EXTENTS 2018

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

EXTE N TS

ISSUE II 2018 EDITORS Rebecca Bachman Nina Mross Peter Samuels LAYOUT Krista Doersch Asya Snejnevski Tatyana Vashchenko Jess Vetrano

mat·ter /ˈmadər/ noun 1. physical substance in general, as distinct from mind and spirit; (in physics) that which occupies space and possesses rest mass, especially as distinct from energy.

2. an affair or situation under consideration; a topic.

3. the reason for distress or a problem.

4. the substance or content of a text as distinct from its manner or form. verb 1. be of importance; have significance.

ma teria mate rialis mat erial

material + matter

OUTREACH Jackie Donovan Hope Freije Rhiannon Neuville Jake Stephens FACULTY ADVISOR Jeff Hou MA·TE·RI·AL /MƏˈTIRĒƏL/ NOUN 1. THE MATTER FROM WHICH A THING IS OR CAN BE MADE. 2. FACTS, INFORMATION, OR IDEAS FOR USE IN CREATING A BOOK OR OTHER WORK. 3. CLOTH OR FABRIC. ADJECTIVE 1. DENOTING OR CONSISTING OF PHYSICAL OBJECTS RATHER THAN THE MIND OR SPIRIT. 2. IMPORTANT; ESSENTIAL; RELEVANT.

cover design by Jess Vetrano cover art by Rebecca Bachman, Krista Doersch, Jackie Donovan, Asya Snejnevski + Jess Vetrano

because it matters.

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

EXTE N TS

ISSUE II 2018 EDITORS Rebecca Bachman Nina Mross Peter Samuels LAYOUT Krista Doersch Asya Snejnevski Tatyana Vashchenko Jess Vetrano

mat·ter /ˈmadər/ noun 1. physical substance in general, as distinct from mind and spirit; (in physics) that which occupies space and possesses rest mass, especially as distinct from energy.

2. an affair or situation under consideration; a topic.

3. the reason for distress or a problem.

4. the substance or content of a text as distinct from its manner or form. verb 1. be of importance; have significance.

ma teria mate rialis mat erial

material + matter

OUTREACH Jackie Donovan Hope Freije Rhiannon Neuville Jake Stephens FACULTY ADVISOR Jeff Hou MA·TE·RI·AL /MƏˈTIRĒƏL/ NOUN 1. THE MATTER FROM WHICH A THING IS OR CAN BE MADE. 2. FACTS, INFORMATION, OR IDEAS FOR USE IN CREATING A BOOK OR OTHER WORK. 3. CLOTH OR FABRIC. ADJECTIVE 1. DENOTING OR CONSISTING OF PHYSICAL OBJECTS RATHER THAN THE MIND OR SPIRIT. 2. IMPORTANT; ESSENTIAL; RELEVANT.

cover design by Jess Vetrano cover art by Rebecca Bachman, Krista Doersch, Jackie Donovan, Asya Snejnevski + Jess Vetrano

because it matters.

CONTENTS

TABLE OF Letter from the Editors

5

62

Rainier Grove

Matter-Matters

6

66

Tools for Community Power: Resources For Design Justice + Neighborhood-level Organizing

REBECCA BACHMAN, PETER SAMUELS, NINA MROSS DANIEL WINTERBOTTOM

THESES Tideflat Tales

NICKY BLOOM + TREVOR BENTLEY

16

Between City + Sea

24

Perception + Precision

32

TATYANA VASHCHENKO

JACK ALDERMAN

15

MODELS Flow | Movement ASYA SNEJNEVSKI

Remnant

JEAN NI

Coexist

KRISTA DOERSCH

New to the City ASYA SNEJNEVSKI

Data + Democracy + Materiality JEFF HOU

STUDIOS Aerospina: Redefining Mexico City’s Gateway

LAURA DURGERIAN, MACKINLEY ERICKSON + SHARON FUNG

Community Habitat: Design for the Ethiopian Community in Seattle YUNXIN DU + YANG HE

39 40 40

YUTONG HU + NINA MROSS

MARCUS CHAFFEE, CLARA CHEEVES, FATEMA MASWOOD, BEC NISSEN + LAUREN WONG

72

Portal Park

76

Fiber, Thread, Fabric

80

An Octopus’ Garden

84

Can We Be Here?

89

NICKY BLOOM + ALLISON ONG JULIA BAKKE, REBEKAH RONGO + FENGYI ZU MALIN ANDERSON, JULIA BRASCH, ELLIE LANGE, FATEMA MASSWOOD, DARIN ROSSELINI, JESS VETRANO + RACHEL WELLS SIERRA DRULEY, JEAN NI + MONICA TAYLOR

ART + ACTION

90

Lightness + Drawings

42

96

Putting “Conserve” Back in Conservatory

42

102

Drawing in Design

44

106

Strange Coupling

53

110

What Matters? then / now

112

Making the Cover

54 58

DYLANA GUTH + NINA MROSS KRISTA DOERSCH

MICHELLE HOOK + THAISA WAY NINA MROSS + ISABELA NORIEGA PROFESSIONAL PROFILES: JUDY BLANCO, DAVID DE LA CRUZ + RICH FREITAS

CONTENTS

TABLE OF Letter from the Editors

5

62

Rainier Grove

Matter-Matters

6

66

Tools for Community Power: Resources For Design Justice + Neighborhood-level Organizing

REBECCA BACHMAN, PETER SAMUELS, NINA MROSS DANIEL WINTERBOTTOM

THESES Tideflat Tales

NICKY BLOOM + TREVOR BENTLEY

16

Between City + Sea

24

Perception + Precision

32

TATYANA VASHCHENKO

JACK ALDERMAN

15

MODELS Flow | Movement ASYA SNEJNEVSKI

Remnant

JEAN NI

Coexist

KRISTA DOERSCH

New to the City ASYA SNEJNEVSKI

Data + Democracy + Materiality JEFF HOU

STUDIOS Aerospina: Redefining Mexico City’s Gateway

LAURA DURGERIAN, MACKINLEY ERICKSON + SHARON FUNG

Community Habitat: Design for the Ethiopian Community in Seattle YUNXIN DU + YANG HE

39 40 40

YUTONG HU + NINA MROSS

MARCUS CHAFFEE, CLARA CHEEVES, FATEMA MASWOOD, BEC NISSEN + LAUREN WONG

72

Portal Park

76

Fiber, Thread, Fabric

80

An Octopus’ Garden

84

Can We Be Here?

89

NICKY BLOOM + ALLISON ONG JULIA BAKKE, REBEKAH RONGO + FENGYI ZU MALIN ANDERSON, JULIA BRASCH, ELLIE LANGE, FATEMA MASSWOOD, DARIN ROSSELINI, JESS VETRANO + RACHEL WELLS SIERRA DRULEY, JEAN NI + MONICA TAYLOR

ART + ACTION

90

Lightness + Drawings

42

96

Putting “Conserve” Back in Conservatory

42

102

Drawing in Design

44

106

Strange Coupling

53

110

What Matters? then / now

112

Making the Cover

54 58

DYLANA GUTH + NINA MROSS KRISTA DOERSCH

MICHELLE HOOK + THAISA WAY NINA MROSS + ISABELA NORIEGA PROFESSIONAL PROFILES: JUDY BLANCO, DAVID DE LA CRUZ + RICH FREITAS

EXTENTS is the annual student publication of the University of Washington (UW) Department of Landscape Architecture.

Professionally reviewed and student-produced, EXTENTS showcases the work and ideas of students, faculty, and friends, providing a forum for critical discourse and exploration.

This year, EXTENTS takes an intersectional stance on the theme, material + matter. What is the matter of landscape architecture?

What matters, what’s the matter? Black Lives Matter. Vibrant Matter. Our relationship to and understanding of the vast and complex processes of matter are changing all the time.

Matter and materials are the basis of landscape architecture; physical matter, both living and non-living, cultural and ecological, embodies our choices about what matters to us.

How can landscape architecture address the massive resource extraction, water use, and embodied energy on which our work depends? How can we use materials to make places that really matter to us? How do we acknowledge that race matters, that materials resonate beyond the surface, that matter has deep meaning and consequences for life and well-being?

In this issue of EXTENTS, UW landscape architecture students and faculty approach these complex questions through design, art, and writing.

We would like to thank the landscape architects who volunteered their time to serve on the EXTENTS submission review panel: Liz Browning, Jerry Coburn, Laura Enman, Rikerrious Geter, Ken Gifford, Michele Richmond, and Rhys van Bemmel.

EXTENTS Editorial Team Rebecca Bachman Nina Mross Peter Samuels

5

EXTENTS is the annual student publication of the University of Washington (UW) Department of Landscape Architecture.

Professionally reviewed and student-produced, EXTENTS showcases the work and ideas of students, faculty, and friends, providing a forum for critical discourse and exploration.

This year, EXTENTS takes an intersectional stance on the theme, material + matter. What is the matter of landscape architecture?

What matters, what’s the matter? Black Lives Matter. Vibrant Matter. Our relationship to and understanding of the vast and complex processes of matter are changing all the time.

Matter and materials are the basis of landscape architecture; physical matter, both living and non-living, cultural and ecological, embodies our choices about what matters to us.

How can landscape architecture address the massive resource extraction, water use, and embodied energy on which our work depends? How can we use materials to make places that really matter to us? How do we acknowledge that race matters, that materials resonate beyond the surface, that matter has deep meaning and consequences for life and well-being?

In this issue of EXTENTS, UW landscape architecture students and faculty approach these complex questions through design, art, and writing.

We would like to thank the landscape architects who volunteered their time to serve on the EXTENTS submission review panel: Liz Browning, Jerry Coburn, Laura Enman, Rikerrious Geter, Ken Gifford, Michele Richmond, and Rhys van Bemmel.

EXTENTS Editorial Team Rebecca Bachman Nina Mross Peter Samuels

5

Matter-Matters “Is our profession aware of the diminishment of craft and, with it, the lack of understanding of material expression?”

Use of materials elicits the reflective qualities of the polished stone; tactile paving indicates which paths to be on, depending on whether the intention is to pass by or to stop to contemplate the names. Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C.

BY DANIEL WINTERBOTTOM Matter When I arrive home after spending long periods away, I find at the entry a familiar smell that assures me I’m home. This 1920s northwest bungalow throws off a composition of scents from its old fir framing and casings, its cedar siding, its lathe and plaster walls. It’s a powerful olfactory experience that supersedes any visual clue, a strong sensual trigger that signifies to me a sense of place and belonging. Materials signify time as well as place. Wide plank chestnut flooring tells you a house is old. The American chestnut was one of the first trees in the new world used to build housing.

Materials talk. They tell stories and they testify to how and why cultural expressions change. The designer’s process of selecting materials is robust when the intention is to be purposeful and evocative. The black granite at the Vietnam Memorial, designed by Maya Lin, is deeply essential to eliciting powerful visceral and emotional experiences to visitors. Standing in front of this majestic and somber black wall, the blackness conveys sorrow, and its polished surface reflects one’s own image over the names of the dead. The hard granite conveys durability and timelessness. The memorial wall, if it had been crafted of concrete, marble, or wood, would fail to elicit these powerful responses.

6

In The Eyes of the Skin, Juhani Pallasmaa reflects on the sensory attributes of materials and our lost connections to multi-sensory experiences in much current environmental design. He explains how all five senses can be fully expressed and how the deficit of this phenomenon in current design can be traced to material selection and a lack of understanding of the emotive qualities inherent in effective material use. In comparing acoustic and visual modalities, Pallasmaa states, “Sight isolates, whereas sound incorporates; vision is directional, whereas sound is multi-directional.

The sense of sight implies exteriority, but sound creates an experience of interiority. I regard an object, but sound approaches me, the eye reaches, but the ear receives. Buildings do not react to our gaze, but they do return sounds back to our ears.” He offers several examples: The echo of steps on a paved street has an emotional charge because the sound reverberating from surrounding walls puts us in direct interaction with space; the sound measures space and makes its scale comprehensible. …Every city has its echo which depends on the pattern and scale of its streets and the prevailing architectural styles and materials. The echo of a Renaissance city differs from that of a Baroque city. But our cities have lost their echo altogether.1

In a stone church, for instance, the mass of stone and soaring ceilings creates an acoustic phenomenon by which one hears the space before seeing it. Such distinct interactions are evoked by the wooden covered bridges of New England and the Ohio Valley, cast iron manufacturing districts like Soho in New York City, and the partially decomposing stone churches of Antigua, Guatemala.

Given the power and iconic quality of materials and their place-defining identities, why do so few ASLA presentations broach the subject at

the annual conference, and why do landscape architecture students rarely mention materials or materiality, or the emotive and archetypal feelings expressed through them in their studio presentations? Is our profession aware of the diminishment of craft and, with it, the lack of understanding of material expression?

Such expression was fundamental to the collaboration between Olmstead and Vaux that resulted in the some of the most iconic urban parks in the United States, due in large part to the clarification of craft and expression in their forms and material choices.

The revealed framing of this covered bridge conveys a sense of a sacred structure, as in a cathedral or chapel.

Materials and Meaning The intentional, thoughtful selection and crafting of materials underlies the creation of transformative experiences. Pallasmaa suggests that time is expressed through the use of natural materials that reveal their imperfections and are transformed in response to the atmosphere and weathering: The flatness of today’s standard construction is strengthened by a weakened sense of materiality. Natural materials—stone, brick and wood—allow our vision to penetrate their surfaces and enable us to become convinced of the veracity of matter. Natural materials express their age and history, as well as the story of their origins and their history of human use. All matter exists in a continuum of time; the patina of wear adds the enriching experience of time to the

7

Matter-Matters “Is our profession aware of the diminishment of craft and, with it, the lack of understanding of material expression?”

Use of materials elicits the reflective qualities of the polished stone; tactile paving indicates which paths to be on, depending on whether the intention is to pass by or to stop to contemplate the names. Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C.

BY DANIEL WINTERBOTTOM Matter When I arrive home after spending long periods away, I find at the entry a familiar smell that assures me I’m home. This 1920s northwest bungalow throws off a composition of scents from its old fir framing and casings, its cedar siding, its lathe and plaster walls. It’s a powerful olfactory experience that supersedes any visual clue, a strong sensual trigger that signifies to me a sense of place and belonging. Materials signify time as well as place. Wide plank chestnut flooring tells you a house is old. The American chestnut was one of the first trees in the new world used to build housing.

Materials talk. They tell stories and they testify to how and why cultural expressions change. The designer’s process of selecting materials is robust when the intention is to be purposeful and evocative. The black granite at the Vietnam Memorial, designed by Maya Lin, is deeply essential to eliciting powerful visceral and emotional experiences to visitors. Standing in front of this majestic and somber black wall, the blackness conveys sorrow, and its polished surface reflects one’s own image over the names of the dead. The hard granite conveys durability and timelessness. The memorial wall, if it had been crafted of concrete, marble, or wood, would fail to elicit these powerful responses.

6

In The Eyes of the Skin, Juhani Pallasmaa reflects on the sensory attributes of materials and our lost connections to multi-sensory experiences in much current environmental design. He explains how all five senses can be fully expressed and how the deficit of this phenomenon in current design can be traced to material selection and a lack of understanding of the emotive qualities inherent in effective material use. In comparing acoustic and visual modalities, Pallasmaa states, “Sight isolates, whereas sound incorporates; vision is directional, whereas sound is multi-directional.

The sense of sight implies exteriority, but sound creates an experience of interiority. I regard an object, but sound approaches me, the eye reaches, but the ear receives. Buildings do not react to our gaze, but they do return sounds back to our ears.” He offers several examples: The echo of steps on a paved street has an emotional charge because the sound reverberating from surrounding walls puts us in direct interaction with space; the sound measures space and makes its scale comprehensible. …Every city has its echo which depends on the pattern and scale of its streets and the prevailing architectural styles and materials. The echo of a Renaissance city differs from that of a Baroque city. But our cities have lost their echo altogether.1

In a stone church, for instance, the mass of stone and soaring ceilings creates an acoustic phenomenon by which one hears the space before seeing it. Such distinct interactions are evoked by the wooden covered bridges of New England and the Ohio Valley, cast iron manufacturing districts like Soho in New York City, and the partially decomposing stone churches of Antigua, Guatemala.

Given the power and iconic quality of materials and their place-defining identities, why do so few ASLA presentations broach the subject at

the annual conference, and why do landscape architecture students rarely mention materials or materiality, or the emotive and archetypal feelings expressed through them in their studio presentations? Is our profession aware of the diminishment of craft and, with it, the lack of understanding of material expression?

Such expression was fundamental to the collaboration between Olmstead and Vaux that resulted in the some of the most iconic urban parks in the United States, due in large part to the clarification of craft and expression in their forms and material choices.

The revealed framing of this covered bridge conveys a sense of a sacred structure, as in a cathedral or chapel.

Materials and Meaning The intentional, thoughtful selection and crafting of materials underlies the creation of transformative experiences. Pallasmaa suggests that time is expressed through the use of natural materials that reveal their imperfections and are transformed in response to the atmosphere and weathering: The flatness of today’s standard construction is strengthened by a weakened sense of materiality. Natural materials—stone, brick and wood—allow our vision to penetrate their surfaces and enable us to become convinced of the veracity of matter. Natural materials express their age and history, as well as the story of their origins and their history of human use. All matter exists in a continuum of time; the patina of wear adds the enriching experience of time to the

7

materials of construction. But the machinemade materials of today—scaleless sheets of glass, enameled metals and synthetic plastics—tend to present their unyielding surfaces to the eye without conveying their material essence or age. Buildings of this technological age usually deliberately aim at ageless perfection, and they do not incorporate the dimension of time, or the unavoidable and mentally significant dimension of aging. This fear of the traces of wear and age is related to our fear of death.2

Whether you believe the last sentence to be true, Pallasmaa’s statement suggests to me that designers default to using the same industry products, abdicating their role as agents of transformation who can use materials thoughtfully to reveal a deeper, reflective message, one that re-engages as it changes, expanding our understanding of nature and beauty.

Evolving technologies in the design process may be clouding the sensory understanding of materials as well. Pinterest and other image resources are used not simply for generating ideas, but as a graphic cut-and-paste tool to create actual design proposals. Efficient as it is, my impression is that the extent of probing, testing, exploring, and validating seems more truncated when compared to other methods of design such as modeling, creating material palette boards, prototyping, and iterative sketching.

A recently observed example is the prevalence of rusted steel in landscape architecture projects. Design students and practitioners use or suggest the use of corten steel with abandon.

Most students use corten with little knowledge of what it is, how it differs from other steel alloys, and what its strengths and weaknesses are. First used by early modernist architects Saarinen and Holscher and sculptors Indiana and Judd, it has been specified by landscape architects for retaining walls, raised planters, furniture, screens, and more. Often called “weathering steel,” it creates a “self-protecting 8

skin” through the oxidization process that stabilizes and protects the inner steel while creating a patina prized for its aesthetics and “hipness.” The patina is exceptional, as it ranges between purples, oranges, reds, and rusts.

As a “natural” product, it can be harmonious with the landscape, unlike a synthetic material.

However, it is expensive—three times the cost of carbon steel that will also rust. Carbon steel will not last as long, though it often outlasts the intended lifetime of a project. Corten is highly susceptible to salt corrosion; thus, coastal application may be problematic. As with most steels, it is not environmentally benign because its production uses significant quantities of energy.3 Perhaps more to the point, it is used widely without regarding its capacity to receive and mutate with light, weightiness, malleability, and narrative potential.

Corten is well used in the public works of sculptor Richard Serra. Serra was inspired by his early experiences working in an iron shop and by visiting his father in the San Francisco shipyards.4 His large-scale environmental works feature large slabs of corten plate up to one inch thick. The slabs are tilted at angles and often arranged in serpentine forms through which viewers can walk. The experience is deeply psychological, as the planes tilt inward and outward, constricting and opening flows of passage, and containing and releasing space.

The sounds change according to the shape and distance between the plates. Light transforms the steel into fire, while lack of light creates a dark, brooding, blackish purple. One feels the weight and the creation of a sense of risk when passing through precariously leaning, thick sheets of steel.

Serra gained a deep understanding of steel both through his early experiences and by his singular commitment to the material in his sculpture. Such a sensitive and thoughtful approach is also found in the very difficult work of Andy Goldsworthy. Their understanding

evolves not solely through pursuit of an image, but by intimate and at times trying partnerships with materials. Serra’s work is straightforwardly about form, material, and space, yet a narrative is felt, if not read. It informs the participant much about themselves while they witness the phenomenon of a material that reveals time through the changing light and color, space through sound, and movement of the body. It speaks to our relations to and isolation from those around us, as we pass through or linger alone within the spaces. In Serra’s best work, materials convey a deep and existential meaning about ourselves.

A Richard Serra installation at the Dia Art Foundation in Beacon, NY. His work uses form and the natural patina of the material. Play of light and spatial demarcation elicit powerful responses.

Material and Landscape Architecture Landscape architects use materials to create, restore, and preserve places. We create space for dynamic and shifting experiences that acknowledge light, weather, climate, growth, and entropy. We create hardscape and softscape using common building materials and extensive plant palettes. Our knowledge must be broad and multi-focused. We rely less on structural systems, but we must be cognizant of them.

We are fully engaged with natural processes, including cycles of growth, weathering, and ecological change. Landscape architecture

Limiting our [material] choices and our explorations limits our potential as designers and poorly serves communities that need functional, feasible, beautiful places.

students may at times be overwhelmed with all the knowledge they must absorb during their studies, and later continuing into practice. Yet it is these materials of our profession that can shape both inspiring or banal places.

The knowledge of material properties, expression, and craft methods are the tools at our disposal. Limiting our choices and our explorations limits our potential as designers and poorly serves communities that need functional, feasible, beautiful places.

The methods of teaching about materials of design include lecture-based classes, making and crafting in the shops, field trips to construction sites and manufacturing plants, guest lecturers, industry spokespeople, professional-focused classes for creating construction documents and specifications, and design-build studios that incorporate quite a bit of the above into service learning classes. As to comparing and assessing which methods are more successful, there is little documentation on what is most effective. I have long promoted and practiced the design-build model, as it exposes students to the entire process of conceptualization, design development, implementation, and reflection. Students work with a real client and experience the vagrancies and challenges a project presents, and learn how to adapt and resolve those issues in a timely and satisfactory manner. Design-build includes a valuable, albeit short, timeframe for making and exploring craft and materials. It is not intended to create master craftspeople or artists, but it does focus on the act of making and thinking about materials as an essential component of design expression, which are considered early in the process. Not every

9

materials of construction. But the machinemade materials of today—scaleless sheets of glass, enameled metals and synthetic plastics—tend to present their unyielding surfaces to the eye without conveying their material essence or age. Buildings of this technological age usually deliberately aim at ageless perfection, and they do not incorporate the dimension of time, or the unavoidable and mentally significant dimension of aging. This fear of the traces of wear and age is related to our fear of death.2

Whether you believe the last sentence to be true, Pallasmaa’s statement suggests to me that designers default to using the same industry products, abdicating their role as agents of transformation who can use materials thoughtfully to reveal a deeper, reflective message, one that re-engages as it changes, expanding our understanding of nature and beauty.

Evolving technologies in the design process may be clouding the sensory understanding of materials as well. Pinterest and other image resources are used not simply for generating ideas, but as a graphic cut-and-paste tool to create actual design proposals. Efficient as it is, my impression is that the extent of probing, testing, exploring, and validating seems more truncated when compared to other methods of design such as modeling, creating material palette boards, prototyping, and iterative sketching.

A recently observed example is the prevalence of rusted steel in landscape architecture projects. Design students and practitioners use or suggest the use of corten steel with abandon.

Most students use corten with little knowledge of what it is, how it differs from other steel alloys, and what its strengths and weaknesses are. First used by early modernist architects Saarinen and Holscher and sculptors Indiana and Judd, it has been specified by landscape architects for retaining walls, raised planters, furniture, screens, and more. Often called “weathering steel,” it creates a “self-protecting 8

skin” through the oxidization process that stabilizes and protects the inner steel while creating a patina prized for its aesthetics and “hipness.” The patina is exceptional, as it ranges between purples, oranges, reds, and rusts.

As a “natural” product, it can be harmonious with the landscape, unlike a synthetic material.

However, it is expensive—three times the cost of carbon steel that will also rust. Carbon steel will not last as long, though it often outlasts the intended lifetime of a project. Corten is highly susceptible to salt corrosion; thus, coastal application may be problematic. As with most steels, it is not environmentally benign because its production uses significant quantities of energy.3 Perhaps more to the point, it is used widely without regarding its capacity to receive and mutate with light, weightiness, malleability, and narrative potential.

Corten is well used in the public works of sculptor Richard Serra. Serra was inspired by his early experiences working in an iron shop and by visiting his father in the San Francisco shipyards.4 His large-scale environmental works feature large slabs of corten plate up to one inch thick. The slabs are tilted at angles and often arranged in serpentine forms through which viewers can walk. The experience is deeply psychological, as the planes tilt inward and outward, constricting and opening flows of passage, and containing and releasing space.

The sounds change according to the shape and distance between the plates. Light transforms the steel into fire, while lack of light creates a dark, brooding, blackish purple. One feels the weight and the creation of a sense of risk when passing through precariously leaning, thick sheets of steel.

Serra gained a deep understanding of steel both through his early experiences and by his singular commitment to the material in his sculpture. Such a sensitive and thoughtful approach is also found in the very difficult work of Andy Goldsworthy. Their understanding

evolves not solely through pursuit of an image, but by intimate and at times trying partnerships with materials. Serra’s work is straightforwardly about form, material, and space, yet a narrative is felt, if not read. It informs the participant much about themselves while they witness the phenomenon of a material that reveals time through the changing light and color, space through sound, and movement of the body. It speaks to our relations to and isolation from those around us, as we pass through or linger alone within the spaces. In Serra’s best work, materials convey a deep and existential meaning about ourselves.

A Richard Serra installation at the Dia Art Foundation in Beacon, NY. His work uses form and the natural patina of the material. Play of light and spatial demarcation elicit powerful responses.

Material and Landscape Architecture Landscape architects use materials to create, restore, and preserve places. We create space for dynamic and shifting experiences that acknowledge light, weather, climate, growth, and entropy. We create hardscape and softscape using common building materials and extensive plant palettes. Our knowledge must be broad and multi-focused. We rely less on structural systems, but we must be cognizant of them.

We are fully engaged with natural processes, including cycles of growth, weathering, and ecological change. Landscape architecture

Limiting our [material] choices and our explorations limits our potential as designers and poorly serves communities that need functional, feasible, beautiful places.

students may at times be overwhelmed with all the knowledge they must absorb during their studies, and later continuing into practice. Yet it is these materials of our profession that can shape both inspiring or banal places.

The knowledge of material properties, expression, and craft methods are the tools at our disposal. Limiting our choices and our explorations limits our potential as designers and poorly serves communities that need functional, feasible, beautiful places.

The methods of teaching about materials of design include lecture-based classes, making and crafting in the shops, field trips to construction sites and manufacturing plants, guest lecturers, industry spokespeople, professional-focused classes for creating construction documents and specifications, and design-build studios that incorporate quite a bit of the above into service learning classes. As to comparing and assessing which methods are more successful, there is little documentation on what is most effective. I have long promoted and practiced the design-build model, as it exposes students to the entire process of conceptualization, design development, implementation, and reflection. Students work with a real client and experience the vagrancies and challenges a project presents, and learn how to adapt and resolve those issues in a timely and satisfactory manner. Design-build includes a valuable, albeit short, timeframe for making and exploring craft and materials. It is not intended to create master craftspeople or artists, but it does focus on the act of making and thinking about materials as an essential component of design expression, which are considered early in the process. Not every

9

student comes to design with the experience of having worked in a steel plant, a shipyard, or a stone carving shop. But the most inexperienced students do develop a curiosity for materials, ask questions, and conduct research. Some see that analyzing the world though a material perspective is how adept designers learn their trade. Most landscape architects will not build projects themselves. In fact, many of those who start design-build firms spend only their early years in the field before hiring craftspeople to create their ideas. I am not suggesting we create craftspeople, but we can train and develop landscape architects that use materials in a thoughtful, purposeful manner, and raise the level of practice based on this understanding and exploration of materials. We know that Carlo Scarpa neither studied nor worked as a craftsman. He did surround himself with them; he visited their shops and studied their craft. Through this process, he developed a profound respect for their work and he pursued the collaborations between designer and craftsperson that made his innovations possible.

Materials and Education There is untapped potential in US landscape architecture programs to model a practice that partners designers with craftspeople. Students would not be limited to rendering ideas at their desks or on laptops but would use the metal and wood shops as laboratories of exploration.

In these classrooms of making, students would investigate material qualities and forms of assembly, including hand and digital fabrication techniques. They would practice the process of detailing through prototyping and material investigations.

Attention to the science of landscape architecture is critical to better understand and address pressing issues of climate change, stormwater management, ecological systems design, and soil science. Most departments have highly developed curricula around these topics.

I would argue that the craft and artful manner of representation and articulation is equally critical to advancing our cultural expressions and fostering interest in and attachment to

This plywood mock-up was used to refine and test the ergonomics of a chair that would accommodate the widest spectrum of users, while the boat-shaped plywood mock-up was made to test the scale and pattern of the supports. It was then moved around the site to find its optimal location.

10

The skin of the outdoor kitchen references traditional barn doors found throughout the Dalsland region of Sweden, while the mosaic medallion in the observation deck is derived from traditional Syrian decorative forms, paying homage to the recent growth of the area’s Syrian population.

the places we create. To consider only the functional solutions ignores opportunities to engage people at a deeper level of relationship with their built environments. All of this can be introduced in the curriculum by lectures on materials. Technical information on material structure; geological processes that produce stone, iron, and bauxite; and techniques of material crafting, care, and performance can reasonably be taught through classroom lectures. But the deeper understanding—the more tactile and sensory aspects that inform how and why we use certain materials at the phenomenological level—may be best explored through hands-on applications and experimentation.

and heat at the forge, of splitting wood with an axe and shaping it with a draw knife, awakened them to the beauty of the handmade. They gained respect for the labor and skill required to transform a piece of tree to waterproof cladding for the sauna they would design and build. The personality inherent to each of their projects reflected themselves as makers, and their enjoyment was a transformative experience.

There were apparent differences between the two cultures, working side-by-side. Steneby students worked with exact tolerances typically not used in landscape architecture. Through previous experience, they understood material properties and material aesthetics to a greater degree than did the landscape architects.

In a 2018 design-build studio collaboration with HDK Steneby, Academy of Design and Crafts, University of Gothenburg in Dals Långed, Sweden, University of Washington landscape architecture students worked with Steneby students majoring in metal and wood crafts.

Early in the design process, the landscape architecture students experienced welding, forging, shingle making, and wood craft to better understand the potential application of these crafts to the project they would design and build. The visceral experience with steel

Changing the Profession Firms that hire our students consistently decry the lack of knowledge recent landscape architecture graduates possess pertaining to construction and materials. Many entry-level landscape architects will be asked to work on construction documentation, and firms will need to augment their training. It is a criticism of our educational model that it produces students not well-versed in these skills. For students, this postpones advancement to design 11

student comes to design with the experience of having worked in a steel plant, a shipyard, or a stone carving shop. But the most inexperienced students do develop a curiosity for materials, ask questions, and conduct research. Some see that analyzing the world though a material perspective is how adept designers learn their trade. Most landscape architects will not build projects themselves. In fact, many of those who start design-build firms spend only their early years in the field before hiring craftspeople to create their ideas. I am not suggesting we create craftspeople, but we can train and develop landscape architects that use materials in a thoughtful, purposeful manner, and raise the level of practice based on this understanding and exploration of materials. We know that Carlo Scarpa neither studied nor worked as a craftsman. He did surround himself with them; he visited their shops and studied their craft. Through this process, he developed a profound respect for their work and he pursued the collaborations between designer and craftsperson that made his innovations possible.

Materials and Education There is untapped potential in US landscape architecture programs to model a practice that partners designers with craftspeople. Students would not be limited to rendering ideas at their desks or on laptops but would use the metal and wood shops as laboratories of exploration.

In these classrooms of making, students would investigate material qualities and forms of assembly, including hand and digital fabrication techniques. They would practice the process of detailing through prototyping and material investigations.

Attention to the science of landscape architecture is critical to better understand and address pressing issues of climate change, stormwater management, ecological systems design, and soil science. Most departments have highly developed curricula around these topics.

I would argue that the craft and artful manner of representation and articulation is equally critical to advancing our cultural expressions and fostering interest in and attachment to

This plywood mock-up was used to refine and test the ergonomics of a chair that would accommodate the widest spectrum of users, while the boat-shaped plywood mock-up was made to test the scale and pattern of the supports. It was then moved around the site to find its optimal location.

10

The skin of the outdoor kitchen references traditional barn doors found throughout the Dalsland region of Sweden, while the mosaic medallion in the observation deck is derived from traditional Syrian decorative forms, paying homage to the recent growth of the area’s Syrian population.

the places we create. To consider only the functional solutions ignores opportunities to engage people at a deeper level of relationship with their built environments. All of this can be introduced in the curriculum by lectures on materials. Technical information on material structure; geological processes that produce stone, iron, and bauxite; and techniques of material crafting, care, and performance can reasonably be taught through classroom lectures. But the deeper understanding—the more tactile and sensory aspects that inform how and why we use certain materials at the phenomenological level—may be best explored through hands-on applications and experimentation.

and heat at the forge, of splitting wood with an axe and shaping it with a draw knife, awakened them to the beauty of the handmade. They gained respect for the labor and skill required to transform a piece of tree to waterproof cladding for the sauna they would design and build. The personality inherent to each of their projects reflected themselves as makers, and their enjoyment was a transformative experience.

There were apparent differences between the two cultures, working side-by-side. Steneby students worked with exact tolerances typically not used in landscape architecture. Through previous experience, they understood material properties and material aesthetics to a greater degree than did the landscape architects.

In a 2018 design-build studio collaboration with HDK Steneby, Academy of Design and Crafts, University of Gothenburg in Dals Långed, Sweden, University of Washington landscape architecture students worked with Steneby students majoring in metal and wood crafts.

Early in the design process, the landscape architecture students experienced welding, forging, shingle making, and wood craft to better understand the potential application of these crafts to the project they would design and build. The visceral experience with steel

Changing the Profession Firms that hire our students consistently decry the lack of knowledge recent landscape architecture graduates possess pertaining to construction and materials. Many entry-level landscape architects will be asked to work on construction documentation, and firms will need to augment their training. It is a criticism of our educational model that it produces students not well-versed in these skills. For students, this postpones advancement to design 11

responsibility, and slows their professional opportunities and growth. It’s a conundrum for academia, because learning about construction, detailing, and materials is best realized through application, and not through theory or academic lectures, even if both play a role in deepening understanding and in research and innovation.

Applied learning is often a rudimentary exposure to the building and craft process. However limited the engagement, it can be a transformative experience. My belief is that we, as the landscape architecture department at the University of Washington, can increase our support to create additional opportunities for students to develop a curiosity about and a confidence in materials. If we succeed, our students will be increasingly sought after by the leading practitioners. They will assume leadership positions to transform practice and return to a more craft-based approach in landscape architectural design. As alumni, they can play a greater role in advocating for curriculum changes to increase the rigor and skills pertaining to material detailing.

A leading firm in this area, and one of renown, is the practice of Michael Van Valkenburgh.

His landscape architects are highly trained in material performance, innovation, research, and expression. The firm is one of a few that regularly offers presentations at ASLA annual conferences that focus on material expression and performance using their projects as case studies. Mr. Van Valkenburgh recruits students with applicable detailing skills. The firm conducts its own research on material innovation and sustainability while maintaining a high level of craft and material expression in its work. The impressive bluestone wall at Teardrop Park in New York City is one notable example. In Seattle, the office of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN) is another example 12

The bluestone wall at Teardrop Park, New York, NY.

of a firm with a strong focus on materials and detailing that has exceptional staff with significant knowledge about material craft.

They also routinely conduct prototyping and research, and collaborate with craftspeople and industry experts.

Changing Education Seemingly, the next generation is interested in the maker’s movement that explores material inquiry, application, and research. If the academic environment responds accordingly, it can effectively link this inquiry to other relevant and emerging issues, green building, cultural representation, and inclusion and equity. Many interdisciplinary interests are converging. The specification of materials is a vital subject for occupational therapists and industrial designers who serve patients with limb loss, paralysis, cognition impairments, and other challenges. Universal design that has robust social and empathetic focus is needed within the profession of landscape architecture.

As a profession, we abide by codes, but we don’t typically innovate and collaborate to expand opportunities and feelings of equity and responsiveness among those marginalized in accessing and using outdoor spaces.

Material, cultural expression has been the focus of many artists, including Martin Puryear. His use of material references the handcrafted tools used by African-American

slaves and, at the same time, celebrates African cultural traditions. A wide embrace of diversity is all too often absent from landscape architecture practice. We bemoan the absence of minorities in our profession—a profession in which cultural expression is often timid or paternalistic. A recent design-build studio taught at the University of Washington strove to be a counterpoint. The partner was the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington (JCCC), housed in a building that sheltered many of the returnees after their incarceration during the second world war. The students developed a design based on kintsugi, a practice in which a broken piece of ceramic pottery is repaired using a gold adhesive that does not disguise wounds but rather mends and documents the fractures. The result is understood to reflect both a beautiful and honest approach to healing. Students then used this approach to design a plaza at the center. Using a quarter-inch bronze strip, they created a fractured line linking a symbolic “source” stone representing Seattle to the concentration camp locations, mapping the journey in gold and honoring and repairing a wound still fresh for many JCCC association members. The innovative and intentional use of the material builds on a traditional craft sacred to the Japanese community. The broken bronze line runs across a bluestone plaza, breaking the running bond pattern, a reference to the disruption of normalcy felt by those incarcerated. This sensitive use of specific materials, bronze (healing glue), and stone (stoic endurance) was very much appreciated by the community, who felt that their stories were honored and heard.

In this example, matter mattered. Simple in appearance, but critical in its cultural and material expression, the sensitive use of materials is rarely explored outside of designbuild studio projects. In many landscape architecture departments, the message conveyed is that other foci carry more

The plaza with a bronze inlay created by University of Washington students.

importance, resulting in arbitrary and capricious use of materials. When construction-related courses, and specifically material courses, are given the importance accorded to other areas of the curriculum, ASLA awards will be awarded based on material expression and use, and material research will be supported as it is in many countries. Students will become more holistic in their design thinking and intentions, thoughtful in material expression, and creative in detailing and material choices.

1 Pallasmaa, J. (2005). The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Chichester: Wiley-Academy.

2 Pallasmaa, J. (2005). The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Chichester: Wiley-Academy.

3 Brinkley, M. (2016). What is Corten? Retrieved from https://www. homebuilding.co.uk/what-is-corten/ 4 Richard Serra. (2018). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Richard_Serra#Early_life_and_education

13

responsibility, and slows their professional opportunities and growth. It’s a conundrum for academia, because learning about construction, detailing, and materials is best realized through application, and not through theory or academic lectures, even if both play a role in deepening understanding and in research and innovation.

Applied learning is often a rudimentary exposure to the building and craft process. However limited the engagement, it can be a transformative experience. My belief is that we, as the landscape architecture department at the University of Washington, can increase our support to create additional opportunities for students to develop a curiosity about and a confidence in materials. If we succeed, our students will be increasingly sought after by the leading practitioners. They will assume leadership positions to transform practice and return to a more craft-based approach in landscape architectural design. As alumni, they can play a greater role in advocating for curriculum changes to increase the rigor and skills pertaining to material detailing.

A leading firm in this area, and one of renown, is the practice of Michael Van Valkenburgh.

His landscape architects are highly trained in material performance, innovation, research, and expression. The firm is one of a few that regularly offers presentations at ASLA annual conferences that focus on material expression and performance using their projects as case studies. Mr. Van Valkenburgh recruits students with applicable detailing skills. The firm conducts its own research on material innovation and sustainability while maintaining a high level of craft and material expression in its work. The impressive bluestone wall at Teardrop Park in New York City is one notable example. In Seattle, the office of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN) is another example 12

The bluestone wall at Teardrop Park, New York, NY.

of a firm with a strong focus on materials and detailing that has exceptional staff with significant knowledge about material craft.

They also routinely conduct prototyping and research, and collaborate with craftspeople and industry experts.

Changing Education Seemingly, the next generation is interested in the maker’s movement that explores material inquiry, application, and research. If the academic environment responds accordingly, it can effectively link this inquiry to other relevant and emerging issues, green building, cultural representation, and inclusion and equity. Many interdisciplinary interests are converging. The specification of materials is a vital subject for occupational therapists and industrial designers who serve patients with limb loss, paralysis, cognition impairments, and other challenges. Universal design that has robust social and empathetic focus is needed within the profession of landscape architecture.

As a profession, we abide by codes, but we don’t typically innovate and collaborate to expand opportunities and feelings of equity and responsiveness among those marginalized in accessing and using outdoor spaces.

Material, cultural expression has been the focus of many artists, including Martin Puryear. His use of material references the handcrafted tools used by African-American

slaves and, at the same time, celebrates African cultural traditions. A wide embrace of diversity is all too often absent from landscape architecture practice. We bemoan the absence of minorities in our profession—a profession in which cultural expression is often timid or paternalistic. A recent design-build studio taught at the University of Washington strove to be a counterpoint. The partner was the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington (JCCC), housed in a building that sheltered many of the returnees after their incarceration during the second world war. The students developed a design based on kintsugi, a practice in which a broken piece of ceramic pottery is repaired using a gold adhesive that does not disguise wounds but rather mends and documents the fractures. The result is understood to reflect both a beautiful and honest approach to healing. Students then used this approach to design a plaza at the center. Using a quarter-inch bronze strip, they created a fractured line linking a symbolic “source” stone representing Seattle to the concentration camp locations, mapping the journey in gold and honoring and repairing a wound still fresh for many JCCC association members. The innovative and intentional use of the material builds on a traditional craft sacred to the Japanese community. The broken bronze line runs across a bluestone plaza, breaking the running bond pattern, a reference to the disruption of normalcy felt by those incarcerated. This sensitive use of specific materials, bronze (healing glue), and stone (stoic endurance) was very much appreciated by the community, who felt that their stories were honored and heard.

In this example, matter mattered. Simple in appearance, but critical in its cultural and material expression, the sensitive use of materials is rarely explored outside of designbuild studio projects. In many landscape architecture departments, the message conveyed is that other foci carry more

The plaza with a bronze inlay created by University of Washington students.

importance, resulting in arbitrary and capricious use of materials. When construction-related courses, and specifically material courses, are given the importance accorded to other areas of the curriculum, ASLA awards will be awarded based on material expression and use, and material research will be supported as it is in many countries. Students will become more holistic in their design thinking and intentions, thoughtful in material expression, and creative in detailing and material choices.

1 Pallasmaa, J. (2005). The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Chichester: Wiley-Academy.

2 Pallasmaa, J. (2005). The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Chichester: Wiley-Academy.

3 Brinkley, M. (2016). What is Corten? Retrieved from https://www. homebuilding.co.uk/what-is-corten/ 4 Richard Serra. (2018). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Richard_Serra#Early_life_and_education

13

At the conclusion of UW’s MLA program, students produce a design thesis that explores and expresses landscape architecture in a site-specific way. As students deepen their understandings of their sites, materials take center stage. It is through biotic and abiotic materials that landscape architects understand and express history and culture, as well as hopes for the future. The following three features provide glimpses into theses that offer new imaginings of the Seattle and Tacoma waterfronts.

Access the entirety of these works at UW’s College of Built Environments Library.

15

At the conclusion of UW’s MLA program, students produce a design thesis that explores and expresses landscape architecture in a site-specific way. As students deepen their understandings of their sites, materials take center stage. It is through biotic and abiotic materials that landscape architects understand and express history and culture, as well as hopes for the future. The following three features provide glimpses into theses that offer new imaginings of the Seattle and Tacoma waterfronts.

Access the entirety of these works at UW’s College of Built Environments Library.

15

TIDEFLAT TALES S I TE IMM E R SI O N A S GENER ATIVE D E S I G N PROCE SS Trevor Bentley + Nicky Bloom This project explores the following questions: How can immersion and site-inspired research generate contextually-

Approach diagram

responsive designs? How do human-scale, sensory, and somatic experiences influence design at all scales? Using the Tacoma Tideflats as testing grounds, we experimented with approaches to uncovering and understanding plural site narratives (reading), distilling complexity down to legible threads (writing), and using video, model storytelling, and spatial design to amplify those threads (imaging and spatializing).

Summary of how our designs stemmed from our immersion

Concept model studying various site processes

Materials overlook made of shipping containers

16

The expanse of the Tacoma Tideflats site is remarkable. The Flats’ many visual and physical barriers added a layer of intrigue and mystery as to how the site functions. We experimented with many approaches to work with this complexity, including video and model making, to understand the site’s characteristics and processes at the human scale.

17

TIDEFLAT TALES S I TE IMM E R SI O N A S GENER ATIVE D E S I G N PROCE SS Trevor Bentley + Nicky Bloom This project explores the following questions: How can immersion and site-inspired research generate contextually-

Approach diagram

responsive designs? How do human-scale, sensory, and somatic experiences influence design at all scales? Using the Tacoma Tideflats as testing grounds, we experimented with approaches to uncovering and understanding plural site narratives (reading), distilling complexity down to legible threads (writing), and using video, model storytelling, and spatial design to amplify those threads (imaging and spatializing).

Summary of how our designs stemmed from our immersion

Concept model studying various site processes

Materials overlook made of shipping containers

16

The expanse of the Tacoma Tideflats site is remarkable. The Flats’ many visual and physical barriers added a layer of intrigue and mystery as to how the site functions. We experimented with many approaches to work with this complexity, including video and model making, to understand the site’s characteristics and processes at the human scale.

17

18

STREAMLINE/INTEGRATE

FABRICATE/SUSTAIN

Streamline is a strong theme that plays out over the Port of Tacoma’s history. Integrate drove our design response.

We felt that future designs should invite Tacoma residents to see the sights and hear the sounds of booming industry and find calm moments of refuge. A proposed River Walk along the Puyallup softens the bank, slows and accumulates sediments, and softens the edge between land and water in a highly channelized waterway.

That which is manufactured on and shipped through the Flats is in constant flux, changing as the world’s needs change. We see the end product, but the Flats see the entire life cycle of these products unfold from material to product to scrap to building material again. We propose repurposing a decommissioned railroad as an educational Materials Loop that takes visitors from the lumber mills to the scrap yards to the recycling ships, and back again.

19

18

STREAMLINE/INTEGRATE

FABRICATE/SUSTAIN

Streamline is a strong theme that plays out over the Port of Tacoma’s history. Integrate drove our design response.

We felt that future designs should invite Tacoma residents to see the sights and hear the sounds of booming industry and find calm moments of refuge. A proposed River Walk along the Puyallup softens the bank, slows and accumulates sediments, and softens the edge between land and water in a highly channelized waterway.

That which is manufactured on and shipped through the Flats is in constant flux, changing as the world’s needs change. We see the end product, but the Flats see the entire life cycle of these products unfold from material to product to scrap to building material again. We propose repurposing a decommissioned railroad as an educational Materials Loop that takes visitors from the lumber mills to the scrap yards to the recycling ships, and back again.

19

EXTRACT/GENERATE Historically, the Tacoma Tideflats have relied on extractive processes. Surroundings affect the Flats and the Flats affect them, acting as a global pinch point that thrives on imports and exports. How does a port continue to expand and embrace its role as an economic generator while acknowledging its past? How does it balance productivity and serve as a place to inhabit? A proposed Dredge Lab processes sediments dredged out of the shipping channels. Sediments are phytoremediated and amended as a crucial soil resource to regenerate other eroded fishing areas around the Puget Sound. This is a site that would be managed by the Puyallup Tribal Dredge Management Association on a former Puyallup casino site.

20

Across the site, in plain view from downtown Tacoma, dredged sediments are added to a barrier island created off the tip of the Thea Foss waterway. This creates multi-level habitat that is inaccessible by people and restores some of the niches removed by the creation of the Port of Tacoma. Over time, dredged sediments are added to the island to build a hill, and the island is left for habitation by plants and animals.

21

EXTRACT/GENERATE Historically, the Tacoma Tideflats have relied on extractive processes. Surroundings affect the Flats and the Flats affect them, acting as a global pinch point that thrives on imports and exports. How does a port continue to expand and embrace its role as an economic generator while acknowledging its past? How does it balance productivity and serve as a place to inhabit? A proposed Dredge Lab processes sediments dredged out of the shipping channels. Sediments are phytoremediated and amended as a crucial soil resource to regenerate other eroded fishing areas around the Puget Sound. This is a site that would be managed by the Puyallup Tribal Dredge Management Association on a former Puyallup casino site.

20

Across the site, in plain view from downtown Tacoma, dredged sediments are added to a barrier island created off the tip of the Thea Foss waterway. This creates multi-level habitat that is inaccessible by people and restores some of the niches removed by the creation of the Port of Tacoma. Over time, dredged sediments are added to the island to build a hill, and the island is left for habitation by plants and animals.

21

There are infinite ways for a person to experience the Flats. Clockwise from top left: shipping containers wait to be loaded for another voyage; a channelized section of the Puyallup River; tides can be observed at various shoreline restoration projects; close-up of a scrap recycling yard.

Dredge Lab brainstorming: this design reimagines the now-necessary extractive processes of dredging as a generative process harnessed to provide income for Puyallup people today.

A rough timeline organizes our design process into initial explorations, the discovery of countless plural narratives, and the selection of and design responses to the main three themes we read from the site.

22

23

There are infinite ways for a person to experience the Flats. Clockwise from top left: shipping containers wait to be loaded for another voyage; a channelized section of the Puyallup River; tides can be observed at various shoreline restoration projects; close-up of a scrap recycling yard.

Dredge Lab brainstorming: this design reimagines the now-necessary extractive processes of dredging as a generative process harnessed to provide income for Puyallup people today.

A rough timeline organizes our design process into initial explorations, the discovery of countless plural narratives, and the selection of and design responses to the main three themes we read from the site.

22

23

BETWEEN CITY + SEA: MULT I-TR OPH I C MA R ICU LTU R E A S UR BA N I NT ERTIDAL CATA LYST Tatyana Vashchenko Urban waterfronts can do more than retain the land in spite of the sea. This design project explores and applies multi-trophic mariculture as a means toward enlivening and broadening the disappearing gradient between city and sea. Through the strategic integration of multi-trophic mariculture into a degraded and beleaguered public waterfront, this design research leverages the processes of sediment accretion and intertidal expansion to afford synergistic cohabitation within this living place and

photos by : Zachary Moscicki

dynamic threshold.

24

Sand engine refers to the deliberate massing of sediment with reference to waves, currents, and drift patterns in order to leverage the drift cell’s established dynamics to carry and deposit sediment. This strategy was most famously employed at the Netherlands’ Zandmotor project, at a scale much larger than would be required at North Beach. North Beach’s drift cell once contributed to the formation of West Point. Today, however, a significant portion of the feeder bluffs up the drift cell are armored. There may no longer be enough sediment throughout this system to build up an intertidal gradient, even with armoring and sediment scour reduced along this beach. The proposed location of a sandspit is therefore southwest of Owl Creek’s entry into the Puget Sound.

25

BETWEEN CITY + SEA: MULT I-TR OPH I C MA R ICU LTU R E A S UR BA N I NT ERTIDAL CATA LYST Tatyana Vashchenko Urban waterfronts can do more than retain the land in spite of the sea. This design project explores and applies multi-trophic mariculture as a means toward enlivening and broadening the disappearing gradient between city and sea. Through the strategic integration of multi-trophic mariculture into a degraded and beleaguered public waterfront, this design research leverages the processes of sediment accretion and intertidal expansion to afford synergistic cohabitation within this living place and

photos by : Zachary Moscicki

dynamic threshold.

24

Sand engine refers to the deliberate massing of sediment with reference to waves, currents, and drift patterns in order to leverage the drift cell’s established dynamics to carry and deposit sediment. This strategy was most famously employed at the Netherlands’ Zandmotor project, at a scale much larger than would be required at North Beach. North Beach’s drift cell once contributed to the formation of West Point. Today, however, a significant portion of the feeder bluffs up the drift cell are armored. There may no longer be enough sediment throughout this system to build up an intertidal gradient, even with armoring and sediment scour reduced along this beach. The proposed location of a sandspit is therefore southwest of Owl Creek’s entry into the Puget Sound.

25

The urban intertidal in Puget Sound consists of over 700 miles of armored shoreline. Across Puget Sound, armoring typically accompanies coastal development. This map describes areas of impervious surface within Puget Sound’s watershed in dark grey and shoreline armoring in red.

26

The spatial design I chose to elaborate is composed of a hybrid between cultivated terraces and a sand engine-fed nested groin system made of mussel posts.

27

The urban intertidal in Puget Sound consists of over 700 miles of armored shoreline. Across Puget Sound, armoring typically accompanies coastal development. This map describes areas of impervious surface within Puget Sound’s watershed in dark grey and shoreline armoring in red.

26

The spatial design I chose to elaborate is composed of a hybrid between cultivated terraces and a sand engine-fed nested groin system made of mussel posts.

27

TIDAL MARSH TO BRACKISH BACKWATER

BRACKISH BACKWATER TO MUSSEL POSTS

MUSSEL POSTS TO NORI CURTAINS

1” = 4’ SCALE

EE TH

M ASS GR EL

EADOWS

R ED L A VER

PUBL

RONMENTAL E ENVI DU CA TIO N

IC O YS TE R

IN

OPS RKSH WO ON TI VA

(NO RI )H A

IN YS DA

I LT

1” = 4’ SCALE

T ES RV

CU

1” = 4’ SCALE

MN AUTU

LOW TIDE + 2.33 1 2 : 5 8 P M

TI DAL TE RR ACE SECTION : AUTUMN EQUIN OX , 0 9 - 2 2 - 2 0 2 8

CONSTRUCTED KELP FORESTS

POROUS GROINS AS MUSSEL POSTS

POROUS GROIN AT UPPER BEACH

1” = 4’ SCALE

1” = 4’ SCALE

AM ON G

OG PR UN

NISMS RGA EO IN AR M

SU GA

EN CE

R

F LP KE

EST OR

M A NOVEL H S FOR ABI

TA TM OS AI C

RA

MM

ED EXPLORATION OF

CONS TRU CT ED

IMMERSIVE EXPERI

1” = 4’ SCALE

CU LT IV AT IO

N

D BE

GR S(

LA ACI

RIA)

LOW TIDE - 3.22

PO R O U S GR OI N SE CT I ON : L AT E SP RI N G, 05-26 -20 58 28

29

TIDAL MARSH TO BRACKISH BACKWATER

BRACKISH BACKWATER TO MUSSEL POSTS

MUSSEL POSTS TO NORI CURTAINS

1” = 4’ SCALE

EE TH

M ASS GR EL

EADOWS

R ED L A VER

PUBL

RONMENTAL E ENVI DU CA TIO N

IC O YS TE R

IN

OPS RKSH WO ON TI VA

(NO RI )H A

IN YS DA

I LT

1” = 4’ SCALE

T ES RV

CU

1” = 4’ SCALE

MN AUTU

LOW TIDE + 2.33 1 2 : 5 8 P M

TI DAL TE RR ACE SECTION : AUTUMN EQUIN OX , 0 9 - 2 2 - 2 0 2 8

CONSTRUCTED KELP FORESTS

POROUS GROINS AS MUSSEL POSTS

POROUS GROIN AT UPPER BEACH

1” = 4’ SCALE

1” = 4’ SCALE

AM ON G

OG PR UN

NISMS RGA EO IN AR M

SU GA

EN CE

R

F LP KE

EST OR

M A NOVEL H S FOR ABI

TA TM OS AI C

RA

MM

ED EXPLORATION OF

CONS TRU CT ED

IMMERSIVE EXPERI

1” = 4’ SCALE

CU LT IV AT IO

N

D BE

GR S(

LA ACI

RIA)

LOW TIDE - 3.22

PO R O U S GR OI N SE CT I ON : L AT E SP RI N G, 05-26 -20 58 28

29

Mariculture as a spatial design tool is morphologically and performatively plastic.

It is a model that changes as maricultural agents become established and form habitat for other non-cultivated creatures. An integrated multitrophic aquaculture-based waterfront could go beyond retaining the land in spite of the sea. It could reestablish an interstitial space for the organisms that make the intertidal zone a living place and a living infrastructure for a terrestrial urban center. In this way, the intertidal zone is both a threshold and a place. In conventional waterfront design, the intertidal zone is summarily overlooked—it is rarely understood to be valuable as recreational space for urbanites, nor as performatively valuable as a softer form of shore protection infrastructure. As a result, the urban intertidal has been designed as the thinnest of spaces: a contour, a line, an edge.

In an urban world that is pressed for public space and in need of multifaceted approaches to mitigating the uncertainty and risk at the water’s edge, mariculture as a design tool offers a medium with which to reconceptualize the threshold between city and sea as a place again.

30

Iterative grading studies revealed that a series of terraces running at a constant width along the shoreline would not provide optimal sediment substrate to shellfish and other sand/gravel loving organisms. Rather, alternating the compression and release of terraces in a scalloped pattern would allow for both sandy, flat sediment and vertical cobble substrate at every intertidal elevation.

31

Mariculture as a spatial design tool is morphologically and performatively plastic.

It is a model that changes as maricultural agents become established and form habitat for other non-cultivated creatures. An integrated multitrophic aquaculture-based waterfront could go beyond retaining the land in spite of the sea. It could reestablish an interstitial space for the organisms that make the intertidal zone a living place and a living infrastructure for a terrestrial urban center. In this way, the intertidal zone is both a threshold and a place. In conventional waterfront design, the intertidal zone is summarily overlooked—it is rarely understood to be valuable as recreational space for urbanites, nor as performatively valuable as a softer form of shore protection infrastructure. As a result, the urban intertidal has been designed as the thinnest of spaces: a contour, a line, an edge.

In an urban world that is pressed for public space and in need of multifaceted approaches to mitigating the uncertainty and risk at the water’s edge, mariculture as a design tool offers a medium with which to reconceptualize the threshold between city and sea as a place again.

30

Iterative grading studies revealed that a series of terraces running at a constant width along the shoreline would not provide optimal sediment substrate to shellfish and other sand/gravel loving organisms. Rather, alternating the compression and release of terraces in a scalloped pattern would allow for both sandy, flat sediment and vertical cobble substrate at every intertidal elevation.

31

PERCEPTION + PRECISION: N

3000

4000

2018

4000 W, 250 N

2000

A N EXPLOR ATO RY PR O C E S S TOWAR D G E N E R AT IVE S I T E A NALYSIS

1946

of site. In the process, the site’s latent complexities and

analysis that merges perceptive and precise modes of

conceptual potentials can be uncovered. It is an approach

representation. This approach uses hand drawing and

that also responds to landscape fluxes by encouraging

digital tools, and allows for dynamic representations that

analysis on a broad timescale.

LIGHT 0

This project explores a nontraditional approach to site

1000

Jack Alderman

BLUFF

show both subjective and data-driven understandings

Fort Casey, WA

467 ACRE

1899

Fort Worden, WA

433 ACRE

1900

Fort Lawton, WA

703 ACRE

1900

Fort Colombia, WA

593 ACRE

1898

1200 W, 1050 S

RADAR

1700 E, 1100 S

S 0

W

Fort Stevens, OR

542 ACRE

1836

Fort McDowell, CA

595 ACRE

1901

Fort Miley, CA

54 ACRE

1898

Fort Barry, CA

477 ACRE

1905

1000

2000

3000

4000

E

The site for exploration in this thesis was Seattle’s Discovery Park, which has a rich history and a complex web of factors contributing to its form. The project focused on three nodes in the park that sparked further exploration: light, bluff, and radar.

Fort Lawton (now part of Discovery Park) is part of a network of coastal forts that have been converted to public parks.

32

33

PERCEPTION + PRECISION: N

3000

4000

2018

4000 W, 250 N

2000

A N EXPLOR ATO RY PR O C E S S TOWAR D G E N E R AT IVE S I T E A NALYSIS

1946

of site. In the process, the site’s latent complexities and

analysis that merges perceptive and precise modes of

conceptual potentials can be uncovered. It is an approach

representation. This approach uses hand drawing and

that also responds to landscape fluxes by encouraging

digital tools, and allows for dynamic representations that

analysis on a broad timescale.

LIGHT 0

This project explores a nontraditional approach to site

1000

Jack Alderman

BLUFF

show both subjective and data-driven understandings

Fort Casey, WA

467 ACRE

1899

Fort Worden, WA

433 ACRE

1900

Fort Lawton, WA

703 ACRE

1900

Fort Colombia, WA

593 ACRE

1898

1200 W, 1050 S

RADAR

1700 E, 1100 S

S 0

W

Fort Stevens, OR

542 ACRE

1836

Fort McDowell, CA

595 ACRE

1901

Fort Miley, CA

54 ACRE

1898

Fort Barry, CA

477 ACRE

1905

1000

2000

3000

4000

E

The site for exploration in this thesis was Seattle’s Discovery Park, which has a rich history and a complex web of factors contributing to its form. The project focused on three nodes in the park that sparked further exploration: light, bluff, and radar.

Fort Lawton (now part of Discovery Park) is part of a network of coastal forts that have been converted to public parks.

32

33

K RED TA IL HAW RUFOUS HU

MMINGBIR

D

BLACK

THROAT

ED WA RBLER

12 mi TRAILS 270 BIRD SPECIES 250’ ELEVATIONAL CHANGE

LMON OK S A

CHINO

FORAGING/PREY

PREDATORY

MIGRATORY

Performance refers to both the ecological and social performance of the site. This image slices the site into sections to show where fauna exists and how human paths of circulation move within this network of predators and prey. The site is also valuable as a stopover for migratory species: the rufous hummingbird, red-tailed hawk, black-throated warbler, and salmon.

34

The removal of a slice of the Discovery Park bluff and an analysis of the existing geological layers reveals the landform’s ever-changing nature and the processes that created it. After water seeps through a layer of Esperance sand, it moves horizontally on a layer of Lawton clay. It eventually washes out from the bottom of the sand layer, further exposing clay faces beneath.

35

K RED TA IL HAW RUFOUS HU

MMINGBIR

D

BLACK

THROAT

ED WA RBLER

12 mi TRAILS 270 BIRD SPECIES 250’ ELEVATIONAL CHANGE

LMON OK S A

CHINO

FORAGING/PREY

PREDATORY

MIGRATORY

Performance refers to both the ecological and social performance of the site. This image slices the site into sections to show where fauna exists and how human paths of circulation move within this network of predators and prey. The site is also valuable as a stopover for migratory species: the rufous hummingbird, red-tailed hawk, black-throated warbler, and salmon.

34

The removal of a slice of the Discovery Park bluff and an analysis of the existing geological layers reveals the landform’s ever-changing nature and the processes that created it. After water seeps through a layer of Esperance sand, it moves horizontally on a layer of Lawton clay. It eventually washes out from the bottom of the sand layer, further exposing clay faces beneath.

35

FEB

JAN DE C

NO

R MA

V APR

OCT MA Y

N

JU

AU G

P SE

JUL

Discovery Park’s main trail leads to the lighthouse, which provides a base for looking at elements of the site that relate to the shoreline: marine life, shipping routes, wind, human use, and site program.

36

Site analysis led to generative ideas that amplify existing relationships on the site. This image focuses on the idea of restore, with a focus on the park’s bluff. In this concept, symphoricarpos albus (snowberry) and Lupinus polyphyllus (big leaf lupine) could be planted on existing pockets of the bluff. These two species have fast-growing, expansive rhizomes that grow well in sandy soil. The running nature of the rhizomes would help stabilize parts of the bluff and create a temporal event: the yearly bloom.

37

FEB

JAN DE C

NO

R MA

V APR

OCT MA Y

N

JU

AU G

P SE

JUL

Discovery Park’s main trail leads to the lighthouse, which provides a base for looking at elements of the site that relate to the shoreline: marine life, shipping routes, wind, human use, and site program.

36

Site analysis led to generative ideas that amplify existing relationships on the site. This image focuses on the idea of restore, with a focus on the park’s bluff. In this concept, symphoricarpos albus (snowberry) and Lupinus polyphyllus (big leaf lupine) could be planted on existing pockets of the bluff. These two species have fast-growing, expansive rhizomes that grow well in sandy soil. The running nature of the rhizomes would help stabilize parts of the bluff and create a temporal event: the yearly bloom.

37

Whether spatially scaled or strictly conceptual, model making is integral to the design process. Exploration of materials sparks conversation between student and model. This dialogue deepens the ideas that undergird design decisions by engaging the senses and facilitating a three-dimensional exploration of concepts. The following four projects investigate design concepts through a wide range of materials including wax, cement, paper, and metal.

39

Whether spatially scaled or strictly conceptual, model making is integral to the design process. Exploration of materials sparks conversation between student and model. This dialogue deepens the ideas that undergird design decisions by engaging the senses and facilitating a three-dimensional exploration of concepts. The following four projects investigate design concepts through a wide range of materials including wax, cement, paper, and metal.

39

Flow // Movement ASYA SNEJNEVSKI

LANDSCAPE REPRESENTATION CONCEPTUAL WORK MATERIALS: WOOD, TWINE, BEESWAX

Instead of looking specifically at the flow of elements and people as they move onto and off of a site, these model iterations were explorations of the way that movement and flow of elements can be trapped and frozen on site.

Remnant

JEAN NI

STUDIO AND CONCEPTUAL WORK MATERIALS: PLASTER, FOUND OBJECTS (TWINE, BURLAP, COTTON, METAL, CARDBOARD, PLASTIC)

How can representation of material processes present a narrative about human and landscape memory?

These projects utilize the power of words—unearthing, embeddedness, extraction, accumulation—and their implied socio-cultural histories as the basis upon which sculptural experimentation is enacted.

40

41

Flow // Movement ASYA SNEJNEVSKI

LANDSCAPE REPRESENTATION CONCEPTUAL WORK MATERIALS: WOOD, TWINE, BEESWAX

Instead of looking specifically at the flow of elements and people as they move onto and off of a site, these model iterations were explorations of the way that movement and flow of elements can be trapped and frozen on site.

Remnant

JEAN NI

STUDIO AND CONCEPTUAL WORK MATERIALS: PLASTER, FOUND OBJECTS (TWINE, BURLAP, COTTON, METAL, CARDBOARD, PLASTIC)

How can representation of material processes present a narrative about human and landscape memory?

These projects utilize the power of words—unearthing, embeddedness, extraction, accumulation—and their implied socio-cultural histories as the basis upon which sculptural experimentation is enacted.

40

41

Coexist

KRISTA DOERSCH

STUDIO CONCEPTUAL WORK: COLLIDE, PASSAGE, EDGE MATERIALS: BRASS, WALNUT

This model blends the ideas of collision, change over time, and configuration through the lens of coexistence. I explored how places are held together with no singular cultural glue by literally building a model with no glue. Instead, the materials collide, allow passage, and support one another. Over time, one could rearrange the same pieces into new forms in a process of evolution.

New to the City ASYA SNEJNEVSKI

STUDIO CONCEPTUAL WORK: PERMEATE, PASSAGE, SEPARATION MATERIALS: BRASS, PLASTER

As new arrivals permeate the urban network, they combine, stack, peel away, and yet there is some shell of past life that does not enter, like a snake skin that is shed to allow for new growth and development. We are always changing, evolving. The model suggests that maybe there is yet another step, another skin to shed in the future.

42

43

Coexist

KRISTA DOERSCH

STUDIO CONCEPTUAL WORK: COLLIDE, PASSAGE, EDGE MATERIALS: BRASS, WALNUT

This model blends the ideas of collision, change over time, and configuration through the lens of coexistence. I explored how places are held together with no singular cultural glue by literally building a model with no glue. Instead, the materials collide, allow passage, and support one another. Over time, one could rearrange the same pieces into new forms in a process of evolution.

New to the City ASYA SNEJNEVSKI

STUDIO CONCEPTUAL WORK: PERMEATE, PASSAGE, SEPARATION MATERIALS: BRASS, PLASTER

As new arrivals permeate the urban network, they combine, stack, peel away, and yet there is some shell of past life that does not enter, like a snake skin that is shed to allow for new growth and development. We are always changing, evolving. The model suggests that maybe there is yet another step, another skin to shed in the future.

42

43

data + democracy + materiality “Data these days have a kind of materiality...

You can manipulate data in so many different ways... they’re something you can work with, similar to plants and building materials.”

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN JEFF HOU, PETER SAMUELS + TATYANA VASHCHENKO Tatyana Vashchenko: To start, given our theme material + matter, how would you describe the material toolkits or the concept of materiality within landscape architecture?

Jeff Hou: Well, landscape architecture is such a broad discipline. The toolkit that we have is incredibly diverse. It changes with the scale at which you’re working. If you’re working at site scale, design-build, residential, you are in touch with plant material as well as building material. But if you’re working with larger scale planning, it’s a different kind of materiality. The materials might be words and images. And I don’t know if you can consider data as a kind of material, but I think data these days have a kind of materiality that wasn’t associated with an older idea of data. You can manipulate data in so many different ways: by visualization, by presenting it in varied venues.

They’re something you can work with, similar to plants and building materials—a kind of material that isn’t traditional or conventional.

I don’t think there’s one toolkit for landscape architecture, per se. You must consider multiple toolkits.

44

Thick section of Seattle central waterfront: data as materials (Vanessa Lee, 2005)

Peter Samuels: Is part of the definition of materials then perhaps that we have the ability to manipulate them? At what point do data become material as opposed to being immaterial?

JH: They’re essentially something you can use; you can manipulate them to achieve your goal.

If you’re designing for a small garden over there, you might use plant material. If your goal is to plan for an urban district or a watershed, data becomes material. Data are something you must use in order to achieve a desirable outcome. I think to me, materiality becomes manifested in that way.

TV: You have a background in both landscape architecture and architecture.

And as you say, in landscape architecture, materiality is conceived of in a really broad way. Within architecture do you see that as being different? How would you compare the two?

JH: In architecture, you’re definitely working with a much more focused set of materials. But there’s kind of a blurred area where overlap can occur. As landscape architects, we also use steel, masonry, and other types of material [that architecture uses], because architecture doesn’t just stop at a line where landscape architecture

45

data + democracy + materiality “Data these days have a kind of materiality...

You can manipulate data in so many different ways... they’re something you can work with, similar to plants and building materials.”

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN JEFF HOU, PETER SAMUELS + TATYANA VASHCHENKO Tatyana Vashchenko: To start, given our theme material + matter, how would you describe the material toolkits or the concept of materiality within landscape architecture?

Jeff Hou: Well, landscape architecture is such a broad discipline. The toolkit that we have is incredibly diverse. It changes with the scale at which you’re working. If you’re working at site scale, design-build, residential, you are in touch with plant material as well as building material. But if you’re working with larger scale planning, it’s a different kind of materiality. The materials might be words and images. And I don’t know if you can consider data as a kind of material, but I think data these days have a kind of materiality that wasn’t associated with an older idea of data. You can manipulate data in so many different ways: by visualization, by presenting it in varied venues.

They’re something you can work with, similar to plants and building materials—a kind of material that isn’t traditional or conventional.

I don’t think there’s one toolkit for landscape architecture, per se. You must consider multiple toolkits.

44

Thick section of Seattle central waterfront: data as materials (Vanessa Lee, 2005)

Peter Samuels: Is part of the definition of materials then perhaps that we have the ability to manipulate them? At what point do data become material as opposed to being immaterial?

JH: They’re essentially something you can use; you can manipulate them to achieve your goal.

If you’re designing for a small garden over there, you might use plant material. If your goal is to plan for an urban district or a watershed, data becomes material. Data are something you must use in order to achieve a desirable outcome. I think to me, materiality becomes manifested in that way.

TV: You have a background in both landscape architecture and architecture.

And as you say, in landscape architecture, materiality is conceived of in a really broad way. Within architecture do you see that as being different? How would you compare the two?

JH: In architecture, you’re definitely working with a much more focused set of materials. But there’s kind of a blurred area where overlap can occur. As landscape architects, we also use steel, masonry, and other types of material [that architecture uses], because architecture doesn’t just stop at a line where landscape architecture

45

takes over. But plant material is something that is in the realm of landscape architecture, less in the realm of architecture. Because of that, we’re working with something that’s dynamic.

With plants, you don’t just plant and you’re done. You maintain them, expect them to grow.

[These materials] are something you have

Traditional dwelling compound on Pongso-No-Ta’u.

(Jeffrey Hou, ca.

1995)

to manipulate after the conclusion of design, something that goes on for a much longer period of time than in architectural design. That influences the way we think about the use of material and how to take care of it, how to work with it. And that has an impact on methodology in design. In landscape architecture you design for something that continues to evolve. You are designing for a process rather than for an outcome, per se, and that’s where things get pretty interesting.

PS: In your career, you first trained in architecture. Did dynamism—working more with change over time—play a role in your move toward landscape architecture?

JH: In a way. But that’s not how I first started.

Initially, I was interested in the broader spatial

fabric, beyond the footprint of the building. I happened to be working on my thesis project my final year of school for which I didn’t have a building program; it was more about what a site means for a particular memory. I also happened to visit a place on a small island between Taiwan and the Philippines where the vernacular architecture is completely embedded, literally embedded, into the landscape. It had this almost cave-architecture. There was seasonal migration between buildings that are completely below ground, half-submerged, and the others which are above the ground: a complete integration with landscape. Landscape had become a complete form of dwelling. It was not just something that served architecture—it became architecture in itself. And that’s how I became interested in landscape. It was actually after I started landscape architecture that I became more aware of this dynamism. And then things really started to make sense: nothing is set in stone, things shift all the time. And our built environment is more open-ended than we normally think. So it’s not how I started, but it’s one reason I’m still in the field.

be wider, to include more ephemerality, more temporary interventions. There’s a different sensibility toward material, and a continued debate about whether we should aim for something more permanent and if we are thinking in a more short-sighted manner. So there are people who are critical of these types of interventions using cheap materials. They suggest that we should be aiming for something more permanent. And there are others who would say that we need that kind of temporary intervention to engage people, or to create a sense of excitement and to explore possibilities.

So it’s not so much about the materiality per se, but it’s more about creating the opportunity for creating possibility, which can open the door to something more permanent. It’s more about a

dynamic process rather than something that’s final. And I actually haven’t thought about this before, but this is another conversation where materiality becomes an interesting way of talking about these different kinds of projects.

TV: You bring up the two sides of the discourse surrounding tactical urbanism.

I assume you’re somewhere more on the side of promoting temporary installations?

JH: I’m actually critical of both. There is this kind of tactical urbanism that doesn’t go beyond tactics. We need to think more broadly, beyond short-term intervention. But I’m also on the side of temporary intervention to say, we need this kind of activism to open up possibilities.

“Material has a way of engaging you in an intensive process.

In a dialogue. It’s an approach that depends on the material you use and has its own particular set of limitations and possibilities to push you to explore design in a different way.”

PS: In your own scholarship you focus on how democracy and politics interact with the configuration of public space.

How do you see materials as facilitating or enabling the expression of politics and culture?

JH: Okay, well that’s a very good one. And I usually don’t put material in the middle of that conversation. Material carries a message and also suggests who is in control of what defines that message. The fact that there was a more limited palette in the previous era of design—maybe that flags a certain type of design authority that’s more top-down than bottom-up. And if you look at more recent DIY tactical urbanism, it pushed material palettes to Gap Filler Summer Pallet Pavilion, Christchurch, NZ (Maja Moritz, 2012)

46

47

takes over. But plant material is something that is in the realm of landscape architecture, less in the realm of architecture. Because of that, we’re working with something that’s dynamic.

With plants, you don’t just plant and you’re done. You maintain them, expect them to grow.

[These materials] are something you have

Traditional dwelling compound on Pongso-No-Ta’u.

(Jeffrey Hou, ca.

1995)

to manipulate after the conclusion of design, something that goes on for a much longer period of time than in architectural design. That influences the way we think about the use of material and how to take care of it, how to work with it. And that has an impact on methodology in design. In landscape architecture you design for something that continues to evolve. You are designing for a process rather than for an outcome, per se, and that’s where things get pretty interesting.

PS: In your career, you first trained in architecture. Did dynamism—working more with change over time—play a role in your move toward landscape architecture?

JH: In a way. But that’s not how I first started.

Initially, I was interested in the broader spatial

fabric, beyond the footprint of the building. I happened to be working on my thesis project my final year of school for which I didn’t have a building program; it was more about what a site means for a particular memory. I also happened to visit a place on a small island between Taiwan and the Philippines where the vernacular architecture is completely embedded, literally embedded, into the landscape. It had this almost cave-architecture. There was seasonal migration between buildings that are completely below ground, half-submerged, and the others which are above the ground: a complete integration with landscape. Landscape had become a complete form of dwelling. It was not just something that served architecture—it became architecture in itself. And that’s how I became interested in landscape. It was actually after I started landscape architecture that I became more aware of this dynamism. And then things really started to make sense: nothing is set in stone, things shift all the time. And our built environment is more open-ended than we normally think. So it’s not how I started, but it’s one reason I’m still in the field.

be wider, to include more ephemerality, more temporary interventions. There’s a different sensibility toward material, and a continued debate about whether we should aim for something more permanent and if we are thinking in a more short-sighted manner. So there are people who are critical of these types of interventions using cheap materials. They suggest that we should be aiming for something more permanent. And there are others who would say that we need that kind of temporary intervention to engage people, or to create a sense of excitement and to explore possibilities.

So it’s not so much about the materiality per se, but it’s more about creating the opportunity for creating possibility, which can open the door to something more permanent. It’s more about a

dynamic process rather than something that’s final. And I actually haven’t thought about this before, but this is another conversation where materiality becomes an interesting way of talking about these different kinds of projects.

TV: You bring up the two sides of the discourse surrounding tactical urbanism.

I assume you’re somewhere more on the side of promoting temporary installations?

JH: I’m actually critical of both. There is this kind of tactical urbanism that doesn’t go beyond tactics. We need to think more broadly, beyond short-term intervention. But I’m also on the side of temporary intervention to say, we need this kind of activism to open up possibilities.

“Material has a way of engaging you in an intensive process.

In a dialogue. It’s an approach that depends on the material you use and has its own particular set of limitations and possibilities to push you to explore design in a different way.”

PS: In your own scholarship you focus on how democracy and politics interact with the configuration of public space.

How do you see materials as facilitating or enabling the expression of politics and culture?

JH: Okay, well that’s a very good one. And I usually don’t put material in the middle of that conversation. Material carries a message and also suggests who is in control of what defines that message. The fact that there was a more limited palette in the previous era of design—maybe that flags a certain type of design authority that’s more top-down than bottom-up. And if you look at more recent DIY tactical urbanism, it pushed material palettes to Gap Filler Summer Pallet Pavilion, Christchurch, NZ (Maja Moritz, 2012)

46

47

PS: Are there examples that come to mind where tactical urbanism broadens the material palette? And in what ways does it also narrow it?

JH: Yeah, definitely. For example, pallets have become a cliché that almost everyone uses.

It’s been used in all kinds of community gardens, installations, parklets, parking days.

If you see them, then you know it’s a tactical urbanism project. But there was one project in Christchurch [New Zealand] where [Gap Filler, a placemaking and urban regeneration social enterprise,] wanted to use pallets, but they also wanted to preserve their functionality as pallets. They wanted to avoid taking them apart, making them waste again. [In the project,] they used pallets to create an urban performance space. Basically, what they did is they drilled a hole through the vertical pieces in the pallets so they could be chained together and wouldn’t fall apart. That’s the only intervention that they made. So those pallets can be disassembled and used as pallets again. Their functionality isn’t lost. And I think that’s one instance where a material is used in a more thoughtful manner rather than as something that has become trendy and fashionable. To me, it has to do with a recognition of the material—not just the material itself but also how you use it. How you maneuver it [in a way] that recognizes the value of the given material. That’s one instance in which you can critique how tactical urbanism can also in some ways narrow the use of material. If you use it in a more critical manner, you can actually expand the way we think about the material and its life cycle.

There was another project that I came across in Taipei recently. It’s in a very narrow alleyway that’s very shady. There’s not much you can do in the space. A community group came up with a way to introduce plants by hanging them from

windows and walls. They used a lot of ferns and shade-tolerant plants, creating an aerial irrigation system that they can control with cellphones. They have these small devices that mist and water the plants. It has completely transformed the alleyway. It’s amazing. Most of the stuff they use is kind of inexpensive, but it does change the perception of the alleyway.

It became more of a community space. The community came together, took an alleyway, and transformed it into something else. It’s an example of tactical urbanism that opened up the imagination for a space and got people more interested in maintaining it into the future.

TV: As an educator, what is your philosophy for guiding students to engage with materials?

JH: I teach design studios, but I don’t teach material courses, so the way I approach materials is related to how they are used in a studio context. It’s how you use material to interpret the texture and the quality of a place, and how you work with models and different model making materials to explore and push the boundaries of design. I love model making.

I think Peter knows that. Material has a way of engaging you in an intensive process, in a dialogue. It’s an approach that depends on the material you use and has its own particular set of limitations and possibilities to push you to explore design in a different way. Working with plaster is different from working with clay or wood or something else.

So different kinds of materials allow you to examine the appropriate methods of design.

For some design, plaster makes perfect sense. It lends itself to a different kind of design process.

With plaster, once it’s solidified, you can carve it, but it’s there already. With clay, you can continue to shift and morph it into different

shapes. The choices of material allow you to become much more conscious of your design process.

This isn’t to criticize digital media or the abundance of tools that we have. They’re appropriate for certain tasks and processes and are now becoming as intuitive as pen and pencil.

Some “old timers” are stuck in the opinion that you have to draw in order to communicate. I don’t think that’s the case—or at least not 100 percent of the time. But actual model making is becoming something that students don’t often have the experience of doing. This diminishes their ability to engage in a wider design process.

In the old days, before laser cutting, we had to cut all the contours by hand. By doing so, you’re completely immersed in the topography. You have to cut each layer. With the laser cutter and 3D printer, you send a file, and everything is cut or printed for you. For me, it doesn’t have the same level of immersion in the topography.

Also, it’s kind of a meditative process, making models. I don’t know if you feel the same way.

You realize very quickly, especially with a scale model, when something is the right scale or not.

You turn the model around and begin to see, “oh, something isn’t working very well,” and you can begin to make changes right away.

“Drawings can lie. They can be deceiving.

Models rarely lie. You see what’s there.”

Models don’t lie as much as drawings. Drawings can lie. They can be deceiving. Models rarely lie.

You see what’s there. And that’s what I want my students to experience. Even if they don’t use it as much in the future, this way they get the chance to engage in this other type of design process.

Alleyway greening in Taipei. (Jeffrey Hou, 2018) 48

49

PS: Are there examples that come to mind where tactical urbanism broadens the material palette? And in what ways does it also narrow it?

JH: Yeah, definitely. For example, pallets have become a cliché that almost everyone uses.

It’s been used in all kinds of community gardens, installations, parklets, parking days.

If you see them, then you know it’s a tactical urbanism project. But there was one project in Christchurch [New Zealand] where [Gap Filler, a placemaking and urban regeneration social enterprise,] wanted to use pallets, but they also wanted to preserve their functionality as pallets. They wanted to avoid taking them apart, making them waste again. [In the project,] they used pallets to create an urban performance space. Basically, what they did is they drilled a hole through the vertical pieces in the pallets so they could be chained together and wouldn’t fall apart. That’s the only intervention that they made. So those pallets can be disassembled and used as pallets again. Their functionality isn’t lost. And I think that’s one instance where a material is used in a more thoughtful manner rather than as something that has become trendy and fashionable. To me, it has to do with a recognition of the material—not just the material itself but also how you use it. How you maneuver it [in a way] that recognizes the value of the given material. That’s one instance in which you can critique how tactical urbanism can also in some ways narrow the use of material. If you use it in a more critical manner, you can actually expand the way we think about the material and its life cycle.

There was another project that I came across in Taipei recently. It’s in a very narrow alleyway that’s very shady. There’s not much you can do in the space. A community group came up with a way to introduce plants by hanging them from

windows and walls. They used a lot of ferns and shade-tolerant plants, creating an aerial irrigation system that they can control with cellphones. They have these small devices that mist and water the plants. It has completely transformed the alleyway. It’s amazing. Most of the stuff they use is kind of inexpensive, but it does change the perception of the alleyway.

It became more of a community space. The community came together, took an alleyway, and transformed it into something else. It’s an example of tactical urbanism that opened up the imagination for a space and got people more interested in maintaining it into the future.

TV: As an educator, what is your philosophy for guiding students to engage with materials?

JH: I teach design studios, but I don’t teach material courses, so the way I approach materials is related to how they are used in a studio context. It’s how you use material to interpret the texture and the quality of a place, and how you work with models and different model making materials to explore and push the boundaries of design. I love model making.

I think Peter knows that. Material has a way of engaging you in an intensive process, in a dialogue. It’s an approach that depends on the material you use and has its own particular set of limitations and possibilities to push you to explore design in a different way. Working with plaster is different from working with clay or wood or something else.

So different kinds of materials allow you to examine the appropriate methods of design.

For some design, plaster makes perfect sense. It lends itself to a different kind of design process.

With plaster, once it’s solidified, you can carve it, but it’s there already. With clay, you can continue to shift and morph it into different

shapes. The choices of material allow you to become much more conscious of your design process.

This isn’t to criticize digital media or the abundance of tools that we have. They’re appropriate for certain tasks and processes and are now becoming as intuitive as pen and pencil.

Some “old timers” are stuck in the opinion that you have to draw in order to communicate. I don’t think that’s the case—or at least not 100 percent of the time. But actual model making is becoming something that students don’t often have the experience of doing. This diminishes their ability to engage in a wider design process.

In the old days, before laser cutting, we had to cut all the contours by hand. By doing so, you’re completely immersed in the topography. You have to cut each layer. With the laser cutter and 3D printer, you send a file, and everything is cut or printed for you. For me, it doesn’t have the same level of immersion in the topography.

Also, it’s kind of a meditative process, making models. I don’t know if you feel the same way.

You realize very quickly, especially with a scale model, when something is the right scale or not.

You turn the model around and begin to see, “oh, something isn’t working very well,” and you can begin to make changes right away.

“Drawings can lie. They can be deceiving.

Models rarely lie. You see what’s there.”

Models don’t lie as much as drawings. Drawings can lie. They can be deceiving. Models rarely lie.

You see what’s there. And that’s what I want my students to experience. Even if they don’t use it as much in the future, this way they get the chance to engage in this other type of design process.

Alleyway greening in Taipei. (Jeffrey Hou, 2018) 48

49

TV: Whether it’s the meditative act of handcrafting each layer or sculpting clay, or use of digital modeling to print physical models, model making gives you the opportunity to modify and examine your design. There’s the communication aspect as well as the subsequent process of manipulation: the taking away and adding to.

JH: Yes, I think in the context of studio, material becomes an important way of thinking about design methods and design process. It’s not a material in the sense of the actual material you use in the site, but material more in the sense of how one begins to engage in the design process.

PS: In model making you engage form and material. As a student, it sometimes feels like we talk about form and material separately. What are the opportunities and pitfalls of which students should be aware as they attempt to engage form and material together?

JH: This is a relevant question. Forms are definitely influenced by materials, and vice-

versa. For example, the kind of model material you use would influence what you could make.

The choice of construction or plant materials influences the form of a space or structure.

Conversely, to achieve a certain form, you need to select an appropriate material. In terms of pitfalls in the learning process, sometimes it’s hard to do everything or too much all at once.

There is a building block model of learning. You take portions, one step at a time. If we give you ten materials to use in your first studio, that’s probably too many. If we give you two, then you can begin to explore the texture, weight, and manipulation of those. And if we pair materials and form, rather than 10 materials and 10 forms, maybe we give you two formal palettes and two materials. Then you begin to explore. I think it’s more about how you scale an exploration.

I think as you become more advanced in your career, you become much more capable of choosing. And I think most experienced designers still come back to a very simple palette, and develop the design, adding things in a more iterative manner.

Model making for Plant’s-Eye Views of Taipei, 2018 Taipei Biennial, collaboration with Dorothy Tang (courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum) 50

51

TV: Whether it’s the meditative act of handcrafting each layer or sculpting clay, or use of digital modeling to print physical models, model making gives you the opportunity to modify and examine your design. There’s the communication aspect as well as the subsequent process of manipulation: the taking away and adding to.

JH: Yes, I think in the context of studio, material becomes an important way of thinking about design methods and design process. It’s not a material in the sense of the actual material you use in the site, but material more in the sense of how one begins to engage in the design process.

PS: In model making you engage form and material. As a student, it sometimes feels like we talk about form and material separately. What are the opportunities and pitfalls of which students should be aware as they attempt to engage form and material together?

JH: This is a relevant question. Forms are definitely influenced by materials, and vice-

versa. For example, the kind of model material you use would influence what you could make.

The choice of construction or plant materials influences the form of a space or structure.

Conversely, to achieve a certain form, you need to select an appropriate material. In terms of pitfalls in the learning process, sometimes it’s hard to do everything or too much all at once.

There is a building block model of learning. You take portions, one step at a time. If we give you ten materials to use in your first studio, that’s probably too many. If we give you two, then you can begin to explore the texture, weight, and manipulation of those. And if we pair materials and form, rather than 10 materials and 10 forms, maybe we give you two formal palettes and two materials. Then you begin to explore. I think it’s more about how you scale an exploration.

I think as you become more advanced in your career, you become much more capable of choosing. And I think most experienced designers still come back to a very simple palette, and develop the design, adding things in a more iterative manner.

Model making for Plant’s-Eye Views of Taipei, 2018 Taipei Biennial, collaboration with Dorothy Tang (courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum) 50

51

Before embarking on a year-long thesis or capstone project, landscape architecture students will engage in up to seven quarters of design studios. The students’ resulting projects address prompts that span diverse issues and scales. The following eight studio projects range in theme from displacement in the face of development to Scandinavianinspired urban design to memorialization.

53

Before embarking on a year-long thesis or capstone project, landscape architecture students will engage in up to seven quarters of design studios. The students’ resulting projects address prompts that span diverse issues and scales. The following eight studio projects range in theme from displacement in the face of development to Scandinavianinspired urban design to memorialization.

53

A

Mexico City & region face messy problems.

Water is a watershed issue, not a city issue.

AEROSPINA

Messy problems converge at the city boundary in the Benito Juarez airport & the borough of Neza York.

Redefining Mexico City’s Gateway

Laura Durgerian, Mackinley Erickson + Sharon Fung Built in the footprint of former Lake Texcoco, Mexico City’s gateway, Benito Juárez International Airport, sinks as the city’s aquifer is drained to support over 20 million inhabitants. With the airport vacated for firmer ground, we look to the potential energy of settling ground and the byproducts of dense humanity—ingenuity, agency, and energy—to catalyze a mixed-life system. Densifying within existing runways and using the cells between as public lands and test plots, we layer research, education, commerce, transit, recreation, housing, water collection, public life, and shared resources to grow a flexible living and learning organism that provides a resource

How Is It Shaped By What Is Already There?

to surrounding lower-income communities, particularly those displaced by disaster.

As the runways point to the city’s center, there is opportunity for an equitable eastwest connection, bringing the city’s history—the Zócalo, Paseo de la Reforma, and Chapultepec Park—into conversation with its future dynamic urban ecology.

54

Existing Runways Scaffolding for an innovation district

Test Plots Mosaic of public lands

Contextual Mesh Unfolding expansion into surrounding colonias 55

A

Mexico City & region face messy problems.

Water is a watershed issue, not a city issue.

AEROSPINA

Messy problems converge at the city boundary in the Benito Juarez airport & the borough of Neza York.

Redefining Mexico City’s Gateway

Laura Durgerian, Mackinley Erickson + Sharon Fung Built in the footprint of former Lake Texcoco, Mexico City’s gateway, Benito Juárez International Airport, sinks as the city’s aquifer is drained to support over 20 million inhabitants. With the airport vacated for firmer ground, we look to the potential energy of settling ground and the byproducts of dense humanity—ingenuity, agency, and energy—to catalyze a mixed-life system. Densifying within existing runways and using the cells between as public lands and test plots, we layer research, education, commerce, transit, recreation, housing, water collection, public life, and shared resources to grow a flexible living and learning organism that provides a resource

How Is It Shaped By What Is Already There?

to surrounding lower-income communities, particularly those displaced by disaster.

As the runways point to the city’s center, there is opportunity for an equitable eastwest connection, bringing the city’s history—the Zócalo, Paseo de la Reforma, and Chapultepec Park—into conversation with its future dynamic urban ecology.

54

Existing Runways Scaffolding for an innovation district

Test Plots Mosaic of public lands

Contextual Mesh Unfolding expansion into surrounding colonias 55

What Does it Feel Like?

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

2018 - 2040

2040 - 2070

2070 - 2100

The Roof as a Public Good Densified runways create constructed ridgelines from which people can overlook their city. A responsive roof collects water and solar energy. Transit connects people. Agriculture nourishes.

2020 2050?

2100?

How Does it Grow Over Time?

2100?

2070?

The Runway as a Living Spine Scaffolding affords gradual, demand-based growth and infill. Unfolding umbrella piles collect, treat, store, and infiltrate water, while enabling vertical connections between runway and test plot. A network of smart roofs harnesses energy to power suspended streetcar transit.

2020?

56

57

What Does it Feel Like?

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

2018 - 2040

2040 - 2070

2070 - 2100

The Roof as a Public Good Densified runways create constructed ridgelines from which people can overlook their city. A responsive roof collects water and solar energy. Transit connects people. Agriculture nourishes.

2020 2050?

2100?

How Does it Grow Over Time?

2100?

2070?

The Runway as a Living Spine Scaffolding affords gradual, demand-based growth and infill. Unfolding umbrella piles collect, treat, store, and infiltrate water, while enabling vertical connections between runway and test plot. A network of smart roofs harnesses energy to power suspended streetcar transit.

2020?

56

57

LEGEND Plan Master

A

44 42

1 2 3 4 5

2

40

9

6 7

38

8 9

36

10

34 32

11 12

30

28 26

1

24

parking stone seating waterfront plaza underwater walkway stone steps indoor reservable space pavilion wooden deck upland habitat bioretention nearshore habitat floating island

22 24

10

B

10 6

2

20

2

7

26

18

4

B’ 6

ADA ACCESSIBLE WALKWAY

8

A’

FLOATING ISLAND

12

EXPANDED WETLAND

Yunxin Du + Yang He

BIORETENTION

A

WALKWAY

C’ UPLAND HABITAT

11

20

3

18

COMMUNITY HABITAT Design for the Ethiopian Community in Seattle

5

24

22

C

C

The focus of this design is to engage the Ethiopian and broader East African communities that live, work, and come together in Rainier Beach. Through the

A'

design process, we aimed to recognize the multiplicity of social identities and the complexity of community belonging by designing for an authentic sense of place and support for the development of a critical race/social justice lens.

Clear

Dry Season

+2 Year Adapt

Rainy

Wet Season

+4 Year Stabilize

The site is located at Pritchard Island Beach, an eight-minute walk from the community center, Ethiopian Community in Seattle (ECS). The design intends to preserve and expand the existing bird habitat, as well as create human habitat for all people in the community, with a special welcome to people of Ethiopian descent. Through this lens of human habitat, the design intends to cater to peoples’ needs while also inspiring human interaction with wildlife habitat.

58

59

LEGEND Plan Master

A

44 42

1 2 3 4 5

2

40

9

6 7

38

8 9

36

10

34 32

11 12

30

28 26

1

24

parking stone seating waterfront plaza underwater walkway stone steps indoor reservable space pavilion wooden deck upland habitat bioretention nearshore habitat floating island

22 24

10

B

10 6

2

20

2

7

26

18

4

B’ 6

ADA ACCESSIBLE WALKWAY

8

A’

FLOATING ISLAND

12

EXPANDED WETLAND

Yunxin Du + Yang He

BIORETENTION

A

WALKWAY

C’ UPLAND HABITAT

11

20

3

18

COMMUNITY HABITAT Design for the Ethiopian Community in Seattle

5

24

22

C

C

The focus of this design is to engage the Ethiopian and broader East African communities that live, work, and come together in Rainier Beach. Through the

A'

design process, we aimed to recognize the multiplicity of social identities and the complexity of community belonging by designing for an authentic sense of place and support for the development of a critical race/social justice lens.

Clear

Dry Season

+2 Year Adapt

Rainy

Wet Season

+4 Year Stabilize

The site is located at Pritchard Island Beach, an eight-minute walk from the community center, Ethiopian Community in Seattle (ECS). The design intends to preserve and expand the existing bird habitat, as well as create human habitat for all people in the community, with a special welcome to people of Ethiopian descent. Through this lens of human habitat, the design intends to cater to peoples’ needs while also inspiring human interaction with wildlife habitat.

58

59

Sculpture

The wooden pathway leads people all the way

Roof Structure

through the site northward and arrives at the

Stone Seating

pavilion and indoor space. This proposed structure provides shelter for various indoor programming, such as coffee ceremonies, art galleries, and other community activities organized by the ECS. Like

Waterfront Plaza

the ECS’s nearby community center, this indoor space could also be reserved for private events. The

Underwater Pathway

covered corridor connects the pathway from the upland habitat area to the waterfront lawn area, creating a semi-open gathering space.

Stretching out to the water, the narrow wooden

Wooden Deck

deck provides a broader waterfront view. The

Bioretention

stone steps invite people closer to the water. The

Steps

lawn area serves as an open space for community gatherings, while stone seating and sculptures

Stone Steps

Expanded Wetland

placed on the lawn area invite both exploration and rest.

The waterfront plaza is another open gathering space and extends beyond the waterfront. It was reflected in the community survey that some people

Top: Exploded axon of waterf ront plaza + lawn area Bottom: View of the waterf ront plaza + underwater walkway

enjoy being close to water but don’t want to touch it. The design of the underwater walkway takes this into consideration by providing an immersive waterfront experience.

Top left: Exploded axon of wooden pathway and shelter Top right: View of the waterf ront and the pavilion Bottom: Concept model

60

61

Sculpture

The wooden pathway leads people all the way

Roof Structure

through the site northward and arrives at the

Stone Seating

pavilion and indoor space. This proposed structure provides shelter for various indoor programming, such as coffee ceremonies, art galleries, and other community activities organized by the ECS. Like

Waterfront Plaza

the ECS’s nearby community center, this indoor space could also be reserved for private events. The

Underwater Pathway

covered corridor connects the pathway from the upland habitat area to the waterfront lawn area, creating a semi-open gathering space.

Stretching out to the water, the narrow wooden

Wooden Deck

deck provides a broader waterfront view. The

Bioretention

stone steps invite people closer to the water. The

Steps

lawn area serves as an open space for community gatherings, while stone seating and sculptures

Stone Steps

Expanded Wetland

placed on the lawn area invite both exploration and rest.

The waterfront plaza is another open gathering space and extends beyond the waterfront. It was reflected in the community survey that some people

Top: Exploded axon of waterf ront plaza + lawn area Bottom: View of the waterf ront plaza + underwater walkway

enjoy being close to water but don’t want to touch it. The design of the underwater walkway takes this into consideration by providing an immersive waterfront experience.

Top left: Exploded axon of wooden pathway and shelter Top right: View of the waterf ront and the pavilion Bottom: Concept model

60

61

R

Mature Trees

Invasive Plants

RAINIER GROVE

Degraded Wetland

Fenced Off

Trash Dumping

Local Businesses

ሬን የ ር መ ና ፈ ሻ Yutong Hu + Nina Mross

Layer

Seven vacant lots wedged between Rainier Avenue S and S Cloverdale Place hold a dense tree canopy, a degraded wetland, steep slopes, and a liquefaction zone and are thus inaccessible to the community. Trash and old furniture are being dumped into the site, and invasive plants are taking over. However, the site lies at the center of a vibrant neighborhood and is right next to several small shops and community service organizations. Because of these conditions, the economic value of these lots to developers is low, but the potential community and ecological values are very high.

Access

Through our project, these vacant lots will be transformed into a large community park that combines habitat restoration, biodiversity measures, and significant stormwater management performance with large event and market spaces, a canopy walk, and a terraced beach, which enmesh human users in the ecological environment and create a rich community hub. The Afrocentric design, guided by the community, celebrates and supports Ethiopian culture and community life.

Concept: Neighborhood Landmark Enmesh

62

63

R

Mature Trees

Invasive Plants

RAINIER GROVE

Degraded Wetland

Fenced Off

Trash Dumping

Local Businesses

ሬን የ ር መ ና ፈ ሻ Yutong Hu + Nina Mross

Layer

Seven vacant lots wedged between Rainier Avenue S and S Cloverdale Place hold a dense tree canopy, a degraded wetland, steep slopes, and a liquefaction zone and are thus inaccessible to the community. Trash and old furniture are being dumped into the site, and invasive plants are taking over. However, the site lies at the center of a vibrant neighborhood and is right next to several small shops and community service organizations. Because of these conditions, the economic value of these lots to developers is low, but the potential community and ecological values are very high.

Access

Through our project, these vacant lots will be transformed into a large community park that combines habitat restoration, biodiversity measures, and significant stormwater management performance with large event and market spaces, a canopy walk, and a terraced beach, which enmesh human users in the ecological environment and create a rich community hub. The Afrocentric design, guided by the community, celebrates and supports Ethiopian culture and community life.

Concept: Neighborhood Landmark Enmesh

62

63

W

Master Plan እቅድ ዕ ቅድ

A

1) market

6) skywalk

2) plaza

7) bio-islands

3) event

8) terrace beach

4) dining

9) meadow

5) reservoir

10) dry creek

B A S

apartments

H A V E S .

Wood

Concrete

White Metal Lattice

String Lights

7

Artist's Pattern

Roof Slats

4 a st c e n te

5

r

6

rainier avenue south

3 1

2

metal lattice wood deck

8 9 10

substation

wood roof

so

u

th

c

lo

v

e

rd

a

le

p

la

c

e

stone bench

low water level sand gravel

concrete pylons S E C T I O N S C A L E 1/8”= 1’ 0’

4’

8’

16’

24’

30'

28'

MINI-MART

Merkato Plaza መርካቶ አደባባይ

bio-island

' 26

reservoir

30

' 26 24'

' 28

'

34'

28 ' 32

30

'

38'

36'

40'

42' 44'

' 26 '

' 24 2' 2

32'

30

'

' 28

aeration terrace treatment creek ' 32

34 '

Wetland & Stormwater ረግረግ እና ዝናብ 64

SCALE: 1” = 20’

0’

20’

40’

60’

65

W

Master Plan እቅድ ዕ ቅድ

A

1) market

6) skywalk

2) plaza

7) bio-islands

3) event

8) terrace beach

4) dining

9) meadow

5) reservoir

10) dry creek

B A S

apartments

H A V E S .

Wood

Concrete

White Metal Lattice

String Lights

7

Artist's Pattern

Roof Slats

4 a st c e n te

5

r

6

rainier avenue south

3 1

2

metal lattice wood deck

8 9 10

substation

wood roof

so

u

th

c

lo

v

e

rd

a

le

p

la

c

e

stone bench

low water level sand gravel

concrete pylons S E C T I O N S C A L E 1/8”= 1’ 0’

4’

8’

16’

24’

30'

28'

MINI-MART

Merkato Plaza መርካቶ አደባባይ

bio-island

' 26

reservoir

30

' 26 24'

' 28

'

34'

28 ' 32

30

'

38'

36'

40'

42' 44'

' 26 '

' 24 2' 2

32'

30

'

' 28

aeration terrace treatment creek ' 32

34 '

Wetland & Stormwater ረግረግ እና ዝናብ 64

SCALE: 1” = 20’

0’

20’

40’

60’

65

C

TOOLS FOR COMMUNITY POWER Resources for Design Justice + Neighborhood-Level Organizing Marcus Chaffee, Clara Cheeves, Fatema Maswood, Bec Nissen + Lauren Wong The Neighborhood Resilience Series is a set of short visual guides developed to support community organizing, capacity building, and material mobilization. They’re inexpensive, easily distributed, and flexible in their application. This project began during an interdisciplinary College of Built Environments studio taught by Rachel Berney and Julie Johnson in Winter 2018 examining resiliency in the Mt. Baker Transit Center and the area’s recent upzoning, which foreshadows tremendous change in the neighborhood.

“Historical Context for the Mt. Baker Lowe's Site” This booklet reminds us that no site is a blank slate and includes research ranging from Coast Salish history to restrictive covenants that prevented the sale of property to non-whites.

Historical Context for the Mt. Baker Lowe’s Site (Fatema Maswood, Lauren Wong)

66

67

C

TOOLS FOR COMMUNITY POWER Resources for Design Justice + Neighborhood-Level Organizing Marcus Chaffee, Clara Cheeves, Fatema Maswood, Bec Nissen + Lauren Wong The Neighborhood Resilience Series is a set of short visual guides developed to support community organizing, capacity building, and material mobilization. They’re inexpensive, easily distributed, and flexible in their application. This project began during an interdisciplinary College of Built Environments studio taught by Rachel Berney and Julie Johnson in Winter 2018 examining resiliency in the Mt. Baker Transit Center and the area’s recent upzoning, which foreshadows tremendous change in the neighborhood.

“Historical Context for the Mt. Baker Lowe's Site” This booklet reminds us that no site is a blank slate and includes research ranging from Coast Salish history to restrictive covenants that prevented the sale of property to non-whites.

Historical Context for the Mt. Baker Lowe’s Site (Fatema Maswood, Lauren Wong)

66

67

As a group of landscape architects and urban

We also sought out historical information to combat

planners, we are continually working toward models

the concept of blank development parcels; here

for truly participatory work that reflects our dream

we live and work on Duwamish land that reflects

of facilitating community spaces that are not defined

thousands of years of human settlement and

by real estate speculation and the whims of unjust

complexity, layers that uphold and challenge all work

markets. We seek transformative change on many

that we do in the built environment. In producing

scales and, in this project, sought out existing

these books, we considered how to make the matter

models of cooperative land ownership, cooperative

of our professional training accessible and responsive

economics, and other elements of community control

to work happening on the ground, and how to build

to germinate ideas of viable alternatives.

long-lasting collaborative relationships.

"Community Economies" This booklet explores different approaches to cooperative economics, providing models for local business ownership and commercial property ownership. It offers questions that communities can ask when organizing to form cooperative businesses.

A Pocket Guide to: Community Economies (Fatema Maswood, Bec Nissen)

Cubes and Ladders: Exploring Community Engagement (Marcus Chaffee, Fatema Maswood, Lauren Wong)

68

“Cubes and Ladders: Exploring Community Engagement�

This booklet aims to equip community members with the language of engagement and ways to push against these processes if they aren’t being used for mutually beneficial goals.

69

As a group of landscape architects and urban

We also sought out historical information to combat

planners, we are continually working toward models

the concept of blank development parcels; here

for truly participatory work that reflects our dream

we live and work on Duwamish land that reflects

of facilitating community spaces that are not defined

thousands of years of human settlement and

by real estate speculation and the whims of unjust

complexity, layers that uphold and challenge all work

markets. We seek transformative change on many

that we do in the built environment. In producing

scales and, in this project, sought out existing

these books, we considered how to make the matter

models of cooperative land ownership, cooperative

of our professional training accessible and responsive

economics, and other elements of community control

to work happening on the ground, and how to build

to germinate ideas of viable alternatives.

long-lasting collaborative relationships.

"Community Economies" This booklet explores different approaches to cooperative economics, providing models for local business ownership and commercial property ownership. It offers questions that communities can ask when organizing to form cooperative businesses.

A Pocket Guide to: Community Economies (Fatema Maswood, Bec Nissen)

Cubes and Ladders: Exploring Community Engagement (Marcus Chaffee, Fatema Maswood, Lauren Wong)

68

“Cubes and Ladders: Exploring Community Engagement�

This booklet aims to equip community members with the language of engagement and ways to push against these processes if they aren’t being used for mutually beneficial goals.

69

"Community Land Trusts" (CLTs) This booklet introduces the idea of land and property ownership using the CLT model, which explores approaches to removing land from the market as a tool for communities to stay in place. We provide and examine existing CLT precedents as well as local and national resources for founding CLTs.

"Community Control: Reframing TransitOriented Development in Mt. Baker" This booklet explores some tools that community members can use to shape the landscape around them in order to support people vulnerable to real estate speculation and rising property values.

Top left + top right: A Pocket Introduction to: Community Land Trusts (Clara Cheeves, Fatema Maswood) Bottom left + bottom right: Community Control: Reframing Transit-Oriented Development in Mt. Baker (Fatema Maswood, Lauren Wong)

70

71

"Community Land Trusts" (CLTs) This booklet introduces the idea of land and property ownership using the CLT model, which explores approaches to removing land from the market as a tool for communities to stay in place. We provide and examine existing CLT precedents as well as local and national resources for founding CLTs.

"Community Control: Reframing TransitOriented Development in Mt. Baker" This booklet explores some tools that community members can use to shape the landscape around them in order to support people vulnerable to real estate speculation and rising property values.

Top left + top right: A Pocket Introduction to: Community Land Trusts (Clara Cheeves, Fatema Maswood) Bottom left + bottom right: Community Control: Reframing Transit-Oriented Development in Mt. Baker (Fatema Maswood, Lauren Wong)

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71

P

0’ 20’ 40’

A

PORTAL PARK

100’

200’

A’

’ B

B

Nicki Bloom + Allison Ong

This design acknowledges the site’s thick history—as a Duwamish village called Little Prairies, a gathering place for several tribes after eviction from other parts of Seattle, a burial ground, and a viaduct—and restores historic function rather than historic form. Water management infrastructure is layered with gathering circles, viewing decks, long views of Mt. Rainier and the Puget Sound, lush planted hillsides, and much-needed open space to immerse visitors in place. A hardscaped plaza allows for formal educational and social programming while the majority

Section A: Wetland Dock & Overlook

of Belltown’s largest future open space is left loose, dedicated to immersive experiences of plants, views, people, and water.

Top right: Site plan (Allison Ong) Bottom right: Sections (Nicky Bloom)

72

Section B: Cistern & Council Ring 73

P

0’ 20’ 40’

A

PORTAL PARK

100’

200’

A’

’ B

B

Nicki Bloom + Allison Ong

This design acknowledges the site’s thick history—as a Duwamish village called Little Prairies, a gathering place for several tribes after eviction from other parts of Seattle, a burial ground, and a viaduct—and restores historic function rather than historic form. Water management infrastructure is layered with gathering circles, viewing decks, long views of Mt. Rainier and the Puget Sound, lush planted hillsides, and much-needed open space to immerse visitors in place. A hardscaped plaza allows for formal educational and social programming while the majority

Section A: Wetland Dock & Overlook

of Belltown’s largest future open space is left loose, dedicated to immersive experiences of plants, views, people, and water.

Top right: Site plan (Allison Ong) Bottom right: Sections (Nicky Bloom)

72

Section B: Cistern & Council Ring 73

Program Icons Biofiltration Channel

!

Section perspective of biofiltration channel (Nicky Bloom)

A series of terraced biofiltration cells treat the lightly

or potentially linked to the greywater system of the

filtered stormwater from the tunnel as it descends

adjacent condominium building.

toward the Puget Sound. As the water is cleaned,

Excess water is expressed in a final round stepwell

The main program areas of the site include a constructed wetland fed by stormwater collected in the Battery

it is piped over to a cistern beneath the hill council

Street tunnel, a bridge from Post Alley into the site, a salal prairie area for intimate bench nooks and plant

ring and stored to be used for plant irrigation on site

gathering, a central council ring with a view of Mt. Rainier, a south-facing lawn, and a flexible outdoor plaza adjacent to a glass program house for indoor rainy weather programming.

shape that people can see before it drains back into the sewer, having been slowed and cleaned en route.

Water Management biofiltration slow cells soak

constructed wetlands

store slow

vegetated swale

10’ deep store cistern

detention planter

Wetland & Overlook 74

soak 5’ deep store cistern

store soak

Top left: Programmatic element icons (Allison Ong) Bottom left: View of wetland and overlook (Allison Ong)

57,000 ft2 pervious surface

spread soak

Water management diagram (Allison Ong) 75

Program Icons Biofiltration Channel

!

Section perspective of biofiltration channel (Nicky Bloom)

A series of terraced biofiltration cells treat the lightly

or potentially linked to the greywater system of the

filtered stormwater from the tunnel as it descends

adjacent condominium building.

toward the Puget Sound. As the water is cleaned,

Excess water is expressed in a final round stepwell

The main program areas of the site include a constructed wetland fed by stormwater collected in the Battery

it is piped over to a cistern beneath the hill council

Street tunnel, a bridge from Post Alley into the site, a salal prairie area for intimate bench nooks and plant

ring and stored to be used for plant irrigation on site

gathering, a central council ring with a view of Mt. Rainier, a south-facing lawn, and a flexible outdoor plaza adjacent to a glass program house for indoor rainy weather programming.

shape that people can see before it drains back into the sewer, having been slowed and cleaned en route.

Water Management biofiltration slow cells soak

constructed wetlands

store slow

vegetated swale

10’ deep store cistern

detention planter

Wetland & Overlook 74

soak 5’ deep store cistern

store soak

Top left: Programmatic element icons (Allison Ong) Bottom left: View of wetland and overlook (Allison Ong)

57,000 ft2 pervious surface

spread soak

Water management diagram (Allison Ong) 75

F

FIBER, THREAD, FABRIC

unstable slope

ecological sensitivity

Site Analysis

connection

creek + salmon

land + property

Daylight Mason Creek & Improve Habitat

Julia Bakke, Rebekah Rongo + Fengyi Zu Ruston Way runs along the shoreline of Tacoma’s waterfront and is one of the city’s most popular destinations. Since the design of the waterfront in the 1980s, use

Green Space Revitalization

has shifted from industry to recreation, and with it, the need for a more connected parks system has grown. During Winter 2018, UW students worked with the City of Tacoma and Metro Parks Tacoma to reintegrate the gulches along Ruston Way with the waterfront. Four gulches exist along Ruston Way: Garfield, Buckley, Puget, and Mason. This project targets Mason Gulch, which is the largest of the four and home to a wide diversity of tree species that provide habitat for many bird species. It has generous creek flow year-round, and is home

Increase Accessibility & Awareness

to a sewage treatment plant at its base. Design objectives were to reconnect the natural topography and hydrology of the gulches to Commencement Bay, while also improving corridor transportation and recreation functions.

76

Center: Concept diagram with Mason Creek as hydrology (blue), the diverse tree canopy as ecology (green), and the people of Tacoma as threads in the fiber of a fabric (red) Top: Site analysis diagrams Bottom: Project vision and objectives diagrams 77

F

FIBER, THREAD, FABRIC

unstable slope

ecological sensitivity

Site Analysis

connection

creek + salmon

land + property

Daylight Mason Creek & Improve Habitat

Julia Bakke, Rebekah Rongo + Fengyi Zu Ruston Way runs along the shoreline of Tacoma’s waterfront and is one of the city’s most popular destinations. Since the design of the waterfront in the 1980s, use

Green Space Revitalization

has shifted from industry to recreation, and with it, the need for a more connected parks system has grown. During Winter 2018, UW students worked with the City of Tacoma and Metro Parks Tacoma to reintegrate the gulches along Ruston Way with the waterfront. Four gulches exist along Ruston Way: Garfield, Buckley, Puget, and Mason. This project targets Mason Gulch, which is the largest of the four and home to a wide diversity of tree species that provide habitat for many bird species. It has generous creek flow year-round, and is home

Increase Accessibility & Awareness

to a sewage treatment plant at its base. Design objectives were to reconnect the natural topography and hydrology of the gulches to Commencement Bay, while also improving corridor transportation and recreation functions.

76

Center: Concept diagram with Mason Creek as hydrology (blue), the diverse tree canopy as ecology (green), and the people of Tacoma as threads in the fiber of a fabric (red) Top: Site analysis diagrams Bottom: Project vision and objectives diagrams 77

Mason Upper Plan

Mason Lower Plan

Breakwater Walkway & Viewpoint

C

C B

A

D

E

Canopy Boardwalk above Mason Gulch with Views of Commencement Bay & Birds

A

B

Forest Walk through Mason Creek to Middle Creek

Entrance to Mason Gulch from Ruston Way Crosswalk

D

E

Ruston Way Restored Shoreline & BikingPedestrain Trail

D B Long section from Upper Mason Neighborhood to Shoreline Breakwater

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79

Mason Upper Plan

Mason Lower Plan

Breakwater Walkway & Viewpoint

C

C B

A

D

E

Canopy Boardwalk above Mason Gulch with Views of Commencement Bay & Birds

A

B

Forest Walk through Mason Creek to Middle Creek

Entrance to Mason Gulch from Ruston Way Crosswalk

D

E

Ruston Way Restored Shoreline & BikingPedestrain Trail

D B Long section from Upper Mason Neighborhood to Shoreline Breakwater

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79

-40

0 -8

0 -9 1

0

This Spring 2018 studio took on the task of designing an artificial reef for the Redondo Beach dive site in Des Moines, Washington. This location, long used by recreational divers and citizen scientists, will soon be set aside as a leased

-10

D

proposed veterans memorial

AN OCTOPUS’ GARDEN Malin Anderson, Julia Brasch, Ellie Lange, Fatema Masswood, Darin Rosselini, Jess Vetrano + Rachel Wells

-20

-30

proposed bull kelp fields

C

0 -1

O

Site Master Plan

B

A

transect route

Circular Routes

dive site with funding from the state’s capital budget—both a success for the diving community and an opportunity for landscape architecture students

Directional Indicator/ Guides

more accustomed to working on land but well-versed in interdisciplinary systems thinking.

Destination/ Wayfinding Illustrative site plan and reef structure components diagram (Malin Anderson, Jess Vetrano) 80

81

-40

0 -8

0 -9 1

0

This Spring 2018 studio took on the task of designing an artificial reef for the Redondo Beach dive site in Des Moines, Washington. This location, long used by recreational divers and citizen scientists, will soon be set aside as a leased

-10

D

proposed veterans memorial

AN OCTOPUS’ GARDEN Malin Anderson, Julia Brasch, Ellie Lange, Fatema Masswood, Darin Rosselini, Jess Vetrano + Rachel Wells

-20

-30

proposed bull kelp fields

C

0 -1

O

Site Master Plan

B

A

transect route

Circular Routes

dive site with funding from the state’s capital budget—both a success for the diving community and an opportunity for landscape architecture students

Directional Indicator/ Guides

more accustomed to working on land but well-versed in interdisciplinary systems thinking.

Destination/ Wayfinding Illustrative site plan and reef structure components diagram (Malin Anderson, Jess Vetrano) 80

81

A

C

Mid-depth Reef Structures

For the reef itself, we designed a complex threedimensional structure that accommodated strict permitting requirements and a limited budget, and considered habitat restoration, public life and environmental education on the waterfront, with an emphasis on the effects of climate change. The proposed reef design will enhance permeability between upland and underwater environments by creating opportunities for public recreation, shoreline access, and environmental integrity.

Shallow Reef Structures

The proposal also incorporates stakeholder needs and desires through the design of an artificial reef

B

D

Deep Reef Structures

and associated upland improvements. Throughout the design process, we worked extensively with representatives from Seattle’s Marine Science and Technology Center (MaST) and the Washington Scuba Alliance, as well as community diving groups, marine scientists at Friday Harbor Laboratories, contractors, community members, politicians, and other stakeholders.

We created a document summarizing the studio’s process and outcomes to ensure the project will

Connecting Reef Structures

be appropriately carried forward once it is handed off to our clients, and to inspire future work in

Max. Height: 18’

1

coastal rocky reef design and restoration. Upon the completion of construction documents, this project will be sent to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for permitting before implementation, Spring 2019.

Illustrative Section -35

-40 Repurposed Culvert

82

-45

-55

-50 Seawall De-armoring

Seawall De-armoring

-60

Repurposed Concrete, Textured + Amended with Cast Surfacing

Top left: Reef structures at most shallow depth (Rachel Wells) Top right: Reef structures at medium depth (Julia Brasch) Middle left: Connecting structures between main reef (Ellie Lange) Middle right: Reef structures at greatest depth (Jess Vetrano) Bottom: Illustrative section (Fatema Masswood)

83

A

C

Mid-depth Reef Structures

For the reef itself, we designed a complex threedimensional structure that accommodated strict permitting requirements and a limited budget, and considered habitat restoration, public life and environmental education on the waterfront, with an emphasis on the effects of climate change. The proposed reef design will enhance permeability between upland and underwater environments by creating opportunities for public recreation, shoreline access, and environmental integrity.

Shallow Reef Structures

The proposal also incorporates stakeholder needs and desires through the design of an artificial reef

B

D

Deep Reef Structures

and associated upland improvements. Throughout the design process, we worked extensively with representatives from Seattle’s Marine Science and Technology Center (MaST) and the Washington Scuba Alliance, as well as community diving groups, marine scientists at Friday Harbor Laboratories, contractors, community members, politicians, and other stakeholders.

We created a document summarizing the studio’s process and outcomes to ensure the project will

Connecting Reef Structures

be appropriately carried forward once it is handed off to our clients, and to inspire future work in

Max. Height: 18’

1

coastal rocky reef design and restoration. Upon the completion of construction documents, this project will be sent to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for permitting before implementation, Spring 2019.

Illustrative Section -35

-40 Repurposed Culvert

82

-45

-55

-50 Seawall De-armoring

Seawall De-armoring

-60

Repurposed Concrete, Textured + Amended with Cast Surfacing

Top left: Reef structures at most shallow depth (Rachel Wells) Top right: Reef structures at medium depth (Julia Brasch) Middle left: Connecting structures between main reef (Ellie Lange) Middle right: Reef structures at greatest depth (Jess Vetrano) Bottom: Illustrative section (Fatema Masswood)

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C

CAN WE BE HERE? Sierra Druley, Jean Ni + Monica Taylor Design Justice Seattle (DJS) is a collaboration of UW Landscape Architecture students engaged in the pursuit of a more equitable future in Seattle. DJS celebrates the power of listening to, learning from, and designing with communities to shape public space. For the Seattle Design Festival “Power” Block Party in September 2017, DJS created an interactive installation that invited new thoughts and perspectives on homelessness and development in Seattle. The installation addressed the challenging question of who has the right to occupy public space—at what times, in what locations, in what ways.

The team constructed the installation using primarily found and secondhand materials, along with four laser etched acrylic panels and LED strip lights.

Photographs Top left: (Greg Shaw) Bottom left: (DJS team) Top right: (DJS team)

84

85

C

CAN WE BE HERE? Sierra Druley, Jean Ni + Monica Taylor Design Justice Seattle (DJS) is a collaboration of UW Landscape Architecture students engaged in the pursuit of a more equitable future in Seattle. DJS celebrates the power of listening to, learning from, and designing with communities to shape public space. For the Seattle Design Festival “Power” Block Party in September 2017, DJS created an interactive installation that invited new thoughts and perspectives on homelessness and development in Seattle. The installation addressed the challenging question of who has the right to occupy public space—at what times, in what locations, in what ways.

The team constructed the installation using primarily found and secondhand materials, along with four laser etched acrylic panels and LED strip lights.

Photographs Top left: (Greg Shaw) Bottom left: (DJS team) Top right: (DJS team)

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85

Visitors interact with “Can We Be Here?” Installation at the SDF Block Party.

(Veronica Foster)

Can We Be Here? is a project that amplifies

The DJS team, which included Sierra Druley, Monica

stories, both collective and personal. It began with

Taylor, and Jean Ni, utilized the City of Seattle’s

a symposium, Designing for the Right to Dwell,

2016 Homeless Needs Assessment, the King County

that brought together individuals who had or were

Coalition on Homelessness’ 2016 Seattle Annual

currently experiencing homelessness, activists,

Report, and Seattle Human Services’ 2015 Addressing

sociology researchers, and designers of the built

Homelessness research. These sources provided

environment. Direct quotes from this discussion

material for statistical evaluations. The Seattle

brought these voices forward throughout the

City Government and the US General Services

installation.

Administration also informed the design team’s

Can We Be Here? intended to invite new thoughts or

mapping investigations.

perspectives through gathered data and narratives. As such, the anonymity of speakers was preserved, and annotation was kept to a minimum.

Photographs Top: (DJS team) Bottom: (Trevor Dykstra)

86

87

Visitors interact with “Can We Be Here?” Installation at the SDF Block Party.

(Veronica Foster)

Can We Be Here? is a project that amplifies

The DJS team, which included Sierra Druley, Monica

stories, both collective and personal. It began with

Taylor, and Jean Ni, utilized the City of Seattle’s

a symposium, Designing for the Right to Dwell,

2016 Homeless Needs Assessment, the King County

that brought together individuals who had or were

Coalition on Homelessness’ 2016 Seattle Annual

currently experiencing homelessness, activists,

Report, and Seattle Human Services’ 2015 Addressing

sociology researchers, and designers of the built

Homelessness research. These sources provided

environment. Direct quotes from this discussion

material for statistical evaluations. The Seattle

brought these voices forward throughout the

City Government and the US General Services

installation.

Administration also informed the design team’s

Can We Be Here? intended to invite new thoughts or

mapping investigations.

perspectives through gathered data and narratives. As such, the anonymity of speakers was preserved, and annotation was kept to a minimum.

Photographs Top: (DJS team) Bottom: (Trevor Dykstra)

86

87

Beyond design studios, students pursue various academic and creative opportunities. They explore ways of communicating ideas that matter to them through art and writing. In the process, they add to important discussions surrounding social and ecological issues. The following features are devoted to some of these projects.

89

Beyond design studios, students pursue various academic and creative opportunities. They explore ways of communicating ideas that matter to them through art and writing. In the process, they add to important discussions surrounding social and ecological issues. The following features are devoted to some of these projects.

89

Lightness Accompanying graphite illustrations by Dylana Guth demonstrate speciation in southern Australian seagrasses, a highly contentious area of taxonomy. Illustrations reference UW Department of Landscape Architecture lecturer Brooke Sullivan’s research on the morphological variations in Zostera, Heterozostera, and Nanozostera in southeast Australia, specifically in the often misidentified species muelleri, nigricaulis, and tasmanica.

Heterozostera nigricaulis.

Graphite on paper (Dylana Guth)

SYSTEM, PERCEPTION + MATERIAL

BY NINA MROSS How do the myriad qualities of lightness relate to our experience of the built environment and our sense of ourselves in the world? What are the social and ecological possibilities of lightness? How does lightness go beyond physical form, to a systemic approach that lightens the human footprint on the world?

Today we are perhaps confronted with a somewhat different question.… It is rather a question of another conception of the earth itself and of its materialities, no longer separated from the city or caught in the opposition between artifice and nature—the question of a new geology, where the earth is no longer seen as what anchors or grounds us, but what releases in the midst of our multiple material manners of being other light dynamic spaces. [...]

Thus lightness might undo its long identification with immateriality and transparency in architecture and find a new concept, no longer opposed to that of the earth.

John Rajchman, 1994.1

In its definition, “lightness” is at once both straightforward and hard to grasp. The Oxford English Dictionary defines lightness as “the quality or fact of being light, in various senses.”

The most fundamental sense of lightness regards matter’s relationship to the force of gravity and its reciprocal relationship with heaviness. Physical lightness as a material property has been of paramount consideration in the built environment since humans evolved to build and use tools. How light something is relative to the strength of a human body, a river, an arch, or a water buffalo has always been of utmost importance. The weight of our own bodies frames our perception of the spatial and material world.2 For as long as we’ve been building and making, we’ve been designing with lightness.

digital age—information seemed to become weightless and anchored to nowhere. Theories and ideas could be shared from anywhere and delivered anywhere, no longer weighed down by books or trapped in institutions.3 As capitalist globalization reaches into every corner of the earth, and as materials can be sourced from anywhere, the stuff of our lives seems to have no roots, no anchor. But is an abstract nowhereness the same as lightness?

Lightness in the Built Environment

In recent years, responses to the crises of rapid global ecological degradation and climate change, digital war, and large numbers of refugees have pushed back against the homogenizing forces of globalization. New eco-aesthetic theories have led to new interpretations and uses of lightness. Most Lightness is relative and is thus always a obviously, the definition of lightness has perceptual condition. Things may appear light broadened to include concepts of sustainability, when their structures or systems touch us defined by one’s “footprint.” Architectural and our landscapes lightly, softly, or gently, or historian Phyllis Richardson, among others, when they reference other cultural touchstones describes lightweight structures as using that have to do with lightness, such as religion minimal materials, thus typically having a and engineering. From the beginning of the lighter footprint on the world. Lightweight modern movement in art and design, the materials are potentially easier to take apart and appearance of lightness has been a common reuse. Richardson goes further, saying that if aesthetic fascination and even a lifestyle a construction is to be considered lightweight, fetish. Modernism saw lightness as a means it must also be made in a lightweight way, of sloughing off the weight of tradition and reducing a project’s footprint throughout the locale, creating an “international style” that system: less fuel uses glass curtain burned, less heavy walls and empty, “As capitalist globalization machinery, less rectangular forms to reaches into every corner of energy use, and a create a perceived greater adaptability lightness. This the earth, as materials can be and capacity to deal disconnection from sourced from anywhere, the with climate change.4 the “heaviness” of stuff of our lives seems to have Though pioneered place was continued no roots, no anchor. But is an by visionaries such through the early

abstract nowhere-ness the same as lightness?”

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91

Lightness Accompanying graphite illustrations by Dylana Guth demonstrate speciation in southern Australian seagrasses, a highly contentious area of taxonomy. Illustrations reference UW Department of Landscape Architecture lecturer Brooke Sullivan’s research on the morphological variations in Zostera, Heterozostera, and Nanozostera in southeast Australia, specifically in the often misidentified species muelleri, nigricaulis, and tasmanica.

Heterozostera nigricaulis.

Graphite on paper (Dylana Guth)

SYSTEM, PERCEPTION + MATERIAL

BY NINA MROSS How do the myriad qualities of lightness relate to our experience of the built environment and our sense of ourselves in the world? What are the social and ecological possibilities of lightness? How does lightness go beyond physical form, to a systemic approach that lightens the human footprint on the world?

Today we are perhaps confronted with a somewhat different question.… It is rather a question of another conception of the earth itself and of its materialities, no longer separated from the city or caught in the opposition between artifice and nature—the question of a new geology, where the earth is no longer seen as what anchors or grounds us, but what releases in the midst of our multiple material manners of being other light dynamic spaces. [...]

Thus lightness might undo its long identification with immateriality and transparency in architecture and find a new concept, no longer opposed to that of the earth.

John Rajchman, 1994.1

In its definition, “lightness” is at once both straightforward and hard to grasp. The Oxford English Dictionary defines lightness as “the quality or fact of being light, in various senses.”

The most fundamental sense of lightness regards matter’s relationship to the force of gravity and its reciprocal relationship with heaviness. Physical lightness as a material property has been of paramount consideration in the built environment since humans evolved to build and use tools. How light something is relative to the strength of a human body, a river, an arch, or a water buffalo has always been of utmost importance. The weight of our own bodies frames our perception of the spatial and material world.2 For as long as we’ve been building and making, we’ve been designing with lightness.

digital age—information seemed to become weightless and anchored to nowhere. Theories and ideas could be shared from anywhere and delivered anywhere, no longer weighed down by books or trapped in institutions.3 As capitalist globalization reaches into every corner of the earth, and as materials can be sourced from anywhere, the stuff of our lives seems to have no roots, no anchor. But is an abstract nowhereness the same as lightness?

Lightness in the Built Environment

In recent years, responses to the crises of rapid global ecological degradation and climate change, digital war, and large numbers of refugees have pushed back against the homogenizing forces of globalization. New eco-aesthetic theories have led to new interpretations and uses of lightness. Most Lightness is relative and is thus always a obviously, the definition of lightness has perceptual condition. Things may appear light broadened to include concepts of sustainability, when their structures or systems touch us defined by one’s “footprint.” Architectural and our landscapes lightly, softly, or gently, or historian Phyllis Richardson, among others, when they reference other cultural touchstones describes lightweight structures as using that have to do with lightness, such as religion minimal materials, thus typically having a and engineering. From the beginning of the lighter footprint on the world. Lightweight modern movement in art and design, the materials are potentially easier to take apart and appearance of lightness has been a common reuse. Richardson goes further, saying that if aesthetic fascination and even a lifestyle a construction is to be considered lightweight, fetish. Modernism saw lightness as a means it must also be made in a lightweight way, of sloughing off the weight of tradition and reducing a project’s footprint throughout the locale, creating an “international style” that system: less fuel uses glass curtain burned, less heavy walls and empty, “As capitalist globalization machinery, less rectangular forms to reaches into every corner of energy use, and a create a perceived greater adaptability lightness. This the earth, as materials can be and capacity to deal disconnection from sourced from anywhere, the with climate change.4 the “heaviness” of stuff of our lives seems to have Though pioneered place was continued no roots, no anchor. But is an by visionaries such through the early

abstract nowhere-ness the same as lightness?”

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91

as Buckminster Fuller and Frei Otto, these concepts are now becoming paradigmatic.5

Zostera muelleri.

Graphite on paper (Dylana Guth)

These ideas can be used to fetishize and rationalize building and developing for aesthetic reasons. Richardson’s book Superlight: Rethinking How Our Homes Impact the Earth is full of beautiful single-family homes or vacation cabins perched lightly in a forest or on a mountainside: an undoubtedly appealing, familiar architectural trope. The author mostly ignores the landscape systems built to access and support these locations, such as roads, power grids, and plumbing, treating the house as an isolated element. There is a slim chapter on urban interventions, where Richardson acknowledges that densely settled areas are those “…most in need of smaller, lighter solutions.”6 These “superlight” buildings do have lighter footprints than alternative constructions, and help to develop the material and building technology so needed for sustainable development, but when considering building a second home in a forest, perhaps the most lightweight intervention would be to work with what already exists or to do nothing, leaving things as found.

Beyond the building scale, ephemerality has discribed historic lightweight settlements: the structures and systems that nomadic cultures built for short-term use before packing them up and taking them along or leaving them behind.

Today, cultures around the world continue these traditions, and designers and engineers take much aesthetic and structural inspiration

92

from these beautiful and ingenious vernacular methods.7 Here, many in the industrialized world perceive lightness as freedom, and the idea of nomadism is coopted by the digital elite.8 Traditional nomads, however, have an extremely intimate relationship with the land. They move around its surface in order to survive without depleting the land’s resources. Today’s “digital nomads” may feel personally light and free but rely on an extremely heavy, global support system for survival. Server farms, the hardware spaces where much of the digital world actually “takes place,” rely on rare earth mining and global transportation systems for their creation, and their upkeep uses vast amounts of energy and water for cooling. In 2009, Google’s data centers were estimated to use 0.01% of the world’s energy.9 Despite that, a reduction in personal possessions, especially one’s own house and car, and participation in the sharing economy, may indeed reflect a lightweight system informed by intimate knowledge of the landscape—in this case, the contemporary digital and urban landscape. Additionally, the nomadic approach to disassemblable structures that are used for only as long as they are needed may provide useful lessons to design professionals.

Today’s most pressing issue for landscape architects, architects, and planners in terms of ephemeral, lightweight settlement is that facing refugees, disaster victims, and people experiencing homelessness. In such cases, the larger system responsible for the people, whether the city, state, or country, is often trying to meet the conflicting desires of providing for those in need while not providing a place for too long, lest it become permanent.

Deborah Gans, principle of Gans Studio in Brooklyn, New York, has focused on planning and construction for disaster situations.

She praises some lightweight approaches to disaster response structures for features such as potential movability, reusability, and

ease of use in low-tech situations. However, Gans criticizes much disaster housing as too light; it is designed for the fantasy of a quick solution in which refugees swiftly move on to their permanent homes, somewhere else. If a lightweight structure or system works well but is planned for a swift resolution that never comes, the settlement can become an extremely heavy presence in the land, sprawling and spreading waste, denuding the environment of fuel and food, and eroding the soil. By planning for reality instead of a dream and integrating the new and existing communities’ shared needs, infrastructures, and production systems, these settlements can become lighter. “Paradoxically,” Gans writes, “the camp with the lightest imprint is one planned with more permanence.”10 Lightness often primarily concerns material things, but a system or method can equally be considered light. As mentioned above, sustainable systems and adaptability are both widely seen as lightweight. As per Gans, clear-eyed and open-ended planning can be considered a lightweight system. Creation that comes out of real conditions and context,

from lived experience, is deemed “light” by Paolo Pedrali, architect and professor at the Polytechnic University of Milan. In 2012, he and colleagues from the university began the Lightweight Landscape Architectural Workshop in Milan. As part of their first workshop, he promoted the use of walking the site as a method of “lightweight thinking” in design.

Instead of coming in with a heavy hand, the design would come out of the deep context and experience of a place.11 This approach is light because understanding movement and processes on the site leads to designs that don’t hinder or block those processes, but which may shape or conduct them subtly.

Lightweight designs

“Lightweight designs release the possibilities latent in places or help to foment indigenous actions that shape the place or design.”

Life cycle of Heterozostera nigricaulis.

Graphite on paper (Dylana Guth) 93

as Buckminster Fuller and Frei Otto, these concepts are now becoming paradigmatic.5

Zostera muelleri.

Graphite on paper (Dylana Guth)

These ideas can be used to fetishize and rationalize building and developing for aesthetic reasons. Richardson’s book Superlight: Rethinking How Our Homes Impact the Earth is full of beautiful single-family homes or vacation cabins perched lightly in a forest or on a mountainside: an undoubtedly appealing, familiar architectural trope. The author mostly ignores the landscape systems built to access and support these locations, such as roads, power grids, and plumbing, treating the house as an isolated element. There is a slim chapter on urban interventions, where Richardson acknowledges that densely settled areas are those “…most in need of smaller, lighter solutions.”6 These “superlight” buildings do have lighter footprints than alternative constructions, and help to develop the material and building technology so needed for sustainable development, but when considering building a second home in a forest, perhaps the most lightweight intervention would be to work with what already exists or to do nothing, leaving things as found.

Beyond the building scale, ephemerality has discribed historic lightweight settlements: the structures and systems that nomadic cultures built for short-term use before packing them up and taking them along or leaving them behind.

Today, cultures around the world continue these traditions, and designers and engineers take much aesthetic and structural inspiration

92

from these beautiful and ingenious vernacular methods.7 Here, many in the industrialized world perceive lightness as freedom, and the idea of nomadism is coopted by the digital elite.8 Traditional nomads, however, have an extremely intimate relationship with the land. They move around its surface in order to survive without depleting the land’s resources. Today’s “digital nomads” may feel personally light and free but rely on an extremely heavy, global support system for survival. Server farms, the hardware spaces where much of the digital world actually “takes place,” rely on rare earth mining and global transportation systems for their creation, and their upkeep uses vast amounts of energy and water for cooling. In 2009, Google’s data centers were estimated to use 0.01% of the world’s energy.9 Despite that, a reduction in personal possessions, especially one’s own house and car, and participation in the sharing economy, may indeed reflect a lightweight system informed by intimate knowledge of the landscape—in this case, the contemporary digital and urban landscape. Additionally, the nomadic approach to disassemblable structures that are used for only as long as they are needed may provide useful lessons to design professionals.

Today’s most pressing issue for landscape architects, architects, and planners in terms of ephemeral, lightweight settlement is that facing refugees, disaster victims, and people experiencing homelessness. In such cases, the larger system responsible for the people, whether the city, state, or country, is often trying to meet the conflicting desires of providing for those in need while not providing a place for too long, lest it become permanent.

Deborah Gans, principle of Gans Studio in Brooklyn, New York, has focused on planning and construction for disaster situations.

She praises some lightweight approaches to disaster response structures for features such as potential movability, reusability, and

ease of use in low-tech situations. However, Gans criticizes much disaster housing as too light; it is designed for the fantasy of a quick solution in which refugees swiftly move on to their permanent homes, somewhere else. If a lightweight structure or system works well but is planned for a swift resolution that never comes, the settlement can become an extremely heavy presence in the land, sprawling and spreading waste, denuding the environment of fuel and food, and eroding the soil. By planning for reality instead of a dream and integrating the new and existing communities’ shared needs, infrastructures, and production systems, these settlements can become lighter. “Paradoxically,” Gans writes, “the camp with the lightest imprint is one planned with more permanence.”10 Lightness often primarily concerns material things, but a system or method can equally be considered light. As mentioned above, sustainable systems and adaptability are both widely seen as lightweight. As per Gans, clear-eyed and open-ended planning can be considered a lightweight system. Creation that comes out of real conditions and context,

from lived experience, is deemed “light” by Paolo Pedrali, architect and professor at the Polytechnic University of Milan. In 2012, he and colleagues from the university began the Lightweight Landscape Architectural Workshop in Milan. As part of their first workshop, he promoted the use of walking the site as a method of “lightweight thinking” in design.

Instead of coming in with a heavy hand, the design would come out of the deep context and experience of a place.11 This approach is light because understanding movement and processes on the site leads to designs that don’t hinder or block those processes, but which may shape or conduct them subtly.

Lightweight designs

“Lightweight designs release the possibilities latent in places or help to foment indigenous actions that shape the place or design.”

Life cycle of Heterozostera nigricaulis.

Graphite on paper (Dylana Guth) 93

release the possibilities latent in places or help to foment indigenous actions that shape the place or design. In this way, lightweight thinking is related to, or could be used to describe, theories and approaches like tactical urbanism and community-based design.

Both systemic lightness and material lightness are perceived by the viewer or user and can have positive impacts on the relationship between place, creation, and systems. Jörg Schlaich is a German engineer internationally known for his lightweight, complex structures.

In his view, lightweight structures require more complex engineering, which is perceived by viewers as a positive product of human ingenuity. The care and craft that goes into lightweight systems, and the perception of that care, creates a positive feedback loop between a person and their environment.

This can also create well-paying jobs for craftspeople, designers, and engineers.12 Going further, any landscape or structure where craft and human ingenuity are visible could be lightweight, especially if it is well adapted to its environment, formed out of its local context, and works without blocking, harming, or alienating its users. In this way, physically heavy structures made of stone or adobe, or vast interventions such as large biodynamic farms, could still be “light.”

Landscape architecture scholarship in general has shown higher interest

in lightweight systems than more materialoriented senses of the word. Without calling it “light,” Chinese landscape architect Kongjian Yu has been promoting what he calls the “art of survival,” tying working landscapes to people’s sense of identity, ingenuity, past, and future. This relates to the theories of Schlaich and Pedrali. Though potentially heavy from the point of view of someone looking for “untouched” landscapes, sustainable working landscapes that are artful and that resonate with the user’s history, identity, well-being, and survival could be called lightweight, a kind of web enmeshing humans in nature.13 Systems of material creation and maintenance, materials themselves, and the perception of materials and material systems are as central to the human experience of any landscape as the aforementioned architectural and engineering contexts. Despite this, landscape architecture scholarship has not considered the use and flows of human-directed matter in landscape architecture to the same degree as architecture or engineering. Marc Treib, professor of architecture at UC Berkeley and landscape historian, approached the concept of material lightness in his 2016 book Austere Gardens.

Austerity is not the same thing as lightness; in Treib’s book, it has a meaning close to restraint and simplicity, either in process or in result. To Treib, in austere gardens there is experiential and intellectual richness, if not colorful or multi-varied richness. He uses the example of a Japanese stone garden, which can also be said to be quite heavy, obliterating what is there to produce a flat plane of gravel. But this kind of landscape is also light in other ways, freeing the mind from dense, complex visual choreography.

Sometimes he tends toward heaviness, however.

Treib describes the landscape as both palette and canvas: an anthropocentric, dominating gaze that results in heaviness.14

Elsewhere, Treib does identify design and experiential approaches that can be categorized as “lightweight thinking.” Finding interest in the reduced and overlooked, like the moss growing in a sidewalk crack, is a lightweight approach to beauty in the landscape. Small interventions in the landscape can magnify the richness that already exists there. Allowing things to weather, change, and renew through time lightens our control of natural processes and brings us in tune with reality. Treib uses the example of the composer John Cage, whose concerts might consist of a player sitting at the piano bench but not touching any keys, suggesting that reducing what is controlled and programmed opens new ways of experiencing and sensing.

This kind of open-ended design is becoming widespread in landscape architecture and is certainly lightweight thinking.

Perhaps the lesson from Treib is that reduced materials or processes can magnify the intervention, which supports mental richness and experiential agency. “The simplest act of design might just be to see anew what lies before us with no additional intervention.”15

fabric of life, weighing it down, and squashing the world, a lightweight system weaves into the reality of a place, picks its way among and between, and dissolves itself into where it is.

Endnotes 1 Rajchman 1994b 2 Janson and Tigges 2014 3 Rajchman 1994a 4 Richardson 2014 5 Lange 2014 6 Richardson 2014, 122 7 Zanelli, Spinelli, Monticelli, and Pedrali 2016 8 Gans 2008 9 Erek, Schmidt, Zarnekow, and Kolbe 2009 10 Ibid, 55 11 Zanelli, Spinelli, Monticelli, and Pedrali 2016 12 Schlaich 2004 13 Yu 2012 14 Treib 2016 15 Ibid, 33

“Allowing things to weather, change, and renew through time lightens our control of natural processes and brings us in tune with reality.”

The state of being light, as we’ve seen, has multi-faceted meanings and interpretations.

Lightness crosses disciplinary boundaries and finds ways to unite landscape, architecture, engineering, economics, logistics, theory, and art. It is interpretive, but also has crystallized characteristics. The most interesting turn in lightweight theory is that of reconnecting lightness with the land, people, and place. It turns out that the lightness of abstraction and globalization are too heavy to bear.

Contemporary theory relocates the source of lightness to where and what we are now: humans on the Earth. Instead of distorting the

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Erek, K., Schmidt, N. H., Zarnekow, R., and Kolbe, L. M. (2009).

Sustainability in Information Systems: Assortment of Current Practices in IS Organizations. AMCIS 2009 Proceedings. 123.

Gans, D. (2008). “Unbearable Lightness,” in Bell, B. and Wakeford, K. (Eds.) Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism, 50-55. New York: Metropolis Books.

Janson, A. and Tigges, F. (2014). Fundamental Concepts in Architecture: The Vocabulary of Spatial Situations. Basel: Birkhäuser.

Lange, A. (2014, September 30). Houses on Gossamer Wings. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com Rajchman, J. (1994a). Lightness: A concept in architecture. ANY: Architecture New York, 1994(5), 5-7.

Rajchman, J. (1994b). Light Matters. ANY: Architecture New York, 1994(5), 28-29.

Richardson, P. (2014). Superlight. New York: Metropolis Books.

Riley, T. (1995). Light Construction. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. Schlaich, J. (2004). “Light Structures – Why and How?” In Schlaich, J. and Bergermann, R. (Eds.) Leicht Weit / Light Structures, 298-310.

New York: Prestel.

Trieb, M. (2016). Austere Gardens: Thought on Landscape, Restraint, and Attending. San Francisco: Oro Editions.

Yu, K. (2012). The Big Feet Aesthetic and the Art of Survival.

Architectural Design, Vol. 82(6): 72-77.

Zanelli, A., Spinelli, L., Monticelli, C., Pedrali, P. (Eds.) (2016).

Lightweight Landscape: Enhancing Design through Minimal Mass Structures. Basel: Springer International.

Heterozostera tasmanica.

Graphite on paper (Dylana Guth) 94

95

release the possibilities latent in places or help to foment indigenous actions that shape the place or design. In this way, lightweight thinking is related to, or could be used to describe, theories and approaches like tactical urbanism and community-based design.

Both systemic lightness and material lightness are perceived by the viewer or user and can have positive impacts on the relationship between place, creation, and systems. Jörg Schlaich is a German engineer internationally known for his lightweight, complex structures.

In his view, lightweight structures require more complex engineering, which is perceived by viewers as a positive product of human ingenuity. The care and craft that goes into lightweight systems, and the perception of that care, creates a positive feedback loop between a person and their environment.

This can also create well-paying jobs for craftspeople, designers, and engineers.12 Going further, any landscape or structure where craft and human ingenuity are visible could be lightweight, especially if it is well adapted to its environment, formed out of its local context, and works without blocking, harming, or alienating its users. In this way, physically heavy structures made of stone or adobe, or vast interventions such as large biodynamic farms, could still be “light.”

Landscape architecture scholarship in general has shown higher interest

in lightweight systems than more materialoriented senses of the word. Without calling it “light,” Chinese landscape architect Kongjian Yu has been promoting what he calls the “art of survival,” tying working landscapes to people’s sense of identity, ingenuity, past, and future. This relates to the theories of Schlaich and Pedrali. Though potentially heavy from the point of view of someone looking for “untouched” landscapes, sustainable working landscapes that are artful and that resonate with the user’s history, identity, well-being, and survival could be called lightweight, a kind of web enmeshing humans in nature.13 Systems of material creation and maintenance, materials themselves, and the perception of materials and material systems are as central to the human experience of any landscape as the aforementioned architectural and engineering contexts. Despite this, landscape architecture scholarship has not considered the use and flows of human-directed matter in landscape architecture to the same degree as architecture or engineering. Marc Treib, professor of architecture at UC Berkeley and landscape historian, approached the concept of material lightness in his 2016 book Austere Gardens.

Austerity is not the same thing as lightness; in Treib’s book, it has a meaning close to restraint and simplicity, either in process or in result. To Treib, in austere gardens there is experiential and intellectual richness, if not colorful or multi-varied richness. He uses the example of a Japanese stone garden, which can also be said to be quite heavy, obliterating what is there to produce a flat plane of gravel. But this kind of landscape is also light in other ways, freeing the mind from dense, complex visual choreography.

Sometimes he tends toward heaviness, however.

Treib describes the landscape as both palette and canvas: an anthropocentric, dominating gaze that results in heaviness.14

Elsewhere, Treib does identify design and experiential approaches that can be categorized as “lightweight thinking.” Finding interest in the reduced and overlooked, like the moss growing in a sidewalk crack, is a lightweight approach to beauty in the landscape. Small interventions in the landscape can magnify the richness that already exists there. Allowing things to weather, change, and renew through time lightens our control of natural processes and brings us in tune with reality. Treib uses the example of the composer John Cage, whose concerts might consist of a player sitting at the piano bench but not touching any keys, suggesting that reducing what is controlled and programmed opens new ways of experiencing and sensing.

This kind of open-ended design is becoming widespread in landscape architecture and is certainly lightweight thinking.

Perhaps the lesson from Treib is that reduced materials or processes can magnify the intervention, which supports mental richness and experiential agency. “The simplest act of design might just be to see anew what lies before us with no additional intervention.”15

fabric of life, weighing it down, and squashing the world, a lightweight system weaves into the reality of a place, picks its way among and between, and dissolves itself into where it is.

Endnotes 1 Rajchman 1994b 2 Janson and Tigges 2014 3 Rajchman 1994a 4 Richardson 2014 5 Lange 2014 6 Richardson 2014, 122 7 Zanelli, Spinelli, Monticelli, and Pedrali 2016 8 Gans 2008 9 Erek, Schmidt, Zarnekow, and Kolbe 2009 10 Ibid, 55 11 Zanelli, Spinelli, Monticelli, and Pedrali 2016 12 Schlaich 2004 13 Yu 2012 14 Treib 2016 15 Ibid, 33

“Allowing things to weather, change, and renew through time lightens our control of natural processes and brings us in tune with reality.”

The state of being light, as we’ve seen, has multi-faceted meanings and interpretations.

Lightness crosses disciplinary boundaries and finds ways to unite landscape, architecture, engineering, economics, logistics, theory, and art. It is interpretive, but also has crystallized characteristics. The most interesting turn in lightweight theory is that of reconnecting lightness with the land, people, and place. It turns out that the lightness of abstraction and globalization are too heavy to bear.

Contemporary theory relocates the source of lightness to where and what we are now: humans on the Earth. Instead of distorting the

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Erek, K., Schmidt, N. H., Zarnekow, R., and Kolbe, L. M. (2009).

Sustainability in Information Systems: Assortment of Current Practices in IS Organizations. AMCIS 2009 Proceedings. 123.

Gans, D. (2008). “Unbearable Lightness,” in Bell, B. and Wakeford, K. (Eds.) Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism, 50-55. New York: Metropolis Books.

Janson, A. and Tigges, F. (2014). Fundamental Concepts in Architecture: The Vocabulary of Spatial Situations. Basel: Birkhäuser.

Lange, A. (2014, September 30). Houses on Gossamer Wings. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com Rajchman, J. (1994a). Lightness: A concept in architecture. ANY: Architecture New York, 1994(5), 5-7.

Rajchman, J. (1994b). Light Matters. ANY: Architecture New York, 1994(5), 28-29.

Richardson, P. (2014). Superlight. New York: Metropolis Books.

Riley, T. (1995). Light Construction. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. Schlaich, J. (2004). “Light Structures – Why and How?” In Schlaich, J. and Bergermann, R. (Eds.) Leicht Weit / Light Structures, 298-310.

New York: Prestel.

Trieb, M. (2016). Austere Gardens: Thought on Landscape, Restraint, and Attending. San Francisco: Oro Editions.

Yu, K. (2012). The Big Feet Aesthetic and the Art of Survival.

Architectural Design, Vol. 82(6): 72-77.

Zanelli, A., Spinelli, L., Monticelli, C., Pedrali, P. (Eds.) (2016).

Lightweight Landscape: Enhancing Design through Minimal Mass Structures. Basel: Springer International.

Heterozostera tasmanica.

Graphite on paper (Dylana Guth) 94

95

PUTTING "CONSERVE" BACK IN CONSERVATORY

Conservatories present a unique challenge to design professionals, as they require the concerted effort of wide-ranging expertise, including that of botanists, horticulturists, architects, landscape architects, and civil and mechanical engineers. Creating controlled environments that stabilize environmental conditions places great demands on the people and resources required to maintain them.

collections with scientific and aesthetic goals, much like zoos and aquariums.

Over 2,000 botanic gardens exist around the world, many with glasshouses, where the important role of landscape architects has been recognized. For example, Jens Jensen designed Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago as a series of naturalistic landscapes. His design allowed the normally conspicuous pipes to be hidden from view and was revolutionary compared to other glasshouses constructed at the time. As more conservatories begin to make meaningful public engagement with conservation a central part of their

Traditionally, conservatories were constructed with wooden frames, so even the sturdiest construction succumbed to humidity and required replacement in a matter of decades.

The mass production of iron and advances in glass and plastics in the last century allowed for much larger and more complex glasshouses to be built.

he is t solar radiation

p ir m ar y

heat source in

Simply put, glasshouses stabilize ambient temperature and humidity by capturing light and heat from the sun as it passes through glass plates, warming the air, plants, and ground within. When light energy becomes heat, it changes wavelengths and cannot easily pass back out through the glass.

Structural venting, heat generation from decomposing fertilizer in soils, and steam have also been used to control glasshouse conditions.

The complex layout of the heating and water pipes utilized in modern glasshouses are what pose the greatest challenge to what are often otherwise simple structures.

G ar L o, I

96

Historically, glasshouses and botanic gardens were places where botanists studied medicinal plants collected by explorers across the globe, and where wealthy people recreated. As materials advanced, glasshouses were often built for exhibitions, such as Joseph Paxton’s unprecedented Crystal Palace for London’s Great Exhibition of 1851. Today, conservatories are more commonly tourist attractions of living

s

fiel icag d P a r k Conservator y, Ch

A

welcoming blast of warm air; an earthy perfume that demands a deep breath; hushed conversations respectful of the library of plants: these are the familiar comforts of glasshouses. People have been creating indoor gardens for centuries, another example of man’s insatiable need to control nature. Over time, the emphasis of such gardens has oscillated between science and pleasure. Most modern conservatories strive to meet both goals simultaneously. By creating climate-controlled spaces that are comfortable for people and appropriate for certain plants, conservatories in urban areas can now play a larger role in plant conservation.

ho u se

ss

by Krista Doersch

g la

THE ROLE OF GLASSHOUSES IN EX SITU CONSERVATION

97

PUTTING "CONSERVE" BACK IN CONSERVATORY

Conservatories present a unique challenge to design professionals, as they require the concerted effort of wide-ranging expertise, including that of botanists, horticulturists, architects, landscape architects, and civil and mechanical engineers. Creating controlled environments that stabilize environmental conditions places great demands on the people and resources required to maintain them.

collections with scientific and aesthetic goals, much like zoos and aquariums.

Over 2,000 botanic gardens exist around the world, many with glasshouses, where the important role of landscape architects has been recognized. For example, Jens Jensen designed Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago as a series of naturalistic landscapes. His design allowed the normally conspicuous pipes to be hidden from view and was revolutionary compared to other glasshouses constructed at the time. As more conservatories begin to make meaningful public engagement with conservation a central part of their

Traditionally, conservatories were constructed with wooden frames, so even the sturdiest construction succumbed to humidity and required replacement in a matter of decades.

The mass production of iron and advances in glass and plastics in the last century allowed for much larger and more complex glasshouses to be built.

he is t solar radiation

p ir m ar y

heat source in

Simply put, glasshouses stabilize ambient temperature and humidity by capturing light and heat from the sun as it passes through glass plates, warming the air, plants, and ground within. When light energy becomes heat, it changes wavelengths and cannot easily pass back out through the glass.

Structural venting, heat generation from decomposing fertilizer in soils, and steam have also been used to control glasshouse conditions.

The complex layout of the heating and water pipes utilized in modern glasshouses are what pose the greatest challenge to what are often otherwise simple structures.

G ar L o, I

96

Historically, glasshouses and botanic gardens were places where botanists studied medicinal plants collected by explorers across the globe, and where wealthy people recreated. As materials advanced, glasshouses were often built for exhibitions, such as Joseph Paxton’s unprecedented Crystal Palace for London’s Great Exhibition of 1851. Today, conservatories are more commonly tourist attractions of living

s

fiel icag d P a r k Conservator y, Ch

A

welcoming blast of warm air; an earthy perfume that demands a deep breath; hushed conversations respectful of the library of plants: these are the familiar comforts of glasshouses. People have been creating indoor gardens for centuries, another example of man’s insatiable need to control nature. Over time, the emphasis of such gardens has oscillated between science and pleasure. Most modern conservatories strive to meet both goals simultaneously. By creating climate-controlled spaces that are comfortable for people and appropriate for certain plants, conservatories in urban areas can now play a larger role in plant conservation.

ho u se

ss

by Krista Doersch

g la

THE ROLE OF GLASSHOUSES IN EX SITU CONSERVATION

97

missions, the connections between glasshouses and the traditions of landscape architecture become even clearer.

Seattle now has two notable glasshouses: Volunteer Park Conservatory and the Amazon Spheres. When the Olmsted Brothers designed Volunteer Park, they included plans for a publicly accessible conservatory with the mission to collect, conserve, and educate people about plants from around the world. The structure itself is a classic Victorian glasshouse that was constructed from a kit ordered from Lord and Burnham and assembled onsite in 1912. It has five display houses—bromeliad, fern, palm, cactus and succulent, and seasonal—and includes several plants that are over 75 years old. To this day, the glasshouse continues to serve the public and is maintained

by Seattle Parks and Recreation, with support from the community non-profit Friends of the Conservatory. It also serves as an official rescue site for endangered plants that are smuggled into the country and seized at customs.

Park Conservator y, Sea r e e ttle un t ,W Vol A

Over a century after the opening of Volunteer Park Conservatory, Amazon has reimagined the glasshouse and the corporate indoor environment with its Spheres, providing its Seattle campus employees with greater access to natural elements. It also serves as a teaching tool where the goal is to conserve and maintain rare species. Inspired by the concept of biophilia, that humans have an innate urge to connect with nature, the Spheres are a blend between work spaces and supports for real and perceived conservation goals for Amazon and its employees. Comprised of three connected domes, the Spheres include two cafes and four floors of meeting nooks nestled among thousands of plants native to cloud forests.

Amazon’s horticulture team also focuses on conservation of ethnobotanically important species from around the world, contributing to human efforts to preserve valuable and threatened species. As landscape architects, it’s hard to argue against a project that recognizes the value of connecting people to nature and prioritizes conservation of species.

As with other newer glasshouses, such as Biosphere Reserves in Italy or Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, the Amazon Spheres are innovative in their systems and materials. From special glass coatings to advanced sensors, technology used in these projects could help make buildings everywhere more efficient.

Glasshouses are artificial environments that differ from their surroundings. Thus, they are typically not closed systems. This means that they rely on resources from outside, like air and water, to function.

In fact, a single conservatory typically has three support houses to assist with climate control. Due to their removal from indigenous or natural habitat, plants brought to conservatories are considered ex situ, Latin for off-site. Other examples of ex situ conservation methods include

98

mesocosms, seed banks, tissue cultures, and outdoor botanic gardens. Conservatories around the world create collections of live specimens, often in entirely different biomes, that can help to preserve genetic diversity in the plant kingdom. Since the early Victorian conservatories, our understanding of how glasshouses can be used to support critical conservation and adaptation strategies has evolved.

Furthermore, in this age of global resource circulation, indigenous ecosystems have been left vulnerable to disease and invasive species.

People intentionally and unintentionally reduce biodiversity, both by exploiting natural resources and by cultivating monocultures of valuable crops. Human impact is often shortsighted, so conservatories can play a vital role in protecting species whose value we may not yet appreciate.

Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) is an organization that coordinates between seed banks and glasshouses around the world to maintain a database of rare and endangered species in the overall global collection. Through their efforts, they have been able to document remaining specimens of species that have gone extinct in the wild. As a rule of thumb, 50 specimens are needed to protect a species’ genetic diversity.

Whether seeds or live plants, it is best if ex situ specimens of a species are kept in varied locations as insurance against natural or manmade disasters. Given existing skill, knowledge, and infrastructure, botanic gardens are a natural choice for accomplishing this.

Even small conservatories can play a large role in maintaining biodiversity. Another major benefit of collaboration through conservatory networks is that they can provide materials for research so that fewer specimens need to be collected from the wild in the first place. By maintaining separate populations, sometimes completely protected out of public view, some

Amazon Spheres Seattle, WA 99

missions, the connections between glasshouses and the traditions of landscape architecture become even clearer.

Seattle now has two notable glasshouses: Volunteer Park Conservatory and the Amazon Spheres. When the Olmsted Brothers designed Volunteer Park, they included plans for a publicly accessible conservatory with the mission to collect, conserve, and educate people about plants from around the world. The structure itself is a classic Victorian glasshouse that was constructed from a kit ordered from Lord and Burnham and assembled onsite in 1912. It has five display houses—bromeliad, fern, palm, cactus and succulent, and seasonal—and includes several plants that are over 75 years old. To this day, the glasshouse continues to serve the public and is maintained

by Seattle Parks and Recreation, with support from the community non-profit Friends of the Conservatory. It also serves as an official rescue site for endangered plants that are smuggled into the country and seized at customs.

Park Conservator y, Sea r e e ttle un t ,W Vol A

Over a century after the opening of Volunteer Park Conservatory, Amazon has reimagined the glasshouse and the corporate indoor environment with its Spheres, providing its Seattle campus employees with greater access to natural elements. It also serves as a teaching tool where the goal is to conserve and maintain rare species. Inspired by the concept of biophilia, that humans have an innate urge to connect with nature, the Spheres are a blend between work spaces and supports for real and perceived conservation goals for Amazon and its employees. Comprised of three connected domes, the Spheres include two cafes and four floors of meeting nooks nestled among thousands of plants native to cloud forests.

Amazon’s horticulture team also focuses on conservation of ethnobotanically important species from around the world, contributing to human efforts to preserve valuable and threatened species. As landscape architects, it’s hard to argue against a project that recognizes the value of connecting people to nature and prioritizes conservation of species.

As with other newer glasshouses, such as Biosphere Reserves in Italy or Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, the Amazon Spheres are innovative in their systems and materials. From special glass coatings to advanced sensors, technology used in these projects could help make buildings everywhere more efficient.

Glasshouses are artificial environments that differ from their surroundings. Thus, they are typically not closed systems. This means that they rely on resources from outside, like air and water, to function.

In fact, a single conservatory typically has three support houses to assist with climate control. Due to their removal from indigenous or natural habitat, plants brought to conservatories are considered ex situ, Latin for off-site. Other examples of ex situ conservation methods include

98

mesocosms, seed banks, tissue cultures, and outdoor botanic gardens. Conservatories around the world create collections of live specimens, often in entirely different biomes, that can help to preserve genetic diversity in the plant kingdom. Since the early Victorian conservatories, our understanding of how glasshouses can be used to support critical conservation and adaptation strategies has evolved.

Furthermore, in this age of global resource circulation, indigenous ecosystems have been left vulnerable to disease and invasive species.

People intentionally and unintentionally reduce biodiversity, both by exploiting natural resources and by cultivating monocultures of valuable crops. Human impact is often shortsighted, so conservatories can play a vital role in protecting species whose value we may not yet appreciate.

Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) is an organization that coordinates between seed banks and glasshouses around the world to maintain a database of rare and endangered species in the overall global collection. Through their efforts, they have been able to document remaining specimens of species that have gone extinct in the wild. As a rule of thumb, 50 specimens are needed to protect a species’ genetic diversity.

Whether seeds or live plants, it is best if ex situ specimens of a species are kept in varied locations as insurance against natural or manmade disasters. Given existing skill, knowledge, and infrastructure, botanic gardens are a natural choice for accomplishing this.

Even small conservatories can play a large role in maintaining biodiversity. Another major benefit of collaboration through conservatory networks is that they can provide materials for research so that fewer specimens need to be collected from the wild in the first place. By maintaining separate populations, sometimes completely protected out of public view, some

Amazon Spheres Seattle, WA 99

specimens can be stored in the country of origin, and a small number would be used for active research and restoration.

Glasshouses are particularly crucial to conserving what are known as recalcitrant species, or plants whose seeds don’t have a dormant phase. They also remain a necessary resource for seed banks that need controlled environments to periodically rejuvenate collections of species whose seeds lose viability over time. The goal with any ex situ conservation is to have the ability to reintroduce species in situ if need be.

Ex situ conservation can be incredibly beneficial, but several concerns exist. First, some scientists argue that the artificial environments should not cost us existing natural systems. As the philosopher Holmes Rolston III noted, there is the danger that technology and ability will make the secondbest solution—ex situ—more attractive than in situ conservation.

ob Gl

a

is ld

trib

n utio

a tanic g of bo

rdens (Image: BGCI

)

Currently, there is need for both, as many parts of the world are experiencing rapid declines in biodiversity for a number of reasons, including climate change. One issue is that approximately half of the world’s botanic gardens are in Europe and North America, while some of the areas with the greatest need for conservation— tropical rainforests, for example—may have the fewest resources. One proposed solution is to increase partnerships in which ex situ facilities in high-income countries provide scientific and financial support to in situ facilities in areas under conservation pressures. Some exchange of specimens may act as an insurance policy, while most of the work can remain local. These partnerships could be self-sustaining; there are many species in the biodiverse, tropical climates along the equator that could attract attention from the public in affluent countries.

Perhaps the biggest ethical dilemma lies in choosing plant species and determining risks of freezing evolution. That is, there is a risk that by inhibiting a plant's interaction with its in situ environment, its offspring will no longer be selected based on in situ adaptive advantages, thus potentially yielding a less resilient species over time. The Botanic Gardens Conservation Strategy of 1989 outlined priorities for ex situ conservation: 1. Rare and endangered 2. Economically important 3. Species required for restoration or rehabilitation of ecosystems 4. Keystone species 5. Taxonomically isolated species

100

Conservatories choose the priorities on which to focus and typically blend in-country and exotic goals. For example, The Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, outside of London, made the decision to focus specifically on flora from the United Kingdom and the world’s arid regions.

Their mission is scientifically driven and based on the idea that “all our lives depend on plants and fungi.” They work in over 100 countries and are leaders in conservation education, research, and policy. Kew Gardens is also home to the world’s largest Victorian glasshouse, built in 1863.

Further research is needed to continue to improve the efficiency of built environments, both in glasshouses and in other types of buildings. There is also little mention of the risks of invasive species directly related to

ex situ conservation; specimens theoretically remain contained in the collections. Perhaps this is because even purposeful efforts to reintroduce species have typically seen low success rates.

Since preserving large ecosystems and creating resilient landscapes are paramount to human health and wellbeing, design innovation and adoption of biomimicry in the face of climate change may prove to be extremely valuable.

Landscape architects and horticulturists will continue to play vital roles in maintaining biodiversity and staying vigilant about the consequences of our collective actions. As humans continue to urbanize, even small conservatories can benefit people as well as the plants that sustain us.

REFERENCES Amazon. 2018. https://www.seattlespheres.com/the-plants Botanic Gardens Conservation International, 2018. https:// www.bgci.org/ Botanic Gardens Conservation International. Summary of the International Review of the Ex Situ Plant Collections of the Botanic Gardens of the World Volume 3 Number 7 - December 2001. https://www.bgci.org/resources/article/0084/ Cohen, J.I., Williams, J.T., Plunknett, H.S. Ex Situ Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources: Global Development and Environmental Concerns. Science. 23 Aug 1991: Vol. 253, Issue 5022, pp. 866-872 Cunningham, A. Crystal Palaces: garden conservatories of the United States. New York. 2000.

Friends of the Conservatory. 2018. https:// volunteerparkconservatory.org/about-us/history-of-theconservatory/

Hakes, J.G., 1992. Gene banking strategies for botanic gardens.

Opera Bot. 113:15-17. Copenhagen.

Heywood, V. H. 1992. Botanic gardens and conservation: New perspectives. Opera Bot. 113:9-13. Copenhagen.

Rolston, H. In Situ and Ex Situ conservation: Philosophical and ethical concerns. Ex Situ Plant Conservation: Supporting Species Survival in the Wild. 2004.

Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, 2018. https://www.kew.org/science/ whoe-are-and-what-we-do Stanley Price, M. R., Maunder, M., and Soorae, P.S. “Ex Situ Support to the Conservation of Wild Populations and Habitats: Lessons from Zoos and Opportunities for Botanic Gardens.”

Ex Situ Plant Conservation: Supporting Species Survival in the Wild. 2004.

Photographs by Krista Doersch

101

specimens can be stored in the country of origin, and a small number would be used for active research and restoration.

Glasshouses are particularly crucial to conserving what are known as recalcitrant species, or plants whose seeds don’t have a dormant phase. They also remain a necessary resource for seed banks that need controlled environments to periodically rejuvenate collections of species whose seeds lose viability over time. The goal with any ex situ conservation is to have the ability to reintroduce species in situ if need be.

Ex situ conservation can be incredibly beneficial, but several concerns exist. First, some scientists argue that the artificial environments should not cost us existing natural systems. As the philosopher Holmes Rolston III noted, there is the danger that technology and ability will make the secondbest solution—ex situ—more attractive than in situ conservation.

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Currently, there is need for both, as many parts of the world are experiencing rapid declines in biodiversity for a number of reasons, including climate change. One issue is that approximately half of the world’s botanic gardens are in Europe and North America, while some of the areas with the greatest need for conservation— tropical rainforests, for example—may have the fewest resources. One proposed solution is to increase partnerships in which ex situ facilities in high-income countries provide scientific and financial support to in situ facilities in areas under conservation pressures. Some exchange of specimens may act as an insurance policy, while most of the work can remain local. These partnerships could be self-sustaining; there are many species in the biodiverse, tropical climates along the equator that could attract attention from the public in affluent countries.

Perhaps the biggest ethical dilemma lies in choosing plant species and determining risks of freezing evolution. That is, there is a risk that by inhibiting a plant's interaction with its in situ environment, its offspring will no longer be selected based on in situ adaptive advantages, thus potentially yielding a less resilient species over time. The Botanic Gardens Conservation Strategy of 1989 outlined priorities for ex situ conservation: 1. Rare and endangered 2. Economically important 3. Species required for restoration or rehabilitation of ecosystems 4. Keystone species 5. Taxonomically isolated species

100

Conservatories choose the priorities on which to focus and typically blend in-country and exotic goals. For example, The Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, outside of London, made the decision to focus specifically on flora from the United Kingdom and the world’s arid regions.

Their mission is scientifically driven and based on the idea that “all our lives depend on plants and fungi.” They work in over 100 countries and are leaders in conservation education, research, and policy. Kew Gardens is also home to the world’s largest Victorian glasshouse, built in 1863.

Further research is needed to continue to improve the efficiency of built environments, both in glasshouses and in other types of buildings. There is also little mention of the risks of invasive species directly related to

ex situ conservation; specimens theoretically remain contained in the collections. Perhaps this is because even purposeful efforts to reintroduce species have typically seen low success rates.

Since preserving large ecosystems and creating resilient landscapes are paramount to human health and wellbeing, design innovation and adoption of biomimicry in the face of climate change may prove to be extremely valuable.

Landscape architects and horticulturists will continue to play vital roles in maintaining biodiversity and staying vigilant about the consequences of our collective actions. As humans continue to urbanize, even small conservatories can benefit people as well as the plants that sustain us.

REFERENCES Amazon. 2018. https://www.seattlespheres.com/the-plants Botanic Gardens Conservation International, 2018. https:// www.bgci.org/ Botanic Gardens Conservation International. Summary of the International Review of the Ex Situ Plant Collections of the Botanic Gardens of the World Volume 3 Number 7 - December 2001. https://www.bgci.org/resources/article/0084/ Cohen, J.I., Williams, J.T., Plunknett, H.S. Ex Situ Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources: Global Development and Environmental Concerns. Science. 23 Aug 1991: Vol. 253, Issue 5022, pp. 866-872 Cunningham, A. Crystal Palaces: garden conservatories of the United States. New York. 2000.

Friends of the Conservatory. 2018. https:// volunteerparkconservatory.org/about-us/history-of-theconservatory/

Hakes, J.G., 1992. Gene banking strategies for botanic gardens.

Opera Bot. 113:15-17. Copenhagen.

Heywood, V. H. 1992. Botanic gardens and conservation: New perspectives. Opera Bot. 113:9-13. Copenhagen.

Rolston, H. In Situ and Ex Situ conservation: Philosophical and ethical concerns. Ex Situ Plant Conservation: Supporting Species Survival in the Wild. 2004.

Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, 2018. https://www.kew.org/science/ whoe-are-and-what-we-do Stanley Price, M. R., Maunder, M., and Soorae, P.S. “Ex Situ Support to the Conservation of Wild Populations and Habitats: Lessons from Zoos and Opportunities for Botanic Gardens.”

Ex Situ Plant Conservation: Supporting Species Survival in the Wild. 2004.

Photographs by Krista Doersch

101

Drawing is a means of translating an idea in our head to a language that can be shared, discussed, considered, altered, rejected, and refined. It is a language that expands and enhances our visions for the future of our landscapes and as such calls for robust and rigorous investigation and exploration. Drawings allow ideas to be developed and in turn inform how others, whether professional or as community members, read, understand, and respond to our ideas and visions. Drawings are an essential form of design process, whatever the media.

D R AWI N G IN DESIGN workshop series all drawings by Michelle Hook, MArch ‘19

Drawing in Design project leader and UW Professor of Landscape Architecture Thaisa Way on the workshop series: In 2016, Seattle landscape architecture firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN) provided an opportunity for the Department of Landscape Architecture to launch a series of weekend workshops called Drawing in Design. The workshops continue to explore how drawing can serve as a way of thinking and a language of design dialogue. Workshop leaders pose questions around how designers draw, what we draw, and how we read and learn from drawings. Drawing in Design workshops have engaged students from the built environment disciplines of landscape architecture, architecture, real estate, urban planning, and construction management as well as industrial design, interactive design, and art history.

102

103

Drawing is a means of translating an idea in our head to a language that can be shared, discussed, considered, altered, rejected, and refined. It is a language that expands and enhances our visions for the future of our landscapes and as such calls for robust and rigorous investigation and exploration. Drawings allow ideas to be developed and in turn inform how others, whether professional or as community members, read, understand, and respond to our ideas and visions. Drawings are an essential form of design process, whatever the media.

D R AWI N G IN DESIGN workshop series all drawings by Michelle Hook, MArch ‘19

Drawing in Design project leader and UW Professor of Landscape Architecture Thaisa Way on the workshop series: In 2016, Seattle landscape architecture firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN) provided an opportunity for the Department of Landscape Architecture to launch a series of weekend workshops called Drawing in Design. The workshops continue to explore how drawing can serve as a way of thinking and a language of design dialogue. Workshop leaders pose questions around how designers draw, what we draw, and how we read and learn from drawings. Drawing in Design workshops have engaged students from the built environment disciplines of landscape architecture, architecture, real estate, urban planning, and construction management as well as industrial design, interactive design, and art history.

102

103

Master of Architecture student Michelle Hook on participating in a Drawing in Design workshop: Facilitated by Ron Henderson, the drawing workshop consisted of meditative sketching of the UW arts quad’s iconic cherry trees in bloom. At times, sun shone through clouds; rainfall and gusting wind characterized other moments. As the trees responded to changing weather, so too did the sketches. Small pink petals would flutter through the quad, leaving the trees and scattering on the ground. Trying to sketch and capture this phenomenon in a permanent way, where the essence of the trees was constantly changing, proved challenging over the course of the workshop. In the span of only two days of sketching, the trees changed drastically from pink to green.

As an architecture student, I had never taken such careful time to sketch landscape and organic nature. In drawing trees, there are no straight lines. This is especially true with blossoming cherry trees. Use of strictly pen at times and of loose watercolors at others allowed for a great deal of exploration within one subject.

The first Drawing in Design workshop was led by Michael Vergason of Michael Vergason Landscape Architects (MVLA). This workshop focused on drawing what the artist sees. Vergason shared with students his drawing history and journey to find inspiration. Students used Japanese format notebooks comprised of accordion pages to draw trees, bridges, and courtyards. They explored historic landscapes and buildings through the act of drawing plans, sections, and perspectives, each composed as a single narrative. A year later, Ron Henderson of L+A Landscape Architecture would share handmade Japanese notebooks with students in an exploration of the cherry blossoms on UW Seattle’s arts quad in early April, using pencils and watercolor. (The artwork featured here is from that workshop.)

Other Drawing in Design workshops have been led by Alan Maskin of Olson Kundig, Teresa Galí-Izard of Arquitectura Agronomia, Shannon Nichol of GGN, Alma du Solier of Hood Design, and Michael Beirut of Pentagram. Kona Gray of EDSA and Janelle Johnson of Hoerr Schaudt will lead upcoming workshops.

104

105

Master of Architecture student Michelle Hook on participating in a Drawing in Design workshop: Facilitated by Ron Henderson, the drawing workshop consisted of meditative sketching of the UW arts quad’s iconic cherry trees in bloom. At times, sun shone through clouds; rainfall and gusting wind characterized other moments. As the trees responded to changing weather, so too did the sketches. Small pink petals would flutter through the quad, leaving the trees and scattering on the ground. Trying to sketch and capture this phenomenon in a permanent way, where the essence of the trees was constantly changing, proved challenging over the course of the workshop. In the span of only two days of sketching, the trees changed drastically from pink to green.

As an architecture student, I had never taken such careful time to sketch landscape and organic nature. In drawing trees, there are no straight lines. This is especially true with blossoming cherry trees. Use of strictly pen at times and of loose watercolors at others allowed for a great deal of exploration within one subject.

The first Drawing in Design workshop was led by Michael Vergason of Michael Vergason Landscape Architects (MVLA). This workshop focused on drawing what the artist sees. Vergason shared with students his drawing history and journey to find inspiration. Students used Japanese format notebooks comprised of accordion pages to draw trees, bridges, and courtyards. They explored historic landscapes and buildings through the act of drawing plans, sections, and perspectives, each composed as a single narrative. A year later, Ron Henderson of L+A Landscape Architecture would share handmade Japanese notebooks with students in an exploration of the cherry blossoms on UW Seattle’s arts quad in early April, using pencils and watercolor. (The artwork featured here is from that workshop.)

Other Drawing in Design workshops have been led by Alan Maskin of Olson Kundig, Teresa Galí-Izard of Arquitectura Agronomia, Shannon Nichol of GGN, Alma du Solier of Hood Design, and Michael Beirut of Pentagram. Kona Gray of EDSA and Janelle Johnson of Hoerr Schaudt will lead upcoming workshops.

104

105

STRANGE EGNARTS COUPLING GNILPUOC A CONVE R S AT I O N B E TWEEN NI N A MRO SS + I SA BEL A N ORIEGA

RUTH KAZMERZAK

NM:

IN:

It’s exactly what it sounds like: two individuals who may not have met each other otherwise are paired and create an art piece. In this case, the pairing is between an established artist, Mary Ann Peters, and a UW student, me.

Strange Coupling, an annual studentrun program, brings together UW students and local Seattle artists to create a collaborative piece, culminating in an exhibition on the UW campus. In 2018, landscape architecture student Isabela Noriega worked with artist Mary Ann Peters.

UW landscape architecture alumni George Lee and Mackenzie Waller also participated in the 2018 event as artists. Photos by Isabela Noriega and Ruth Kazmerzak.

106

So, what is Strange Coupling?

NM:

IN:

Tell me about Mary Ann.

She’s awesome. We hit it off instantly! I look back on our meetings and remember feeling very comfortable in her openness. It was very easy to connect despite our age difference and where we are in our careers. We quickly discovered that traveling plays a strong creative role in our lives. The Middle East is a source of inspiration for her.

She’s traveled there a fair bit and her work is very political as a result. I deeply admire her art for its political nature. I strongly believe art is a reflection of its times. It can be the role of

RUTH KAZMERZAK

the artist to interpret current events—they can serve as a mirror for future contemplation. Her work draws from articles and events of our time that are unfortunately forgotten. The soul of her work reveals that which is controversial and stories of marginalized peoples that should be remembered.

She is an excellent mentor and pushed me to go places that I had not explored before. This came forth when discussing materials for our projects.

She encouraged dirt, fabric, paint, and mixing the different forms of media together. I feel she’s brave in material exploration, and her work is beautiful as a result. Her paintings are rich in color and texture, constantly moving as though trapped on canvas or cardboard.

NM:

IN:

How did the process of collaboration go?

The night we met, we discussed her most recent work: she is focusing on human migration, which coincidentally is a focal point of my projects this summer. She has Syrian 107

STRANGE EGNARTS COUPLING GNILPUOC A CONVE R S AT I O N B E TWEEN NI N A MRO SS + I SA BEL A N ORIEGA

RUTH KAZMERZAK

NM:

IN:

It’s exactly what it sounds like: two individuals who may not have met each other otherwise are paired and create an art piece. In this case, the pairing is between an established artist, Mary Ann Peters, and a UW student, me.

Strange Coupling, an annual studentrun program, brings together UW students and local Seattle artists to create a collaborative piece, culminating in an exhibition on the UW campus. In 2018, landscape architecture student Isabela Noriega worked with artist Mary Ann Peters.

UW landscape architecture alumni George Lee and Mackenzie Waller also participated in the 2018 event as artists. Photos by Isabela Noriega and Ruth Kazmerzak.

106

So, what is Strange Coupling?

NM:

IN:

Tell me about Mary Ann.

She’s awesome. We hit it off instantly! I look back on our meetings and remember feeling very comfortable in her openness. It was very easy to connect despite our age difference and where we are in our careers. We quickly discovered that traveling plays a strong creative role in our lives. The Middle East is a source of inspiration for her.

She’s traveled there a fair bit and her work is very political as a result. I deeply admire her art for its political nature. I strongly believe art is a reflection of its times. It can be the role of

RUTH KAZMERZAK

the artist to interpret current events—they can serve as a mirror for future contemplation. Her work draws from articles and events of our time that are unfortunately forgotten. The soul of her work reveals that which is controversial and stories of marginalized peoples that should be remembered.

She is an excellent mentor and pushed me to go places that I had not explored before. This came forth when discussing materials for our projects.

She encouraged dirt, fabric, paint, and mixing the different forms of media together. I feel she’s brave in material exploration, and her work is beautiful as a result. Her paintings are rich in color and texture, constantly moving as though trapped on canvas or cardboard.

NM:

IN:

How did the process of collaboration go?

The night we met, we discussed her most recent work: she is focusing on human migration, which coincidentally is a focal point of my projects this summer. She has Syrian 107

a final piece. For me it meant establishing a relationship and learning as much as I could from our interactions. She showed me her installations and walked me through her thinking and final products. This I found incredibly helpful, because she broke down her creative process.

NM:

You’re a designer but also an artist. Were there moments when your new knowledge from the program at UW came into play with your and Mary Ann’s existing skills?

IN:

Absolutely. I think conceptual model making is really helpful for me when explaining my ideas. I remember I had laser cut some wooden pieces in the shapes of continents.

We were playing around with them while at a cafe. Suddenly the light shone through one of the cutouts and created a beautiful shadow on the table. It pushed the creative conversation in a different direction, reminding us to leave room for random moments of inspiration. The different ways that I explore my own design process were helpful to our collaboration because they are different from hers; it is always refreshing to see the way others play with creative ideas.

NM:

IN:

heritage, and both my parents are immigrants; it was important to us that this topic be explored and discussed. It was challenging to decide the way this would take physical form. Migration is painful, and people are sometimes forced to move from one home in search of another. We struggled with the way we could poignantly capture this while addressing the struggle.

Mary Ann read a piece recently about the controversial “jewelry law” passed in Denmark.

It allows the authorities to confiscate valuables from asylum seekers. This became the thought we worked around and explored together. Taking part in Strange Coupling was not about creating 108

RUTH KAZMERZAK

Is it important to you to maintain an art practice as a designer?

Making art is still very new for me, because it was unfortunately a part of myself that I didn’t discover and explore until my mid-twenties. Prior to that, clothing was my chosen material for self-expression. Fashion and styling will be always be my first loves, and the body is my preferred tool for communicating identity.

Developing an artistic practice is important to me because the world profoundly overwhelms me: it is beautiful and frightening. An art practice is for communicating with the self and the different parts of the self that interpret the outside world.

Art is a physical manifestation of the dialogue and the emotions that occur inside you. If I can interpret that internal dialogue, I can better communicate with others. To me, this is the very essence of design.

RUTH KAZMERZAK

109

a final piece. For me it meant establishing a relationship and learning as much as I could from our interactions. She showed me her installations and walked me through her thinking and final products. This I found incredibly helpful, because she broke down her creative process.

NM:

You’re a designer but also an artist. Were there moments when your new knowledge from the program at UW came into play with your and Mary Ann’s existing skills?

IN:

Absolutely. I think conceptual model making is really helpful for me when explaining my ideas. I remember I had laser cut some wooden pieces in the shapes of continents.

We were playing around with them while at a cafe. Suddenly the light shone through one of the cutouts and created a beautiful shadow on the table. It pushed the creative conversation in a different direction, reminding us to leave room for random moments of inspiration. The different ways that I explore my own design process were helpful to our collaboration because they are different from hers; it is always refreshing to see the way others play with creative ideas.

NM:

IN:

heritage, and both my parents are immigrants; it was important to us that this topic be explored and discussed. It was challenging to decide the way this would take physical form. Migration is painful, and people are sometimes forced to move from one home in search of another. We struggled with the way we could poignantly capture this while addressing the struggle.

Mary Ann read a piece recently about the controversial “jewelry law” passed in Denmark.

It allows the authorities to confiscate valuables from asylum seekers. This became the thought we worked around and explored together. Taking part in Strange Coupling was not about creating 108

RUTH KAZMERZAK

Is it important to you to maintain an art practice as a designer?

Making art is still very new for me, because it was unfortunately a part of myself that I didn’t discover and explore until my mid-twenties. Prior to that, clothing was my chosen material for self-expression. Fashion and styling will be always be my first loves, and the body is my preferred tool for communicating identity.

Developing an artistic practice is important to me because the world profoundly overwhelms me: it is beautiful and frightening. An art practice is for communicating with the self and the different parts of the self that interpret the outside world.

Art is a physical manifestation of the dialogue and the emotions that occur inside you. If I can interpret that internal dialogue, I can better communicate with others. To me, this is the very essence of design.

RUTH KAZMERZAK

109

S WHAT MAT TE R S?

then / now

tarting out in the MLA program, I was committed to thinking about community design and the role of authentic community engagement. Today, I continue to focus on these ideas in my work at the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust. UW’s program prepared me to be forward thinking in ecological design and to understand the relationship between environmentally and socially just futures and their contribution to ecological sustainability.

In my work today, I’m excited to be approaching an eco-ethic that grapples with the legacy of racism and white supremacy in Los Angeles through my

MLA ‘17, National Park Service and City of Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board

I

entered the MLA program with a strong interest in understanding how public space can support an urban community’s needs. As part of my experience with an urban forestry nonprofit, I interacted with property owners and community members and witnessed how the trees outside people’s front doors provided a sense of place. In turn, I learned how the act of caring for those trees reinforced a sense of community. This was my point of beginning.

I took a landscape history course my first quarter in the program and I couldn’t get enough. I needed to understand how landscape architecture and ecological design had progressed, how diverse its forms had been, and how it had been guided by theories.

110

Somehow (I’m still not sure how), I became very interested in historic preservation and how historic landscapes, especially urban ones, can provide people with an orientation to a neighborhood, city, or region. City blocks, public parks, post-industrial sites, agricultural areas, and other landscapes describe where we come from and, perhaps, where we’re headed. I came to understand that the ways people interact with and relate to a place over time comprise a cultural landscape, and that I could actually pursue these ideas as a career.

Since graduating, I’ve worked documenting the condition of diverse cultural landscapes across the country, from high desert ranches to modernist plazas to Civil War-era forts.

I’ve committed to local preservation efforts through appointment to and service on Seattle’s Landmarks Preservation Board. I remain motivated by urban landscape issues and have paired this with a specialization in a way that I could not have predicted when I came to UW.

MLA ‘17, Project Manager at the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust work with the Neighborhood Land Trust. Diving into the importance of just sustainability has been at the heart of my work to date.

A

s an MLA graduate, I was laser-focused on finding a job in natural resource management, and specifically in integrated watershed management.

I remember looking forward to working collaboratively in partnership with community members, engineers, planners, scientists, and

other stakeholder groups. I am fascinated by the process of bringing a variety of creative perspectives to a single project or concept and finding common ground to design a solution that fulfills multiple objectives. My experience as an MLA student gave me many opportunities to learn how to facilitate that process, and to learn basic language skills in several disciplines.

I knew that I wanted my career in landscape architecture to contribute to the future health and resiliency of the region, and to have a positive impact on the communities in which I worked.

MLA ‘10, Director of Riparian Reforestation at Forterra

I’ve held on to all of the things that mattered to me then, and am delighted to have found my place in a wonderful community dedicated to the health of our region’s rivers and riparian ecosystems. At Forterra, where I have worked for the past eight years, I have had the enormous privilege of developing a landscapescale riparian restoration program model that is now in place in several Puget Sound basins.

111

S WHAT MAT TE R S?

then / now

tarting out in the MLA program, I was committed to thinking about community design and the role of authentic community engagement. Today, I continue to focus on these ideas in my work at the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust. UW’s program prepared me to be forward thinking in ecological design and to understand the relationship between environmentally and socially just futures and their contribution to ecological sustainability.

In my work today, I’m excited to be approaching an eco-ethic that grapples with the legacy of racism and white supremacy in Los Angeles through my

MLA ‘17, National Park Service and City of Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board

I

entered the MLA program with a strong interest in understanding how public space can support an urban community’s needs. As part of my experience with an urban forestry nonprofit, I interacted with property owners and community members and witnessed how the trees outside people’s front doors provided a sense of place. In turn, I learned how the act of caring for those trees reinforced a sense of community. This was my point of beginning.

I took a landscape history course my first quarter in the program and I couldn’t get enough. I needed to understand how landscape architecture and ecological design had progressed, how diverse its forms had been, and how it had been guided by theories.

110

Somehow (I’m still not sure how), I became very interested in historic preservation and how historic landscapes, especially urban ones, can provide people with an orientation to a neighborhood, city, or region. City blocks, public parks, post-industrial sites, agricultural areas, and other landscapes describe where we come from and, perhaps, where we’re headed. I came to understand that the ways people interact with and relate to a place over time comprise a cultural landscape, and that I could actually pursue these ideas as a career.

Since graduating, I’ve worked documenting the condition of diverse cultural landscapes across the country, from high desert ranches to modernist plazas to Civil War-era forts.

I’ve committed to local preservation efforts through appointment to and service on Seattle’s Landmarks Preservation Board. I remain motivated by urban landscape issues and have paired this with a specialization in a way that I could not have predicted when I came to UW.

MLA ‘17, Project Manager at the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust work with the Neighborhood Land Trust. Diving into the importance of just sustainability has been at the heart of my work to date.

A

s an MLA graduate, I was laser-focused on finding a job in natural resource management, and specifically in integrated watershed management.

I remember looking forward to working collaboratively in partnership with community members, engineers, planners, scientists, and

other stakeholder groups. I am fascinated by the process of bringing a variety of creative perspectives to a single project or concept and finding common ground to design a solution that fulfills multiple objectives. My experience as an MLA student gave me many opportunities to learn how to facilitate that process, and to learn basic language skills in several disciplines.

I knew that I wanted my career in landscape architecture to contribute to the future health and resiliency of the region, and to have a positive impact on the communities in which I worked.

MLA ‘10, Director of Riparian Reforestation at Forterra

I’ve held on to all of the things that mattered to me then, and am delighted to have found my place in a wonderful community dedicated to the health of our region’s rivers and riparian ecosystems. At Forterra, where I have worked for the past eight years, I have had the enormous privilege of developing a landscapescale riparian restoration program model that is now in place in several Puget Sound basins.

111

M AK IN G COVER

After pressing, we carefully added a border of clay. This ensured the plaster wouldn’t spill everywhere.

9:20 PM

8:13 PM

7:38 PM

Plaster fill! We waited for about an hour. One could drink wine, gossip, play games, talk of revolution, worship Satan, whatever—it’s your choice.

9:18 PM

Our second press was faster and more chaotically arranged. This one felt more dynamic in texture and material.

8:00 PM

We begin! We brought materials that we thought represent landscape architecture.

We took turns picking material to press. Our first pressed piece was meticulously thought out.

7:55 PM

7:07 PM

7:15 PM

T H E

112

We cut a large piece of clay and then rolled it out with a wine bottle.

Time to flip over! This was super scary and fun and worked and it was awesome.

Once the plaster was ready to flip, we did the ceremonious cutting of the border.

113

M AK IN G COVER

After pressing, we carefully added a border of clay. This ensured the plaster wouldn’t spill everywhere.

9:20 PM

8:13 PM

7:38 PM

Plaster fill! We waited for about an hour. One could drink wine, gossip, play games, talk of revolution, worship Satan, whatever—it’s your choice.

9:18 PM

Our second press was faster and more chaotically arranged. This one felt more dynamic in texture and material.

8:00 PM

We begin! We brought materials that we thought represent landscape architecture.

We took turns picking material to press. Our first pressed piece was meticulously thought out.

7:55 PM

7:07 PM

7:15 PM

T H E

112

We cut a large piece of clay and then rolled it out with a wine bottle.

Time to flip over! This was super scary and fun and worked and it was awesome.

Once the plaster was ready to flip, we did the ceremonious cutting of the border.

113