MAGNETIC ATTRACTIONS

abstract

Retooling Operations

University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design

Studio taught by : Andrew Madl

In Collaboration with Fernando Turpin

Tennessee ASLA Merit Award

Magnetic Attraction frames a spatial intervention and an habitat introduction to re-calibrate the movements and nesting sites of sandhill cranes, steering them away from urban sites and towards ‘ideal’ locations within Ocala National Forest.

Pine Castle bombing range, its peripheral landscape and weekly military test bombings plays a major role in reshaping the landscape. It is a collision zone where micro-controlled military regimes collide with unpredictable bird migration patterns. By embodying this dynamic relationship, the atmospheric volume engages with the landscape in a choreographic system of ecological habitat growth cycles.

Florida’s un-exaggerated landscape is molded and reshaped by retooling these military regimes to strategically bomb “ideal” zones, reforming the landscape into ideal attractions for Sandhill cranes

Right : Phases of Planting and Regeneration

The landscape evolves into a living system of cycles constantly rotating in state with burning, planting, and habitat regenerations. The drawings to the left show how this new regime is integrated into the existing landscape and how it will grow over time.

Phase One : Using grasshopper proximities, land between bodies of scattered water marshes are strategically bombed through re-calibrated military pathways. Through repetition and time, water-channels are formed resulting in a large network of water bodies.

Phase Two : With the extraction of land mass, mounds are formed and planted with appropriate vegetation to sustain and provide ideal foraging conditions for sandhill Cranes.

Phase Three : After the manipulation of the landscape and plantings, the new vegetation is maintained through existing maintenance methods such as controlled burning to regenerate plantings.