years at UW and learned immensely while there.

The work I do now at the City of Seattle relates to my education more than any job I have had in the past in that I do communications and coordination for public outreach around policy and infrastructure. The professors and curriculum at UW prepared me with language for design and planning, as well as an understanding of the complexity of creating people-centered spaces and systems. Whether I am talking about zoning or a website, my constant refrains are, “Does this work for the people who will use it and did you involve them in a meaningful way in the process of creating it?” When we can answer yes to both of those questions, the outcomes are usually far more successful. I have no idea what the future holds, but for now, this work is very satisfying.

alumni profiles 117

Jackson Blalock

tools such as qualitative data analysis or conceptual cognitive modelling.

However, I’m satisfied that my time at UW was spent well­­—hindsight is 20/20.

MLA ‘17

Environmental Outreach Washington Sea Grant

Specialist,

When I joined UW’s MLA program in 2015, I had been working with hands-on, community-driven designbuild projects for close to a decade.

Initially coming from an architecture background, I had quickly realized the limitations of professional practice with regard to connecting with marginalized communities’ priorities, and the need to work across systems-scale and humanscale issues to affect regenerative change.

So, I used the MLA program to identify models of practice that meaningfully engaged with multi-scalar processes of environmental, social and economic change. I created my own approaches to these issues through MLA studios combined with courses in Urban Design and Planning (UDP), the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (SAFS) and the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs (SMEA), and felt supported in this by MLA faculty. Looking back to my time in the MLA program, I would have benefitted from in-depth focus on collaborative strategies for landscape management and using social science

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As I work with Washington Sea Grant to develop collaborations around changing environments, I’m rarely in conversation with designers. I believe this is largely due to my focus on marine issues and the lack of funding for design projects in rural coastal communities.

However, I’m inspired when working with urban landscape architecture firms who engage with large-scale topics such as sea level rise adaptation. I hope this is a growing trend. I’ve been especially encouraged by folks outside of the field who recognize the value of designbased approaches—whether coastal planners at state agencies, cranberry growers spearheading nature-based erosion control efforts or shellfish farmers adapting to shifting sediment characteristics.

Their comments highlight the potential contributions designers can make far outside of their profession.

Jean Ni MLA ‘18

Designer, GGN

As a UW MLA student, I found myself focusing on design activism, conceptual art, storytelling and feminist theory.

These explorations formed exciting frameworks for idea generation and a development of ethical alignment in my work. One of the most important lessons I learned as a student is that access to knowledge and expanded consciousness is as available as the time you choose to allocate. I cannot over-emphasize the value of carving out time during an impossibly busy quarter to show up for what you believe in, engage with different perspectives, or write a proposal for something that elicits excitement. Making intentional efforts to feed curiosity and nourish connectivity in the midst of critique panic and spiraling feelings of imposter syndrome are critical to sustaining a whole and healthy self.

After working for over a year as a designer for a landscape architecture firm, a few key things continue to challenge me in a fast-paced and rigorous professional setting.

Concept: a vision rooted in understanding of place and people forms an authentic foundation for thinking through possible interventions (or enhancements) of a landscape. Do

not lose sight of the power of intentional narrative.

Visual communication: with a tendency to fall into the desire for emulating the lofty and layered graphics that I found inspiring during school, it is critical to recognize that the primary goal of creating visual documents is to communicate an idea—and in its best moment—in a clear and simple way.

Beauty matters, but so does clarity.

Iteration: be prolific and unafraid to produce massive amounts of schemes, forms, details. I often want things to work in an initial draft, and this mentality can often stifle the flow of creativity that comes from moving through a rapid succession of ideas, which can lead to something otherwise undiscovered.

Time: there is never, ever, enough of it.

This can lead to insurmountable levels of stress. It is often effective to mitigate this with shared delights like periodic walking breaks, laughter and snacks.

Challenges

that

I

consider

when

thinking about the future of landscape architecture are also those with which I grapple in thinking about the future of our world at large. Landscape architecture tremendously influences labor, material production and consumption. I believe that the public design realm (likely due to its deep entrenchment in a larger patriarchal, heteronormative and capitalist system) is not always set up to prioritize space for accountability, humility, open creativity and innovation, or patience.

How can we, through our business and organizational structures, reflect an ethic of respect for the people, creatures, and remnant ecosystems that we live with? How do we uplift or make visible the brilliance and value of those who are not adequately represented in positions of power? How can we dream and build alternative systems that support creative ecologies through placemaking? In the face of relentless change, I find value in crafting questions that seek to inform an everevolving practice.

alumni profiles 119

making the cover

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Making the Cover 121