ROOT-v1

RO OT unexpected landscapes

2009 inaugural issue

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unexpected landscapes ∙ inaugural issue

Introduction 1 ∙ Unexpected Landscapes ∙ Amanda Jeter

Part I: Space 2 ∙ Kinou-bi: Functional Beauty ∙ Mariko Tominaga 4 ∙ Green Roofs,Vertical Gardens and Other Living Systems: Adding Balance to the Urban Fabric ∙ Leila Tolderlund 8 ∙ University of Colorado Denver Alumna Profile: Karla Dakin ∙ Amanda Jeter 10 ∙ Enmeshed Landscapes: Walter Hood ∙ Alison Kelly

Part II:Travel 12 ∙ Transmission from Chile: Arquitetura del Paisaje ∙ Ben Bookout 16 ∙ The Distance Between Subject and Object ∙ Michelle Shepherd 18 ∙ Phytoremediation: Bridging the Gap ∙ Kristy Bruce

Part III: Process 22 ∙ (Im)Possible Design Competition and Exhibition 28 ∙ Reigning in the Thesis Process: Let the Work Guide and Direct Your Path ∙ Jenn Thomas

Part IV: Imagination 32 ∙ Place and Time in the Frame: Landscapes Real and Imagined ∙ Joern Langhorst 36 ∙ Marble: Enter the Imagination of Design ∙ Stephan Hall and Kourtnie Harris 40 ∙ Finding Relational Landscapes Tim Davis’ Photoscapes ∙ Chad Summers

Cover Image: Inlet (detail of junk automobile), photo by Tim Davis (see page 40). This Page: Speculative Performance and the Human Response, site plan by Kelly Smith (see page 24). This publication has been printed on recycled paper using soy ink. Please share, recycle, or up-cycle this publication. Copyright © 2009 R O O T. Nothing shown may be reproduced in any form without obtaining the permission of R O O T and its contributors. www.root-land.org

Introduction: Unexpected Landscapes Amanda Jeter, R O O T Editor

In

the mid-1800s, one-armed Civil War veteran John Wesley Powell traveled down the Colorado River to explore, describe, and map the western landscape for the U.S. government. In 1878, his reflections, some unexpected, were published in the Report on Lands in the Arid Regions of the United States. This report called for a different pattern of land allotment than had been prescribed in the 1862 Homestead Act. Powell suggested developing a new land settlement pattern that would be inspired by the topography and limited by water resources. In spite of these constraints, the report also “painted the West as ‘sublime and heroic’ and helped solidify the national landscape identity” (Van Noy, 102). Ignoring the limitations Powell proposed, the West was settled under assumptions of plenty proving that “mythology [is] finally more influential than maps.”2 We wrestle with the consequences of mythologizing the landscape today. The article “Drying of the West,” cites dendrology studies of 2,000 year old trees, revealing that the western climate over the last 50 years has been one of the wettest periods of several millennia, and is likely to swing back into a drought regime that may not sustain the current population (Kunzig, 90-113). These two accounts of the West represent the conflict between what is expected of our landscape and the unexpected, undiscovered, or ignored. The unexpected qualities of landscape can—when perceived—lead to more efficient and interesting landscapes.

The writers in this inaugural issue began exploring the unexpected in landscape through a number of lenses: space, travel, process, and imagination. Some consider their own travels into other lands; other authors explore landscapes that exist in spaces around us, but require thoughtful notice. Unexpected discoveries are made through the design process, often a period of frustration, confusion, and hopefulness for discovery. Unexpected

landscapes can further be found in imaginary worlds that open up ontological levels and thresholds to fictional territories that alter current paradigms of what a landscape can be.

Our inaugural issue suggests that ignoring the unexpected in landscape may lead to a simplified creative process and critical framework that breeds landscape chimeras, deluded in true understanding of capacity, gilded in granite trappings, and void of complex connections to the greater life systems that surround us. This inaugural issue clearly demonstrates that if we are sensitive to the unexpected qualities of landscape, discoveries and new perspectives will help us create interesting and relevant responses to our landscape—a powerful potential for individual designers and our collective landscape.

REFERENCES Kunzig, Robert. February 2008. “Drying of the West.”

National Geographic. 213:2.

Van Noy, Rick. 2003. Surveying the Interior: Literary Cartographers and the Sense of Place. Reno, Nevada: University of Nevada Press.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

R O O T would not be possible without the support and advice of University of Colorado Denver (UCD) College of Architecture and Planning, Department of Landscape Architecture Chair and Associate Professor, Austin Allen.

Substantial support has also been provided by the UCD Student American Society of Landscape Architecture (ASLA) organization and their sponsor, the Colorado Chapter of ASLA. We would also like to thank our faculty advisor, Associate Professor Ann Komara, for her wisdom and encouragement. A special thanks to Assistant Professor Joern Langhorst and the entire faculty and staff in the UCD Landscape Architecture Program for their support of this endeavor.

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Unexpected Landscapes

Kinou-bi: Functional Beauty Mariko Tominaga, Wenk Associates, Inc.

U

nexpected landscapes can be described as spaces that have been developed as a result of daily life needs, and in cultural landscape terms, these places are described as vernacular landscapes. We as designers have much to learn from this ‘everyday landscape’—not built by great designers— but rather by a basic approach to sustainable design.

From my travels to rural villages in Peru, Mexico, Nepal and South Asia, I take inspiration from how the people work with the environment. Working without technologically advanced materials, these land-formers work with local materials and focus on the functionality of the landscape. Landscapes made in this way, in order to grow food or provide shelter, root into the place over time and become an interesting space for people and culture. In Denver, we live and work with advanced, global technology, but sometimes the spaces we design lack the elegance, functionality and beauty of the landscape. These everyday landscapes have patterns that respond to the topography, as seen in the agricultural terracing of rice fields in Japan, that hold many lessons on design and function.

When I go back to my hometown in Japan, I always love to walk through the farm paths that flow with landforms. Rice terraces were not made to look “cool” or “beautiful”, but as a result of functionality, they are very well constructed, and make a convincing, dynamic landscape with sacred beauty. This terracing system has been developed over time to suit the environment, and this fit is the basis of its spatial beauty. This aesthetic is called Kinou-bi in Japanese, which means functional beauty; the essential beauty evolves with a very simple functional product.

Drawing of Jardi Botanic in Barcelona capturing triangular spaces cultivated in sloped land.

Mariko Tominaga, 2008.

Photo by © 2002 Keiichi Kobayashi / “Japanese Rice Fields (small green) Published by PIE BOOKS.” 2 R O OT

The vast majority of cultural landscapes…have developed without the direct involvement of a professional designer, planner or engineer. These ordinary, or vernacular landscapes, which generally evolve unintentionally and represent multiple layers of time and cultural activity, are fundamental to our very existence (Alanen 2000, 5).

Part I: Space

Sketch Book In my travels, I study the unexpected beauty of landscapes through my sketchbook in an effort to expand my design language. Some contemporary landscapes also have functional beauty in their essential forms. An example is Jardi Botanic (new Botanical Garden) in Barcelona, designed with simple triangular spaces. The botanical garden sits on a mountain slope, and the network of paths are designed around the natural topography to avoid large earth moving operations. The result is a triangular-shaped network adapted to the available space and to the mountain slopes. This mesh of network paths outlines seventy-one triangular spaces, which are all very approachable, and the scale feels just right. This is a very good example of how designers responded to the land with deep consideration of the basic function for users.

Informing Design An example of how I have used my discoveries to inform my current work is the Mayham Gulch trail head along Clear Creek. I used a similar solution with the Botanical Garden described above by spending a lot of time analyzing and understanding the site’s topography and letting it guide where I should layout the parking and path rather than imposing a preconceived plan. It is a very fun and creative process, like a puzzle, working with the constraints of the land to fit our needs. After developing several alternatives, the final plan responded more sensitively to the steep canyon topography by terracing the parking lot. Terracing allowed for a 75% reduction in the retaining wall height- 27 feet down to 6 feet. I believe this is the similar approach used when constructing rice terraces. Work closely with the land, and pay attention to the function and people using the landscapes you design.

Lessons from the Land These essential approaches to landscapes hold lessons that we can apply to our practice; For example how to engage the land and find functional beauty in ordinary projects like a parking lot. People who evaluate, judge, and appreciate the projects we build are not necessarily the professional organizations,but more likely, the people who use the spaces every day. Talk to the land; reward comes from how the spaces we design become meaningful to people in their daily lives.

REFERENCES Arnold R. Alanen, and Robert Z. Melnick, eds. 2000. “Introduction.�

Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America. Baltimore, Maryland: Barcelona Botanical Garden. Mariko Tominaga, 2008.

The John Hopkins University Press.

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Les Halles shopping mall with exterior vegetated wall, Avignon, France. Photos (this page and opposite) by Leila Tolderlund.

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Part I: Space

Green Roofs,Vertical Gardens and Other Living Systems: Adding Balance to the Urban Fabric Leila Tolderlund, University of Colorado Denver Landscape Architect/Urban Designer & Instructor, Project Manager for the UCD Green Roof Project

To

be in a garden high in the air, on top of a building, is the ultimate experience. It is extraordinary because intuitively we know that here, a garden is not supposed to be. We feel that we might have come upon a secret–upon something magical and unexplainable. It is as if we have stepped into a fairy-tale, where everything is possible; a place that might connect us to the unknown.

Contemporary green roofs have many benefits that are increasingly being identified, measured, and acknowledged by the general public. These benefits include: controlling quantity and quality of storm water, cooling and cleaning the air, creating habitat for wildlife, conserving energy, doubling the life of the roof, and improving aesthetic environments in work and home settings. These living systems also bring a poetic, symbolic, personal and sometimes spiritual1 sense that often is not talked about. Benefits like these are challenging to measure and assign a value. Yet, these ethereal benefits of green roofs and vertical gardens are perhaps the most important aspects of these unexpected landscapes.

Charlie Miller, president of Roofscapes, Inc., standing in the midst of four to six feet tall swaying meadow grasses on top of Chicago’s City Hall, describes the experience this way: This grass is so beautiful when it’s in the wind. There are insects everywhere. We’re on Chicago’s City Hall, approximately four years after nature was given an opportunity to claim this little patch of the city. The original impetus for this project and the projects in Chicago in general, was an effort to use a natural, beautiful technique, to reduce the temperature in the city in the summer, the so-called Urban Heat Island phenomenon in which many, many gravel covered or gray roofs were absorbing energy, converting it into heat and raising the temperature of the city, essentially creating its own weather.

…I’m an engineer so I tend to focus first on energy benefits, water quality benefits, storm water benefits. But the real benefit is this experience. So what we’re creating is a whole new urban environment, a whole new urban context really. And that’s only going to come to fruition if this spreads. In Germany, projects like this have been around for over forty years and have every indication they’re going to live on much longer. These could very well be 100-year investments. …If you didn’t know you were in the city, you wouldn’t enjoy it half as much. Right?

I could go out to a meadow and this would be nice, but being here in the city, it’s great.

I haven’t bothered to look, but I’ll guarantee you there are worms in the soil here. This environment left to its own devices will get richer and richer as time goes on.2 Miller’s enthusiasm and appreciation for the rooftop garden goes beyond scientific value. He actually goes to the garden to experience nature which is even more significant and unexpected for him in the core of the city.

What is a green roof?

Green roofs are living layers on top of dwellings; undulating vegetated surfaces above, sometimes even alongside, and maybe reaching inside to the interior of a dwelling. Green roofs are a (new) ground plane; a hybrid ground plane offering a layer of prospect and potential, that stretches horizontally and reaches vertically on our buildings; a living layer, that perhaps is moving at a different pace than the city below it. This layer holds the opportunity for discovery, absorption, filtration, release, decay and renewal. It has the ability to hide, to produce, to provide for respite, and to participate in changing culture over time. It is an additional layer in the urban context that participates in the circle of life.

Consider that a green roof holds the potential to cover 5

Unexpected Landscapes

more than just the upper exterior surface of a building. A living roof can also spill into surfaces that exist between, and alongside dwellings. Additionally, recent strides in technology have advanced the properties of both extensive and intensive green roofs making them lighter, more durable and better able to withstand the extreme climatic conditions of the rooftop,but there is still much to be learned .3 Is green necessarily green…or do we have to re-define ‘green’ for living roofs in climates that do not lend themselves to lush vegetation? What are our perceptions and expectations of a living layer on top of, or alongside a dwelling in semi-arid and arid climates?

The importance of living systems like green roofs and vertical gardens exists at different scales that are closely interconnected.

At an individual/personal scale, studies have shown that we seem to be better balanced physically and psychologically when we are aligned with our environment (Sullivan, 678-700). Patients with a view to nature recover faster than patients with a view of a brick wall.4 At a local city/neighborhood scale, green roof systems that help protect, insulate, filter, slow and clean water, provide for wildlife habitat, lower rising temperatures, and clean the air is already acknowledged, implemented and integrated across the nation and across the world. One great thing to keep in mind is that green roofs and vertical gardens–by nature–have large potential in urban settings, where enormous surfaces of wall and roof plots are available and open for vegetation to emerge, unfold and develop.

On a global scale, we now know more than ever, that we all are ‘in the same boat.’ In other words we are a part of nature, so if we destroy nature, we essentially destroy ourselves.

At all of these scales, we should envision nature as a partner if we are to truly benefit from the capacities and powers found within our environment, regardless of whether these natural systems are located above, on top, below, between, alongside or inside our dwellings. The world is currently faced with limited resources and exponential population growth making our cities expand at a worrisome pace. The future health of our cities and citizens–and perhaps the survival of the human species–might depend on a balanced vegetation/hardscape ratio in urban settings. Most major cities are experiencing storm water quality and quantity problems because the ratio of impervious surfaces largely outweighs the area of permeable surfaces. The demand for solutions that provide sustainable and continuous optimum performance is higher than ever. Green roofs, vertical gardens and other living systems offer key solutions for all of these issues. It is imperative for us to identify gardening potential and to cultivate optimal ‘growing plots’ within the urban fabric. Over time vegetation can take hold and develop while also cultivating cultural change. Ground for awareness and performance can be plotted in a world, where there is no 6 R O OT

Imagery by Szumin Yang.

Part I: Space

delineation between building and landscape. In Ken Yeang’s definition of the term: ‘veg.itect,’ he describes it this way:

the divine do so less explicitly.” For a discussion of how ideas of nature are expressed in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, see Spirn’s essay, “Frank Lloyd Wright: Architect of Landscape,” in

Defining the concept of Vegetated Architecture led me to identify some of the key players in the field. Rather than continue the segregation of disciplines, Veg.itecture spans disciplines, further blurring the lines of established practice regimes. This does not demark territories where only the few architect/LA dual practitioners are allowed to have this mantle, but rather it is indicative of a unique approach–one where building and landscape are not discernible as individual elements.

Planned, planted and cultivated urban living systems provide opportunity for all citizens to (re-)connect with themselves and their communities. Urban garden ground allows growth of personal respect and understanding on a spiritual level.

Furthermore, it might restore and strengthen respect and understanding for our environment and for each other.

Frank Lloyd Wright: Shaping an American Landscape, 1922–1932, ed. David DeLong, New York, 1996, 135–69.

2. T. Fetig (2006) recently created the educational series e² (e squared–the economics of being environmentally friendly).

Also available at <http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/103_the_green_ machine_trailer.html>.

3. Recent strides in technology have advanced the properties of both extensive and intensive greenroofs, making them lighter, more durable and better able to withstand the extreme climatic conditions of the rooftop (William McDonough + Partners, 1999). From this web-site <http://www.greenroofs.com/ Greenroofs101/concept.htm>.

4. R.S. Ulrich (1984) studied the records on recovery of

University of Colorado Denver’s green roof research project started in 2006 and aims to educate and create awareness about green roof and vertical garden plots.

Students have designed and will implement living systems on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floor of our building located on 1250 14th Street in downtown Denver. This project will add to a growing body of professional literature and knowledge. Our hope is to explore how vegetation ratios in our cities effect and help generate sustainable urban living. Uniquely, and for the first time, we will conduct research for arid and semi-arid regions of the Western United States. This type of research has so far been limited to areas with higher precipitation.

NOTES 1.

The ethereal or divine in nature is discussed by Anne Whiston

Spirn (1997) who quotes, on pages 249-261, an interview that, almost word for word, is transcribed from a tape of 4 August 1957 in Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, Frank Lloyd Wright: His Living Voice, Fresno, 1987, p. 88. Spirn says: “This is pure Emerson, who had written similar words more than 150 years earlier: ‘the noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition of God’; R. W. Emerson, Nature, Boston, 1836, p. 77.” Wright spoke with Mike Wallace in 1957

patients in a suburban Pennsylvania hospital between 1972 and 1981 to determine whether assignment to a room with a window-view of a natural setting might have restorative influences. Twenty-three surgical patients assigned to rooms with windows looking out on a natural scene had shorter postoperative hospital stays, received fewer negative evaluative comments in nurses’ notes, and took fewer potent analgesics than twenty-three matched patients in similar rooms with windows facing a brick building wall, see pages 249-261.

REFERENCES Fettig, T. (director). (2006). The Green Machine [Video]. Boston: PBS Video.

Spirn, A. W. , Bulmahn, J. Wolschke (ed). (1997) “The Authority of Nature: Conflict and Confusion in Landscape Architecture. Nature and Ideology: Natural Garden Design in the Twentieth Century. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Sullivan, W.C., F. Kuo and S.E. DePooter. (2004). “The Fruit of Urban Nature:Vital Neighbourhood Spaces.” Environment and Behaviour. 36(5).

on the television program The Mike Wallace Interview. “I’ve always considered myself deeply religious,” said Wright. “Do you go to any specific church?” asked Wallace. Wright replied, “My church

Ulrich, R. S. (1984). “View Through a Window May Influence Recovery from Surgery.” Science. 224(4647).

[pause], I put a capital ‘N’ on Nature and go there.” Spirn goes on to say: “Wright is a good example of a designer who appeals to divine authority through nature because he has written so extensively on the topic. Most designers who link the natural and

Yeang, Ken. (2008) “Vegi.tect.” Landscape + Urbanism. 10 February 2008 <http://landscapeandurbanism.blogspot. com/2008/02/ken-yeang-vegitect.htm>.

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UCD Alumna Profile: Karla Dakin, K. Dakin Design, Inc. Amanda Jeter, Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s of Landscape Architecture Candidate, University of Colorado Denver

Sky Trapezium, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver 2008. Left and Bottom Right Photo by Jeff Webb; Top Right Photo by Amanda Jeter.

How did you find your way to landscape architecture as a profession?

In my personal experience all of our family gardens were designed by the landscape architect Thomas Church. Additionally, my previous career was in the art world, working on the east and west coasts. When I moved to Colorado from California, I was unable to participate in the art scene in the same ways I had previously. I took a design class, and then a landscape architecture theory class at University of Colorado Denver and followed my heart to pursue a career that could combine my arts and business background with my creativity.

What informs your design practice?

I have always loved design and continue to educate myself in areas of interest including horticulture and green roofs. As a way of getting people out into the garden I have been pushing food gardening for years in my residential work. Ultimately, my goal is to create an effective design that draws people outside into the theater of the garden. I evaluate my design by staying involved in the jobs, from construction to maintenance.

In forming your own practice what were some of the unexpected issues you faced or discoveries you made?

I made a clear decision to start my own business knowing that I had previous work experience, but I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a corporate person, and as a mother, I wanted the flexibility inherent in having my own business. I think the corporate perspective gives you insight on to how to get public work, but in my residential design work, I can work on a very intimate scale.

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Part I: Space

In 2007, you were commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA Denver) to create a permanent rooftop garden installation, Sky Trapezium. Describe your design process for this work.

This project was my first public commission and a great opportunity to learn how to translate my residential experience into the public realm, and now as a result, I’m bidding on public jobs against corporate firms.

With funding from the Gates Foundation, I worked with MCA’s executive director and chief curator, Cydney Payton on this project. My intentions were to create an oasis of shade and water for the public; I never lost the idea of making the space an inviting garden. To tie the garden to the site I took inspiration from the established pattern and materiality of the architecture by using Brazilian redwood and the wedge shape. This shape evolved, floated, and divided into five bits with the top wedges becoming a blue and green prairie that speaks to the eastern prairie views from Denver. Other wedges take inspiration from the alpine view of the Rocky Mountains.

On this project, I worked with a team of twelve people including structural and civil engineers, an architect and landscape contractor because this garden’s technical parameters are nothing like a garden on the ground. Since successful green roof plant materials in the arid West are still being explored, I also hired Mark Fusco, senior horticulturist with the Denver Botanic Gardens. An amazing collaborator, Mark gave me a plant list and I only knew of about 20% of his recommended plants. In Sky Trapezium the plants are not yet matured, and I am certain some of them may be more successful than others, but this is part of the journey.

FIVE GREEN ROOF PLANTS FROM SKY TRAPEZIUM Acantholimon hohenackeri Prickly Dianthus Chilopsis linearis Desert Willow Daphne cneorum ‘Dr. Lawrence Crocker’ Paxistima canbyi Canby’s Mountain-Lover Physaria bellii Bell’sTwinpod RESOURCES K. Dakin Design, Inc. www.kdakindesign.com Museum of Contemporary Art Denver www.mcadenver.org

Planted in the Sky Trapezium green roof garden, Physaria bellii is a member of the mustard family and a Colorado Native. Photo by Amanda Jeter.

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Enmeshed Landscapes: Walter Hood Alison Kelly, Master’s of Landscape Architecture Candidate, University of Colorado Denver

W

alter Hood (professor, UC-Berkeley; Principal, Hood Design, Oakland) addressed a standingroom-only audience in his April 17, 2008 lecture at the University of Colorado Denver. Hood’s lecture, titled “Landscape Figure/Enmeshed Experience” explored his method of integrated design process as shown in his own projects.

True to his self-proclaimed approach of speaking first about the inspiration and possibilities inherent in a project before the project itself, Hood led the audience of students and faculty from numerous disciplines through diverse projects from Oakland, Los Angeles, and South Carolina. Hood challenged design professionals to move away from “the dissonance of the figure-ground” and to challenge norms through critical thinking about why things are the way they are. Challenging standards serves as the basis for Hood’s theory of enmeshed landscapes–landscapes created more to fulfill a purpose in a locally specific way than to adhere rigidly to existing social and design standards.

Hood’s diverse academic and professional background, which includes practice in architecture and the fine arts as well as landscape architecture, supports his advice to design students and professionals to consider the comprehensive qualities of a site.

At an informal luncheon following his lecture, Hood urged each student in attendance to “challenge yourself as a Landscape Architecture student to not be afraid of architecture and buildings.” Similarly, Hood explained the role of his own distinctive designs in the holistic context of a site as anything but limited by their physical boundaries.

“Our experience of a place is not limited to ‘how wide is this place?” he stated. In response to students’ questions about his ability to create places so integrated into the human element, Hood explained simply that cities and communities are dynamic, and people make them dynamic.

“If I’m not thinking of us,” Hood asked the audience at large, “who am I thinking of?”

Walter Hood (left) at an informal student luncheon with UCD graduate students during is April 2008 visit to UCD. Photo by Jeff Webb; Photo-collage with selections of Hood’s work by Amanda Jeter.

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Part I: Space

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our experience of place is not limited to how wide is this place?â&#x20AC;? -Walter Hood Re-Imagining Rocky Mountain Seed Company Parking Lot. Morgan Williams, 2007.

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Unexpected Landscapes

Transmission from Chile: Arquitectura Del Paisaje Ben Bookout, Master’s of Architecture Candidate, Universidad Catolica de Chile All Photos and Images by Author Unless Noted

U

nexpectedly, the professional perspective of arquitectura del paisaje (landscape architecture) is just beginning to be taken seriously in Chile. To gain a better understanding of the current state of arquitectura del paisaje as a profession, I interviewed Professor Consuelo Bravo, a practicing architect and landscape architect who holds an architectural degree from Universidad Catolica in Santiago and a double master’s degree of landscape architecture and urban design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Landscape Ecology and Economics With fifty-eight distinct ecotones, Chile is the most ecologically diverse country on the planet. It has a population of approximately 15 million people, half of whom live in the capital of Santiago, which lies in the Central Valley region of the country. In 1971, Chile was the first South American country to democratically elect a socialist president, Salvadore Allende, who was subsequently overthrown in a military coup on September 11, 1973 by the iron-fisted dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. Since this controversial dictator relinquished power, Chile has enjoyed Latin America’s fastest growing economy over the last ten years. In total, 91% of Chile’s economy is tied directly to its landscape including the world’s largest copper mine and value added goods such as wine, produce, and salmon (Bravo, 2008).

The recent economic boom in Chile has seen a marked growth in the construction industry and a growth in the architectural profession, especially in Santiago.

With this economic and population growth, there is an increasing concern for the environment. This new conscientiousness is a primary reason for the emergence of the profession of landscape architecture (Bravo, 2008).

Santiago is comparable to Phoenix, Arizona in its desert setting, but its landscape looks European and its use of water is inefficient at best. Furthermore, Santiago has the worst air quality of any South American city.

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Hindering landscape development is Chile’s restrictive market as governing bodies allot only 9% of development space for open space and parks, without offering financial support for landscape construction–limiting open space to only those developments that can afford it. Additionally, maintenance of constructed open space is the responsibility of the municipality, many of which are financially limited.

Due to nervousness about global warming and its implications for Santiago, there is a real need for developments in environmentalism in Chile (Bravo, 2008).

Environmental engineers are hard to find and ecologists and urban foresters hardly exist. Furthermore,the existing industry has had lax regulation as Chile’s version of the EPA has only been around for the last 10 years. Currently there are very few environmental impact statements for existing industry and new developments. Bravo hopes that landscape architects, along with ecologists and legislators, can bring more responsibility and restraint to the industry, enabling a recovery of their brownfield sites.

Changing Gender and Colonial Paradigms Traditionally, the practice of landscape architecture in Chile has been a shared practice between the architect and paisajista. Historically, the paisajista profession has been practiced by females, is typically devalued by the machismo culture in Chile, and is a secondary consideration to architecture. For example, an architect (usually male) would design a house, building, or development and its landscape, lastly consulting with a paisajista to determine which plant selections suit the design.

A further influence on the landscape comes from Chile’s history of colonization. This can be seen specifically in Santiago with its classic European parks and older private residences, contrasting with the recent emergence of more native public landscapes. This duality of landscapes has become more pronounced as Chileans have discovered both the aesthetic and ecological value of their native land. This return to more native landscape phenomenon has only been practiced in Chile since the turn of the millennium (Felsenhard, 30-33).

Part II:Travel

Atacama Desert The world’s driest desert and largest copper mine

Central Valleys pisco, wine, astronomy

Santiago Home to half the population and Universidad Catolica de Chile

Region of Maule Chile’s main wine and fruit production

The Lake District Tourism and German Immigration

Chiloe Unique palifito architecture

Chilean Patagonia Home to Torres de Paine National Park

Brave New Landscapes At the forefront of change in landscape architecture, urban design, planning, Bravo works with her husband Jaime Bravo at their firm I.B.A. in Santiago, Chile. Bravo hopes that landscape perceptions will continue to change and more native, xeric designs will become the norm in the metropolitan regions of Santiago,Valparaiso, and Vina del Mar. Most of I.B.A.’s clients are developers, some who want to appear more environmentally friendly, while others respect the value of landscape architecture and use their firm because they are talented, local, and less expensive than foreign firms which are more commonly used. The value of the service still lays in the perception of the developer and their opinions of the profession determine its viability in new construction and existing renovations. When contracts are won, it is often hard to find materials or relate construction standards as most contractors “shoot from the hip” or are not experienced in landscape construction.

The most ecologically diverse country in the world, Chile contains fi fty-eight ecotypes.

Also known as the Land of the Poets, Pablo Neruda pictured above being the most famous.

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Above: Universidad Pontifi cia Catolica de Chile-Lo Contador campus is set to open Chile’s fi rst master program of landscape architecture in early 2009. Opposite Page: I.B.A. Arquitector’s parking lot design for the Conjunto Armonico development in Punto Fraile, Chile. Images courtesy of Consuelo Bravo, Principal of I.B.A. Arquitector

Bravo is not alone in the struggle to bring landscape architecture to Chile. In April 2008, architects, landscape architects, and landscape professionals came together form ICHAP (Instituto Chileno de Arquitectos Paisajistas).

Ideally, this organization will give landscape architecture a public voice and enhance its viability. Bravo teaches at the Universidad Catolica and is developing its master of landscape architecture program, set to begin in early 2009.

Recovering Native Landscapes An example of Bravo’s work incorporating sustainable values in contemporary Chilean landscape design can be seen in the Conjunto Armonico vacation development in the small coastal town of Punto Fraile. As part of a beach house development, Bravo proposed a permeable parking area with highly xeric and durable plantings directly under the parked cars. Because the parking area is not used as often as a full-time residence, she focused on making the parking lot a landscape asset rather than a typically mundane feature.

The design team experimented with native varieties with mixed results. A final planting plan emerged using a mixture of sedum and other hardy varieties joined the native plants to take on the task of absorbing oil, gas, and other toxic liquids from vehicles. In addition, the parking lot is constructed of permeable materials to allow rainfall to permeate the soils rather than run off to 14 R O O T

drainage. This is an example of how Bravo is trying to change the opinion of native landscapes. She combined non-native xeric ornamentals with Chile’s native plant palette to expose people to the “new” native varieties.

Conclusion Chile is a country of tremendous potential and tremendous beauty. Economic advancements and environmental concerns have brought a growth to landscape architecture.

Traditional paradigms of gender and colonial values are changing quickly as economic gain and a rising concern for the environment in Latin America change the role of landscape from colonial luxury to the realm of native necessity.

Contemporary landscape architects like Bravo have the opportunity to play an important role in protecting the rich ecosystems of the country from irresponsible industrial and suburban development. At the forefront of budding interests in sustainable urban design, and planning, these practioners are helping Chile define its landscape and its global context.

REFERENCES Bravo, Consuelo. (4 June 2008). Lectures in Paisajes Productivos.

Universidad Pontificia Catolica de Chile.

Felsenhardt, Christina. (jul/aug/sept 2001). “Naturaleza, Paisaje, y Paisajismo Nuestra Mundo y su Interpretacion.” CA Ciudad y Arquitectura (105).

Part II:Travel

15

Unexpected Landscapes

The Distance Between Subject and Object Michelle Shepherd, Doctoral Candidate in History,Theory and Criticism of the Environment, University of Colorado Denver Mean Ends In a small anecdotal case, I have employed an individuallybased model of field research in urban ecology. The resulting narrative is meant to demonstrate a liberal participation in environmental discourse and the poiesis of unexpected landscapes (Waldheim 2004, Dixon Hunt 2006).

Media Dependency Recently, when returning to the US from the Netherlands, I stopped in Amsterdam for a day. One intent for this excursion was to do an empirical check on the Amsterdam Bos in reference to the renowned theoretical essay by Anita Berrizbeita (Berrizbeita 1999, 186-203).

Until this lived experience of it, I thought I knew almost everything essential about the park from reading the article.

This theoretical work was the decisive catalyst for my trip to this city. Above all else, I had to see for myself what Berrizbeita had described. I felt that following her vision would direct a landscape architecture student through a transcendental professional threshold.

Posthumanist Biomimicry I wanted to walk the site, to discover, sense, and perceive it as she had, in a presumed investigation of her topic. From this mission I imagined I would be perfectly positioned to report original findings to my colleagues. To match Berrizbeita’s influential, published passages with my own critical oversight would be well worth the effort—so I thought.

Her article emphasizes how important the large park is to the city (Harvard 2003). How unmistakably the naturalized and urbanized landscapes meet (De Jong 2003, 598-9).

Berrizbeita’s thesis rests on the notion of the urban park’s global value as a living infrastructure (De Koninklijke 2008).

Disparity At some moment before my departure from the States, I had reread the article specifically to find directions to the park. I searched Berrizbeita’s words and illustrations for a clear context. I found nothing. I felt that certainly when in Amsterdam this magnificent feat of design and planning would present itself to me serendipitously. Yet, during the weeks while traveling through the Netherlands, I unsuccessfully tried new angles by which to find a street name or the district coordinates for Berrizbeita’s Amsterdam Bos. 16

R O OT

Social-Distance Corollary In South Holland and the Green Heart, I asked around. I mentioned I would go to this park in Amsterdam. Although by train or taxi I was a mere 20 minutes away from the international attraction, most often the park’s name drew blank stares and puzzlement. Frequently, my hosts would assure me that Vondelpark is lovely.

With the joys of WiFi, I scoured the most avant-garde websites for minimal data points: location, proximity, means of access, etc. In neither English nor Dutch was it made clear how “the park,” Amsterdamse Bos, fit into the city of Amsterdam (Amsterdam 2008). One friend-in-passing said, “Oh, the forest.” I thought, yes, there is a forest in this city park (Timmermans 2008).

Alas, the night before my intended reconnaissance, I came closest to the Bos by checking for an available reservation in a hotel that advertised its adjacency to it. I noticed on that location map how suburban the road patterns appeared to be compared to the old center. I noticed that the Schiphol airport was the most recognizable landmark nearby. The hotel had no vacancy.

Parallax My train from Leiden to Amsterdam Central arrived at noon.

Already the day had included a 12-mile bicycle ride with a 50-pound backpack in tow. Fortunately, there was a hotel offering me reasonable accommodations within 300 feet of the station’s main exit. The hotelier–I recognized him immediately from a publicity image on the Internet—scrutinized my euros for their legitimacy and offered me a free city map and tips about where to go (kindly considering my personal tastes).

When I enquired for a bicycle rental, the directions, distance and difficulty level to Amsterdam Bos Park, he sat back.

“Where? Oh, the forest. If you have one day in Amsterdam, why go there?”

Therefore, I must record that no one I spoke with in the Netherlands cares much about the Amsterdam Bos. Berrizbeita portrays it as if it were the structure and essence of urban vitality, however, I have seen that it is far apart from the main public concerns.

Only after my return home, with much more of an investment to know, have I been able to decipher and assemble a way to what the Dutch call the Amsterdam Forest. Its northeastern

Part II:Travel

edge is about two and a half miles southwest of the city’s central train station. The route passes southwest, out of the canal belt, through the Vondelpark, to eventually reach the Bos.

representations, those of “scale” and other co-opted aspects of ecological “realities” (Orr 2008, Juhasz 2008).

If not, we will miss making the biophilic pedestrian urbanity, all together.

Hero and Anti-Hero After searching hundreds of sources, I finally found an aerial photograph that distinctly shows the forest contour in its context. This image, “bekijk hier de Amsterdam satellietfoto” c.

2005, is available on the Aerophoto-Schiphol Photography website: <http://www.aerophoto-schiphol.nl/satellietfoto-amsterdam.html>.

No other image I have seen fully shows Amsterdam’s Grachtengordel (ditches belt) in proximity to Amsterdamse Bos (the forest).

Check theory with practice. Improve theory, as well as the land.

The Bos Park appears to be a place that is more relevant to Schiphol and some newer suburbs, south of Centrum, Oud-Zuid and Zuider-amstel (the traditionally configured cityscape). Although, even at the airport there was no cultural indication of the natural area’s availability. Or, of its tantamount existence compared to something like the commercial duty-free zone.

Multifunctional Landscapes Is it especially odd to peripatetically qualify a city park in one afternoon? Is this an eccentricity left only for theory students? Perhaps the typical resident, or visitor to the Netherlands, takes no special pain to see what Berrizbeita insightfully conveys.

My opportunity to see the forest for myself is spent. Still, I invite anyone to join my investigation strategy and help us all compare our pedagogical precedence with practical facts (Amsterdam Forest 2008).

Reception Study New work, from this awkward beginning, remains, at least for me. One item: Is the ordinary Dutch tourist in Amsterdam ambivalent about urban ecology? This would be a break from the popular image. Investigation of the literature about this could also translate into an understanding of attitudes in western North America (Dekker 2002, 305-316). This could explain a lot. For example, about how the details of environmentalism progress so slowly toward any pervasive impact, to affect the movement’s professed “life sustaining goals.”

My second item: Are our academic leaders taking us astray?

In the spirit of scholarly discourse, we must ask. As a collective (landscape architecture students worldwide), it is our intellectual duty to discuss our faculty’s abstract claims (Marzluff 2008, 68). We must contest illusive “scientific”

REFERENCES Amsterdam Forest, Sound Walk (air, earth, water, fire). 22 July 2008. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JYWc7GuOp4>.

Amsterdam Info. 22 July 2008. Amsterdamse Bos. <http://www. amsterdam.info/parks/amsterdamse-bos>.

Berrizbeita, Anita. James Corner (ed). 1999. “The Amsterdam Bos: The Modern Public Park and the Construction of Collective Experience.” Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Theory. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

De Jonge, Dick. 2003. Het Amsterdamse Bos, Natuur Dichtbij de Stad.

Utrecht: Schuyt en Co Uitgevers.

De Koninklijke Nederlandse Natuurhistorische Vereniging (Royal Dutch Society for Natural History). 22 July 2008. Nature Study, Experience, Conservation. <http://www.knnv.nl>.

Dekker, Jos. 2002. “Dynamiek in de Nederlandse Natuurbescherming.” Druk- en zetwerk: Grafisch bedrijf Ponsen & Looijen bv,Wageningen. 22 July 2008 <http://igiturarchive. library.uu.nl/dissertations/2002-0729-144057/htm>.

Harvard University, Graduate School of Design. March 31 - May 26, 2003, Past Exhibits: Large Parks: New Perspectives. 22 July 2008 <http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/events/exhibitions/large_parks. htm>.

Hunt, John Dixon. 2004. The Afterlife of Gardens. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Juhasz, Joe. 23 July 2008. Joe Juhasz on Scale. <http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=M1kSXPJs78I>.

Marzluff, John M. (et al, ed). 2008. Urban Ecology: An International Perspective on the Interaction Between Humans and Nature.

New York: Springer.

Orr, David. 23 July 2008. “The Architecture of Democracy: Integrating Design, Politics and Spirit into a New Blueprint for a Sustainable Future.” Revolution from the Heart. <http:// www.bioneers.org/node/1439>.

Timmermans, Geert. 22 July 2008. Description of Dick de Jong’s 1947 “Het Amsterdamse Bos, van cultuursteppe tot bospark.” <http://www.knnv.nl/amsterdam/inhoudBlaadje%2020061. htm#13>.

Waldheim, Charles (ed). 2006. The Landscape Urbanism Reader. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

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Phytoremediation: Bridging the Gap Kristy Bruce, Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s of Landscape Architecture Graduate, University of Colorado Denver

T

he world's population is drastically increasing, creating higher demand on available space. For densely populated areas, open recreational space is usually amongst the first type of land to be sacrificed for housing and commercial areas. Because of this, the available land that does exist for recreation is often built on expired landfills. Creating usable space on these covered landfills causes several types of health problems because water leaches through the compacted waste into groundwater sources, contaminating drinking water as well as leaking harmful, combustible methane gas into the air.

This is especially true in Patna, India, where hoards of cricket players crowd small lots where cows eat the reemerging landfill refuse that lies just beneath the surface, and children play in the contaminated puddles.

Patna, India, the capitol of the Bihar province, houses two million people in a city that is roughly nine km wide by twenty-five km long adjacent to the Ganga River (known to westerners as the Ganges River). Although many areas in India currently have major water issues and a complex cultural environment, Patna is the ideal location to pioneer an unexpected landscape where recreation meets trash and an ancient culture coincides with science.

The Cycle of Contamination The degree to which the groundwater and surface runoff is contaminated is dependent on the amount of water which has passed through the waste. Because Patna experiences extreme monsoon seasons and has a high water table, the waste is often immersed in water for long periods of time. This creates large amounts of toxic leachate (a solution resulting from leaching, as of soluble constituents from soil, landfill, etc., by downward percolating ground water). Leachate studies have been done on landfills that have primarily paper, food, glass, metals, plastics, rubber, diapers, oils, grease, and other liquid wastes; the health compromising toxins found in these household and industrial waste sites are selenium, mercury, chromium, cadmium, PCB's, PAH, and lead (James 1977, 429-32).

These toxins affect human health through bioaccumulation, the body's tendency to store chemicals and allow them to 18

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Trash dumping at the Electrical Board Colony community landfi ll. Photo by Kristy Bruce taken March 16, 2008 in Patna India.

accumulate. The painful and fatal Itai-Itai disease, caused by chronic cadmium poisoning, and Minamata disease, caused by chronic mercury poisoning are two examples that usually occur in people consuming contaminated fish found near industrial waste (James 1977, 429-32).

Contaminants don't only come from water sources, but can accumulate in the body from eating plants and animals that are contaminated as well. PCB's are manmade chemicals used in electrical applications, hydraulics, paints, and plastics to name a few; PCB's cause a wide range of health issues, including brain damage, spinal degeneration, loss of smell, reproductive issues, and several forms of cancer (EPA 2008). PAH's are a product of incomplete combustion of organic materials and some types are known to cause anemia and a suppressed immune system in the short term and developmental issues, reproductive issues, and cancer with long term exposure (EPA 2006). Because many of the landfills in India don't have liners beneath them, the water system is directly exposed to these waste associated contaminants. When these landfills are converted to park spaces, the waste continues to break down and contaminate the water system.

Part II:Travel

Sacred or Polluted?

There is a struggle in India between the scientific data supporting health issues caused by pollution in the water sources, and the Hindu religious belief that several of the water sources are pure and healing regardless of their pollution levels. The prime example is the Ganga River, a cultural cornerstone in the Hindu faith. Although the Ganga has 300 million gallons of waste draining into it every day with fecal-coliform counts 10,000% higher than the government standard for safe river bathing, people bath in and drink the river water every day (Polidor 1999).

religious tradition, phytoremediation will allow one process to exemplify both religious culture and scientific remediation.

Plants have been very important religious cultural icons for Hinduism for thousands of years. The ancient Vedas, or Hindu texts, discuss how plants are sacred. Ayurveda is one Veda which is about medicinal health through the use of plants. Another historic tradition of nature worship which is still active in India is the Sacred Groves. The groves are regionally specific forests that are considered to be the home of gods and ancestral spirits, and thus protected from resource depletion because within the Hindu religious context it is taboo to acquire wood, water, or animals from the forests (Polidor 1999). This creates little separation between spirituality, nourishment, nature, and medicine. Because plants are so important in Indian culture, they are important symbols in park design.

In addition to bridging culture and science, they allow remediation and recreation to occur on the same site.

Plants that have phytoremediative qualities and cultural importance in the Hindu culture include lotus, which hyperaccumulates Cadmium and represents purity and renewal; Mulberry, which rhizodegredate PCBs and is

Morning ritual bathing in the Ganga. Photo by Jack Wasserbach taken March 20, 2008 in Varanasi India.

"The Ganga is very pure, very clean" says Raj, our Ganga boat tour guide, as we watch a two year old corpse in a white shroud taken out to the middle of the river for burial. The Hindu religion is one of the oldest cultural belief systems in the world, and their practices must be honored and respected. It is an important and beautiful set of traditions to preserve. There is, however, an opportunity to overlap that ancient culture with science in a manner that pays homage to the Hindu culture while improving the quality of life in India.

Ayurveda and Phytoremediation There is a science which can bridge the Hindu culture with science and allow for recreation and waste management: phytoremediation. Phytoremediation uses a group of plants to help remove organic and inorganic toxins from soil and water sources through a variety of processes. Because the process uses plants, a historic symbol that often represents cleansing in the Hindu

Nightly religious ritual to celebrate Mother Ganga. Photo by Kristy Bruce taken March 20, 2008 in Varanasi India.

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Unexpected Landscapes

the primary food for silk worms (a major cash crop in n India); And sedges, which hyperaccumulate semi-volatilee petroleum products, and are traditionally used to makee paper, patch baskets, medicinally, to relieve dysentery, forr perfume, and for cattle (Singh 2003, 978-81).

Finding Cultural and Scientific Solutions The use of these plants and other traditionally Indian n architectural elements value the inherent cultural al landscape of India. Cultural landscapes have ethnographicc importance, meaning they “mirror the systems of meanings, s, ideologies, beliefs, values, and world-views shared by a group of people… [a] distinctive way of transformingg nature into culture” (Haresty 2000, page 169). In a placee with such unique and fortified cultural traditions, plants with important cultural meanings will be recognized and appreciated. The associative overlap of healing the earth with these plants will be easily understood through the venue of an ethnographic landscape.

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Common Plants used for Phytoremediation Common Name Latin Name (Type of phytoremediation, types of chemicals remediated)

The increasing volume of trash is consuming the landscape which could be used for healthy recreation. Frequently after a landfill is covered the space is subsequently used for recreation. The current nature of landfill development entails spreading out landfill materials until level and then covering it with soil, preventing the coincidence of landfill accumulation process and space for recreation.

Furthermore, the existing landfill process is not designed to prevent groundwater leachates and methane accumulation (James 1977, 429-32). If more sites were active landfills as well as recreation areas, there would be a greater area of much needed open space.

Birds-Foot Trefoil Lotus corniculatus

If the physical and mental disconnect between microbial science and historic cultures, recreation and waste management, were bridged, then the mass population might be more involved in waste management and outdoor recreation, improving community health. This goal could be accomplished by creating a series of phytoremediation treatment trains at current landfill locations providing educational venues as well as opening up space for community parks. If these treatment trains were strategically situated at waste dump sites, the amount of leachates contaminating potable water sources could be vastly reduced. Considering the phytoremediation approach from a cultural point of view in active environments could potentially meld different ideas into one solution resulting in healthier communities.

(Reed bed treatment systems)

(Rhizodegradation, accumulation hydrocarbons)

Buffalo Grass Bouteloua gracilis

(Rhizodegradation, accumulation hydrocarbons)

Common Foxglove Digitalis purpurea

Poplars Populus spp.

(Phytodegradation, phytovolatization, chlorinated solvents, PAH atrazine, DDT, carbon tetrachloride)

Sunflower Helianthus annuus

(Extraction, metabolism, rhizodegradation, metals/PAH)

(Phytoextraction, cadmium)

Switch Grass Panicum virgatum

Common Reed Phragmites australis

(Rhizodegradation, hydrocarbon)

English Ryegrass Lolium perenne (Rhizodegradation, hydrocarbons)

Lotus Nymphaea lotus

(Hyperaccumulation, cadmium)

Mulberry Morus rubra (Rhizodegradation PAH/PCB)

Pauls’ Scarlet Rose Rosa spp.

(Phytodegradation, organic contamination)

Vetch Vicia spp.

(Uptake metals)

Water Hyssop Bacopa monnieri (Accumulates metals)

White Lupine Lupinus albus (Rhizoaccumulation, arsenic)

Yarrow Achillea millefolium

(Accumulation, cadmium)

Part II:Travel

Types of Phytoremediation

REFERENCES

There are five known types of phytoremediation processes; each of which mitigates toxins through a different method. The following definitions are described in the EPA document “Introduction to Phytoremediation” (Oppelt 2000). There have been many experiments to identify which plants are potential phytoremediators, but the science is still young and the potential for finding more plants with phytoremediative properties is high.

Haresty, Donald L. Alanen, Arnold R., and Robert Z. Melnick, (eds.) 2000. “Ethnographic Landscapes/Transforming Nature Into Culture.” Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America.

Baltimore, Maryland: The John Hopkins University Press.

James, Stephen C. May 1977. “Metals in Municipal Landfill Leachate and Their Health Effects.” American Journal of Public Health. 67(5).

Phytovolitization Phytovolitization occurs when certain plants uptake toxins into their roots and stems, then release the toxins from the leaves as nontoxic vapor. One family of plants which exhibits this phytoremediative process is Poplars.

McCutcheon. 2003. “LID Technical Guidance Manual for Puget

Rhizodegredation

Oppelt, Timothy. February 2000. “Introduction to

A second process, rhizodegredation allows enzymes to be released from the roots as they metabolize toxins within the soil, and is exhibited in switch grass, osage orange, mulberries, English ryegrass, buffalo grass, Indian mustard and sunflowers.

Phytostabilization The type of phytoremediation which occurs when the roots act to prevent spreading of toxins into other soils or into water sources is called phytostabilization, exhibited in plants with extensive root systems.

Phytoaccumulation The most common method of phytoremediation is phytoaccumulation, which takes place when the plant uptakes and accumulates toxins in its stems and leaves.

Phytoaccumulation can be identified in vetech, yarrow, alpine pennycress, brake ferns, lupine, poplars, birdsfoot-trefoil, Indian mustard, hairy golden rod, foxglove, chickweed, buffalo grass, water hyssop, water velvet, sunflowers, indigo, chives as well as several more.

Within this process the portion of the plant which is storing the toxic materials must be harvested and managed at a toxic waste site to prevent the plant from dying back and returning the toxin to the soil.

Sound: Sampling of Plant Species Studied for Phytoremediation.” Retrieved April 2007 <http://www. superorg.net/archive/proposal/plant%20species%20phyto. pdf>.

Phytoremediation,” Retrieved May 2007 <http://www.clu-in. org/download/remed/introphyto.pdf>.

Polidor, Amberly. 1999-2008. Sacred Land Film Project. Retrieved April, 2008 <http://www.sacredland.org/world_sites_pages/ Ganges.html>.

Singh,V.P. and R.C. Srivastava. 2003. “Ethnobotany and Medicinal Plants of India and Nepal” Vol 2: Economic Importance of Sedges of Uttar Pradesh. India: Scientific Publishers, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. 20 February 2008.

“Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs).” Retrieved April, 2008 <http://www.epa.gov/pcb/pubs/about.htm>.

U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. 28 November 28, 2006.

“Ground Water & Drinking Water, Consumer Factsheet on: BENZO(A)PYRENE.” Retrieved April, 2008 <http://www.epa. gov/OGWDW/contaminants/dw_contamfs/benzopyr.html>.

Phytodegredation The final type of phytoremediative process is phytodegredation. This process absorbs the toxin from the ground and metabolizes it into a benign material within the plant. Poplars and some varieties of roses have been proven to metabolize toxins in this way.

Landfi ll converted into cricket fi eld. Photo by Jack Wasserbach taken on March 15, 2008 in Patna India.

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Unexpected Landscapes

(Im)Possible Design Competition: Interview with founders Michelle & Kevin Delk

Taking place each May since 2003, the (Im)Possible Design Competition celebrates the design process. The 2007 exhibition, (Im)Possible Landscapes; An Exploration into the Imaginative Perspective of Landscape Architecture, intended to expose and promote the inventive and insightful language of the design process and to present the viewer with a deeper understanding into the process of exploration that ultimately espouses fine design. The 2008 exhibition featured work of University of Colorado Denver (UCD) graduate landscape architecture students including Stephan Hall, Amanda Jeter, Meg Posey, Kate Taylor Randall, and Kelly Smith. To learn more about the process, R O O T talks with founders Michelle and Keven Delk; Michelle is a talented landscape architect with Civitas Inc. (civitasinc.com) and Kevin is a restaurant impresario and owner of Mario’s Double Daughter’s Salotto (www.doubledaughters.com) and Beatrice & Woodsley.

How did the (Im)Possible Design Competition come into being?

Michelle: During my last year in the landscape architecture program at UCD, my friends and I talked about trying to coordinate an exhibit of our classmate’s work. We independently talked to different galleries, but did not come across a venue that had the flexibility to make the process feasible.

Kevin: In 2002, I created the concept for Mario’s Double Daughter’s Salotto, a bar and art gallery that would represent art from around the world. Michelle and I talked about the opportunity to use the gallery space for the design competition.

Initially the concept was that all forms of design should be better represented and more approachable to people from a pedestrian level.

Michelle: I maintained a close tie with UCD and collaborated with Tony Mazzeo and Lori Catalano to work out the selection process. The first (Im)Possible Design exhibit took place in May of 2003 and it has been an annual event in May ever since. Kevin and I are not part of the judging selection; rather we invite design professionals to really engage and try to understand how the students’ drawings communicate ideas. The exhibit itself has worked out great at Double Daughters and the staff gets more questions and input from the public than for any other exhibition—the public studies the drawings as if they were maps.

What are the goals or future intentions for the exhibit?

Kevin: The goal has always been to expand the competition to feature work from all design fields including graphic design and architecture. With Michelle’s personal landscape architecture endeavors, the opportunity of displaying student work outside of the vacuum of school, and the chance to change perceptions of landscape architecture (publically it is a pretty misunderstood design field that encompasses much more than planting an average backyard) all made it a great design field to initiate the exhibition.

Michelle: The intention of (Im)Possible Design is to offer insight on the design process and that the ideas depicted in the exhibit may seem impossible, but through the creative and imaginative process of design they can become places in the world. In design, the thought process expressed graphically can seem farfetched to the pedestrian eye, but these explorations can lead to innovative landscapes in the real world. It’s also a fantastic way for students to get feedback from professionals. Also, as Kevin stated, the exhibit was not labeled strictly as a landscape architecture endeavor because its goal is to ultimately represent work from all design fields.

22 R O O T

Part III: Process

(Im)Possible Design 2008 Exhibition: Featured Work of Kate Taylor Randall Radical Gardening/Sand Creek 2008 Studio. Instructors: Anthony Mazzeo and Adam Clack â&#x2C6;&#x2122; www.radicalgardening.com Fluvial Garden: A Study in Structured Indeterminacy Project Statement Flash flooding of Sand and Westerly Creeks, primarily due to adjacent development, has carved deep channels and starved adjacent wetlands. The oversized channel, a remnant of Stapleton International Airport, allows the creation of islands that widen the creek, reduce the waterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s velocity, and provide variable conditions that foster more diverse flora and fauna.

Concrete remnants are placed on a grid, with greater density within the existing waterway. Hydrological and morphological processes respond within a matrix of structured indeterminacy to create fluvial islands. The design is legible from an elevated skywalk that introduces new relationships between remnant infrastructure, creek, and garden.

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Unexpected Landscapes

VIEWING WINDOW

RETAINING WALL

SKY GARDEN WALK

SHALLOW BRANCH

EXISTING RIPARIAN AREA

NATURAL INDETERMINACY SECTION

SEDIMENTATION EXISTING POTENTIAL SUCCESSION 1 POTENTIAL SUCCESSION 2 EROSION

RETAINING WALL

SKY GARDEN WALK

BRANCH

BRANCH

STRUCURED INDETERMINACY SECTION

Top Image: Natural Indeterminacy. Bottom Image: Structured Indeterminacy. Kate Taylor Randall.

24 R O O T

FLUVIAL ISLAND

Part III: Process

EXISTING FLUVIAL ISLAND

BRANCH

SHALLOW BRANCH

SAND AND GRAVEL BAR

NEW RIPARIAN AREA

SHADY EDDY

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Unexpected Landscapes

(Im)Possible Design 2008 Exhibition: Featured Work of Kelly Smith Radical Gardening/Sand Creek 2008 Studio. Instructors: Anthony Mazzeo and Adam Clack ∙ radicalgardening.com Each plant is an indicator…because it is a product of the conditions under which it grows and thereby a measure of these conditions.

–Frederick Clements -1920

Project Statement The radical gardening studio challenges students to achieve an intimate and multifaceted reading of site processes. It urges students to artfully combine ecology, human experience, program and aesthetics into a legible perFORMance while utilizing minimal resources. Sites selected for radical gardening studios have typically experienced some degree of human impact therefore disturbance is viewed as a working layer rather than a mere inconvenience.

The first sequence of the studio asked students to investigate the site through a series of section cuts. Because the site helped facilitate storage needs during the construction and deconstruction of the Denver Stapleton Airport, it resembled a patchwork of varying successional stages. Intrigued by this condition, I ran my cut along a recently disturbed pocket and into open grassland.

I documented the plant species growing along the cut and discovered the correlation between soil properties, disturbance, succession, and plant composition. Upon further research I found all plants have varying windows of pH levels/ nutrient needs under which they can grow. Plant communities change over time in response to changes in soil nutrient availability. However, the more nutrients you add to soil, the less diverse the plant composition becomes because plants that thrive within certain conditions outcompete plants that can only tolerate those conditions.

I sought to experiment with the “succession patchwork” as well as highlight site processes/ characteristics. I proposed applying different nutrients in grid form throughout the site to create a discernable macro composition of monoculture plots.

However, as one walks the site micro compositions would begin to emerge in variable site conditions such as swales, ditches, slopes and depressions thereby highlighting site processes/ characteristics. Visit radicalgardening.com, “RG Ancestry” link for more images and information on this project.

26 R O O T

Part III: Process

Top Image: Excerpt of Recombinations_Weeds as Indicators Middle Image: Concrete Decompression Section Bottom Image: Human Movement_Primary and Secondary Circulation Patterns Determined by Site Variances

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Reigning in the Thesis Process: Let the Work Guide and Direct Your Path Jenn Thomas, Master’s of Landscape Architecture Candidate, University of Colorado Denver, Administrative Coordinator for the Center of Preservation Research (CoPR), the Colorado Center for Community Development (CCCD) and board member of the Jane Silverstein Ries Foundation.

T

he thesis process is a meandering, circuitous journey—one of surprises, discoveries and unexpected redirection. My thesis explores the education of Denver landscape architect Jane Silverstein Ries (19092005) at the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture for Women in Groton, Massachusetts, from 1928 to 1932.

I have been researching the prolific career of this Denver landscape architect for several years—deciding which portion of Reis’s extensive career to focus on for my thesis project had been challenging.

Upon her death in 2005, Ries’s extensive papers were bequeathed to the Western History Collection of the Denver Public Library which enabled a firsthand look at her amazing work. The thesis research and methods class helped narrow my interests into what I thought was a tight, comprehensive topic and argument. I have since discovered that the best-laid plans can be fractured as the project begins to dictate direction. How one regards the change of events can make all the difference as to journey is fruitful or futile. Learning to ride the waves of change has been more challenging than I expected, but it has also been immensely rewarding.

Originally, I was going to briefly analyze Ries’s educational experience through her assignments and discuss how they influenced her later design work in Denver. The subsequent research and reading changed the direction of the paper. My proposal outline mapped out a path that no longer fit well. Ries was so prolific and the archive records so vast that trying to narrow down her career ideology into a few key examples seemed ludicrous, not to mention insufficient in explaining her regional importance and influence. Furthermore, as I investigated Lowthorpe and Ries’s assignments an incredible opportunity presented itself. No other archive, either in the personal papers of Lowthorpe’s graduates or the official Lowthorpe archives housed at the Rhode Island School of Design, had as many schoolwork examples as the Ries whether the archive. As I examined how each assignment fit into the Lowthorpe program, I discovered that Ries’s work illustrated a very particular time and place in landscape architecture’s educational history, and these specific examples could enable me to highlight Lowthorpe’s contribution to our 28 R O O T

During World War II, Jane Silverstein Ries documented lighthouses as part of her duty for the U.S. Coast Guard Women’s Reserve, also known as SPARS. Photo of Jane Silverstein Ries from the Jane Silverstein Ries Papers, WH1785, Western History Collection, The Denver Public Library.

profession’s history while also examining Ries’s formative years.

Reframing my thesis to focus on the educational milieu of the time in the Boston area inherent in Ries’s assignments, rich pedagogical connections began to emerge between the teaching styles at the Lowthorpe School, the landscape architecture program at Harvard, and the unofficial women’s branch of Harvard’s program, the Cambridge School of Domestic Architecture and Landscape Architecture (Harvard did not admit women until 1942). All three schools imparted similar landscape architectural knowledge to their students as it related to design, drafting, rendering (using watercolor), surveying, and construction details.

What distinguished the Lowthorpe education was its emphasis on horticultural knowledge. Only Lowthorpe required its students to take horticulture classes all three years. The women students had to not only study an array of plant types, but they also had to propagate and grow plant materials and maintain the school grounds as part of their requirements.

Part III: Process

Plan of Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture. The women students had to not only study an array of plant types, but they also had to propagate and grow plant materials and maintain the school grounds as part of their requirements. Image: Rhode Island School of Design Archives and Special Collections, Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture Records, School Catalogue, 1942-44.

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Unexpected Landscapes

The notion of enframement at work in the brick walk at Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture. Photo from The Rhode Island School of Design Archives and Special Collections, Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture Records, School Catalogue, 1942.

A design theory that permeated all three institutions focused on the notion of enframement. Taught at Lowthorpe and prevalent in Ries’s work, enframent is aptly described in the seminal textbook of the time, An Introduction to the Study of Landscape Design by Henry Vincent Hubbard and Theodora Kimball: If a landscape composition is to tell as one unified thing it must be segregated from the things on each side of it…in the actual practice of the landscape architect this segregation is almost always accomplished by the creation of some kind of frame, which not only prevents the visual intrusion of undesirable objects, but sets definite limits to the composition which is being considered, fixes its center, and so gives value to the compositional space-relations of the objects within it.

(Hubbard 1929, 126).

An example of enframent in Ries’s work can be seen at the Anderman Residence, circa1962-72. Ries surveyed and designed the entire site plan for the Anderman Residence.

Design considerations included mountain viewsheds to the west, flow between indoor and outdoor living spaces, the use of naturalizing native plant materials, and berming to provide owners privacy from the adjacent Highline Canal recreation path.

This notion of enframement also helped me more clearly define the context of Ries’s educational experience. My thesis had to be reframed, enframed differently than I had originally projected. Just like a design project, you have to make room for and be open to change, while also 30 R O O T

maintaining focus through the strategic positioning or enframent of your argument.

The thesis process and its meanderings can lead to an elegant solution that lies in the framing of a view and simplifying details, which can provide respite in a world overstuffed with information and stimulation. The thesis process is about choices and routing; sometimes obtuse crossing through literal and metaphorical landscapes that ultimately produces a project well worth the effort.

Anderman Residence designed by Jane Silverstein Ries c. 1962-72.

View from the interior breakfast nook. Photo by Jenn Thomas.

REFERENCES Hubbard, Henry Vincent and Theodora Kimball. 1929. An Introduction to the Study of Landscape Design. New York: The Macmillan Company.

Part III: Process

JSR and Lobo. Photo taken by Dr. Thomas J. Noel, 1990, Courtesy of Cathe Mitchell.

Jane Silverstein Ries, FASLA Biography courtesy of the Jane Silverstein Ries Foundation As the first woman to pursue a career in landscape architecture in Colorado, Jane Silverstein Ries, FASLA, was a pioneer. She graduated from the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture in Groton, Massachusetts in 1932, and by 1934 had already opened her own landscape architecture office in Denver. Jane held the third landscape architecture license in the State of Colorado. Her career in landscape architecture spanned nearly six decades. Jane was ahead of her time with her philosophy of incorporating native plants and materials into her designs and built her projects to reflect, preserve and restore the natural environment. She was a strong voice in issues of land use and fought to conserve prairie, mountain landscapes, wildlife and urban spaces.

In 2005, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) awarded Jane the ASLA Medal, the highest honor bestowed on landscape architects. To date, she is one of three female recipients of the medal.

JSR Foundation-Student Scholarships JSR Foundationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mission to embrace the spirit of

place ensures that Janeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s legacy of land stewardship and sustainability lives on. The JSR Foundation awards scholarships to students who demonstrate a passion for preserving, improving and enhancing public spaces through responsible and innovative land use and design.

To be eligible, students must be currently enrolled in an accredited landscape architecture program that will result in a Bachelors or Masters of Landscape Architecture. A monetary scholarship is awarded each year to one deserving student. Students are required to submit a design brief for review by the JSR board.

Visit the JSR Foundation online for more information: www.jsrfoundation.org.

Jane Silverstein Ries (1909-2005): Retrospective of a Colorado Landscape Architect February 6, 2009 - May, 3, 2009 A retrospective exhibit of her career, featuring her garden design and landscape architecture work.

Denver Public Library 10 West 14th Avenue Parkway, 7th Floor denverlibrary.org 31

Unexpected Landscapes

Place and Time in the Frame: Landscapes Real and Imagined Joern Langhorst, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Colorado Denver

“….to see new things consists not in seeking new places, but in having new eyes.”

Marcel Proust, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu

L

andscape can be discovered in unusual places – and challenges us to interact with it in a variety of – often unexpected – ways. This act of discovery is – not surprisingly – not limited to “physical” or “haptic” landscapes. Landscape is present in every medium, but in particular in TV and film – and this ubiquitous presence of landscape imagery heavily influences our experience of “real” landscapes.

An indicator might be the increasingly prominent appearance of familiar landscape icons in TV ads (such as the sublime desert landscapes of Monument Valley or Arches National Park in SUV ads). Landscape here serves both as a background and primary image that somehow reflects on the advertised products’ qualities. Here, the idea of untamed, unspoiled wilderness, the last frontier that sets man against a overwhelmingly sublime nature, immense in both scale and inhospitality, draws equally on modern human’s (in particular: man’s) urge to escape from the confines of a over-complex, highly regulated sociocultural environment and into the world of John Ford’s westerns, seemingly idealizing the hero’s struggle for freedom and survival.

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•

Landscape as subject (“about a landscape” e.g. documentary)

•

Landscape as setting (“take place”)

•

Landscape as character (imbued with (human) qualities and characteristics)

•

Landscape as symbol (represents something beyond its physical reality)

Though different films more or less emphasize one or the other “role,” most of the cinematic representations of landscape combine several or all of the above (Helphand 1986, 1-8).

The human sense of place and self in the world is constituted primarily by the practice of looking, and is, in effect, a study of images. Film and television have transformed society in the contemporary west, and created a convergence between what is real in the everyday and how we imagine the everyday. The consequence of this is that we have to abandon the idea of cinematographic images merely capturing, mimicking or mirroring people and place. Instead, they signify events that are not passively observed but are actively reconstructed as they are viewed. The viewer becomes immersed in the construction of (cinematic) place – and an active participant. The “suspension of disbelief” (Barthes 1985) necessary for this to occur is a happy one – escapism as a participatory pastime (Tuan 1996). 1

John Ford’s “The Searchers” (1953) and Wim Wender’s “Paris, Texas” (1984) draw on the same set of core American myths: the western desert as the last frontier, the freedom of the automobile and the wandering male, and the sanctuary of the nuclear family. Both protagonists are on a quest to fulfill their destiny: John Wayne rescuing a girl abducted years before by a band of Indians,Wender’s main character, Travis, driven by a crumpled photograph in his pocket, depicting an empty lot in the town where he had hoped to build a house for himself and his family.

In both films, the landscape instantaneously becomes a central character, mirroring the quest and challenges of the “heroes” navigating a wasteland of epic and sublime qualities.

The survey of film allows to analyze particular place and landscape topoi and their interdependence with a specific cultural setting, revealing and visually describing how landscape and place happen (or are constituted) as interaction between an individual (or a society) and its environments– landscape being a continuous presence in every frame.

Landscape critic and historian Kenneth Helphand discerns four different “roles” of landscape in film:

• The “Big City” as setting of a futuristic ideal society in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927).

Part IV: Imagination

Landscape. Honolulu International Airport. Joern Langhorst, 2004.

• The city as a place with human affections: evil, sinister alienating (achieved by primarily the use of shadow and light) in the 1920s and 1930s film noir. This portrayal of the sinister city was lost with the introduction of color, until more recent films such as “Blade Runner” (Ridley Scott, 1982) and “Batman” (Tim Burton, 1989) successfully resurrected it, introducing the post-modern, apocalyptic vision of the Neo-Noirs, such as “The Man Who Wasn’t There” (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2001); Christopher Nolan’s “Following” (1998) and “Memento” (2000), or the recent “Batman Begins” (2005) or “Dark Knight (2008).

• The vernacular small town was a recurring, almost painfully positive and wholesome topos in 1950s and 1960s television shows. “Pleasantville” (Gary Ross, 1998) and “The Truman Show” (Peter Weir, 1998) are terrific “remakes” that simultaneously capture and critique the “wonderful, harmonious world” and its artificiality.

• Peter Bogdanovich’s “Last Picture Show” (1971) starkly contrasts this by describing the quintessential American small town as a place of excessive social control, and an oppressive and empty lostness. David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” (1986) and, even more, his TV series “Twin Peaks” (1990) show the paradisiacal, harmonious haven as a thin surface over an abyss of sinister and ominous human devices and desires, the source of familiarity and comfort all of a sudden turning into a threat, an uncanny brooding presence. “Virgin Suicides” (Sofia Coppola, 1999) and

“American Beauty” (Sam Mendes, 1999) are de-masking the hollow construct of suburban affluence.

The change in the ways similar “places” are represented in cinema is not only a portrait of their physical change, but also indicative of different readings, attitudes, and interpretations over time.

The prolific use of existing, often iconic landscapes in movies and TV ads may not be unproblematic in this context, since it affects the experience of “real” places: For once, it is unclear to what extent our perception is affected by the visual habits carried over from television (e.g. the framing of views, the editing of visual experience). Oscar Wilde’s “life imitates art more than art imitates life” comes to mind. Additionally, we might infuse the real place with memories from a cinematographic mise-en-scene – the place as the location of a cinematic plot that substitutes our own impressions, memories and experiences. Memorable moments carried by a particular place are ample in movie history – the chase across the faces of Mount Rushmore in Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest”, “Thelma and Louise’s” Canyon finale, “Vertigo’s” use of San Francisco Landmarks, Golden Gate Bridge in hundreds of establishing shots–the list is endless.

Film is an ideal medium to communicate abstract ideas and concepts by translating them into primarily visual expressions. By transforming the experience of space 33

Unexpected Landscapes

These cinematic experiences surround us, and, to varying degrees, become a part of our shared visual culture, affecting the concept and percept of real place. and time, it has the possibility of transcending the “real” world and revealing process and structure on and beneath the visual surface of landscape – as well as creating its own mystery, meaning and reality. This again points to an inherent ambiguity in pictures and images – on one hand photographic images appear as a one-to-one simulation of the real world, as reality. On the other hand we know that images are illusionistic, often manipulative and therefore cannot be trusted (Barthes 1981).2 Alain Resnais’ award-winning “Last Year at Marienbad” (1961) illustrates this: The formal garden, with its principles of control and order translated into built form, expressing orthogonal predictability, morphs into a place of dislocation and disorientation, temporal and spatial, its principles turned upside down, space and time relative concepts, without a point fixe. Peter Greenaway’s “The Draughtsman’s Contract” (1982) similarly plays with the concepts and the visual connections inherent in the formal gardens of the late baroque – the garden rooms designed as “stages”, framed as a series of vistas, are the set of occurrences the main protagonist meticulously and reliably documents. Insidiously, the reliable and predictable geometry of space and time becomes the source of increasing uncertainty, and ultimately, the realization of the inherently illusionistic character of spatial form and time.

The deconstruction of linear time and narrative, only glimpsed in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” (1994) is taken further in Christopher Nolan’s “Following” (1998) and “Memento (2000).

These cinematic experiences surround us, and, to varying degrees, become a part of our shared visual culture, affecting the concept and percept of real place (Aitken 1994, 3-25).

The technical possibilities of digital media in particular have made it increasingly difficult to discern representations of a “real” from an invented environment. Attempts such as John Dixon Hunt’s to interpret, e.g. “The Garden as Virtual Reality,” show how blurry the line between the “real” and the “virtual” world is becoming – the feeling of being fully immersed in a movie’s story and setting is a familiar experience for most of us (Dixon Hunt1997, 5-14).

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Film as a medium is at least three-dimensional – it adds the dimension of time to the two-dimensional screen, creating a more and more perfect illusion of a fourdimensional – real – space. Landscape (and works of landscape architecture) is primarily a spatial experience: Landscape itself–built or wild – is spatial: “Spatially, it is all-enveloping and surrounds us, flooded with light and atmosphere. Irreducible, the landscape controls our experience extensively: it permeates our memories and consciousness, and enframes our daily lives” (Corner 1992, 246).

Elements of landscape experience can be provided by film, such as movement, activity, temporal and spatial change.

The medium can even create more than perfect illusions of landscape, it is able to go beyond and change the temporal and spatial context of reality, thus creating a “heightened reality.” Its “unique and specific possibilities can be defined as dynamization of space and, accordingly, spatialization of time,” (Panofsky 1959, 18) it is “free of the limits of time and space,” wrote the Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov in the 1920s (Vertof, 15-17).

The constituting time-space relation can only be read to a limited extent through traditional representations of space that are usually conceived only from one viewpoint and one angle (the classical modes of projection: plan, section /elevation, perspective, axon). Those in a way are “stills” or individual frames out of a continuous sequence of experiences. “A determinate view necessarily gives way to an indeterminate flow of perspectives” (Holl 2000, 13).

There are commonalities between filmmaking and landscape architecture: both change the existing and create their own reality, form and meaning. The word “text” has often been used as a metaphor to describe designed landscapes and other works of design. We speak of “reading” a landscape for a reason. Given the predominance of the visual in our senses, though, “film” seems to be a more appropriate metaphor.

While this allows to critique the bases of a cultural and individual construction place meaning and time-space relations, it reveals also the intrinsic danger of uncritically

Part IV: Imagination

applying (or better, copying) patterns predetermined by previous cinematic experiences.

Association Biannual Conference, Southern Polytechnic State

Mitchell Schwartzer suggests that commercials have pioneered new visual frontiers on television. TV ads are organized along a “series of attention-grabbing vignettes,” illustrated by car commercials, such as the Lexus commercial showing Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao in a cascade of shots from varying distances and angles, defying any idea of continuity to evoke the rush of driving; “A single car commercial might feature several places – might take us on a thirty-second drive across the United States, the landscapes and landmarks.…The built environment morphs from a continuous place of limited experience into a wide-open zoomscape of succession” (Scwartzer 2004, 270-71).

3. It is not just among student projects using a particular

This culture is – at least implicitly – contained in the visual habits and cultural formation of design students (and professionals). The ubiquitous presence and availability of digital media that put a plethora of tools at the hands of unreflective and uncritical users makes it all too easy to replicate the scenarios seen elsewhere. Combining this with the commodification of space, place and landscape and their mechanisms of production, we have a situation where the medium indeed drives the content–or, in Marshall McLuhan’s words, “…becomes the message.”3

University, Atlanta, March 2009 (forthcoming).

software, but also among designs within a profession, that design proposals start to “look” remarkably similar. The eight final proposals for a memorial at Ground Zero in New York City illustrate this quite succinctly.

REFERENCES Aitken, S.C. & L.E. Zonn. 1994. “Re-Presenting the Place Pastiche.” In Place, Power, Situation, and Spectacle: A Geography of Film, ed. Aitken, S.C. & L.E. Zonn. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Barthes, Roland. 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang.

Barthes, Roland. 1985. The Responsibility of Forms. New York: Hill and Wang.

Corner, James. 1992. “Representation and Landscape.” Word and Image. 8(3).

Dixon Hunt, John. 1997. “The Garden as Virtual Reality.” Die Gartenkunst 9(1).

Helphand, Kenneth. 1986. “Landscape Films.” Landscape Journal.

Not surprisingly, more and more places look like someplace else.

5(1).

Holl, Steven. 2000. Parallax. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press.

NOTES

Panofsky, Erwin. 1959. “Style and Medium in the Motion

1. Tuan claims that escapism is a necessary part of human

Pictures.” In Film: An Anthology, ed. Daniel Talbot.

existence, addressing physical movement as well as acts of

Berkeley, University of California Press. [Orig. pub. 1934].

imagination. Both are obviously critical parts of any landscape experience, whether within the physical world or within representations.

2. This has implications that are as much ethical as practical.

We now can render spatial and material configurations that cannot exist outside their mostly computer-generated representations. The question of whether we should and what

Tuan,Yi-Fu. 1998. Escapism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Schwartzer, Mitchell. 2004. “Zoomscape.” New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Vertov, Dziga. 1984. Kino-Eye.The Writings of Dziga Vertov.

Berkeley, University of California Press.

the implications for a discourse on landscape, in particular dynamic landscape change might be is conspicuously absent from current discourses (see Langhorst, J. “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: On the Dialectics of Landscape and Representation.” Proceedings of the Design Communication

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Unexpected Landscapes

Marble: Enter the Imagination of Design This article features student work by Stephan Hall and Kourtnie Harris from the Fall 2007 MLA core studio taught to first year graduate students by Anthony Mazzeo, Leila Tolderlund and Michelle Delk. Hall and Harris’s peers selected their work, and on the following pages is an overview of the studio process with excerpts from the students’ projects that illustrate the unexpected discoveries they made in Marble, CO.

The Marble, CO studio began with the following two questions from our instructors: 1. What is Landscape Architecture?

2. What is the relevance of landscape architecture in our current cultural situation?

As we crossed over the threshold of our preconceptions, we found answers more elusive than the questions. At some point in the studio through countless iterations, scribbled notes, potential rendered scenes, uncertain attempts, small triumphs, surprises, missteps and re-steps we emerged from the act of recording our experience of the site and began guiding ourselves and others through a ‘path’ of design.

Understanding the context of Marble, Colorado and its complex cultural, historic, ecologic, social and economic layers of the small mountain town began our exploration. The marble from the Marble Yule Quarry has reached numerous monuments and edifices around the nation including the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The rugged terrain, harsh social history and the extraction process of marble mining are just a few metaphors that guided us as first year MLA students. The notions of ‘mapping’ and ‘metaphor’ were at the heart of this studio as they provided a ‘middle term’ with the ability to join together things previously unrelated. Metaphors can be used for invention, leading to the joining of things normally unrelated are re-presented in evocative and persuasive ways. For landscape architects, metaphor presents a mechanism to simultaneously think analytically and imaginatively, technically and expressively, descriptively and speculatively. The value in such thinking is the discovery of unanticipated relationships.

Within these foundational frameworks, the studio focused on space, place and path and the place of each within the landscape. Landscapes are composed of extensive geographies, ecologies, associations and fictions; they are deeply situated among layers and layers of contextual relationships that operate across vast scales of space and time. These layers were brought into relation through a series of mappings, while the temporal and spatial qualities of the site were navigated through a cinematic sequence and a series of scenes providing glimpses of the unknown and what may lay ahead later in the journey. Finally, the projects were taken to a resolved yet open-ended state by several designed loci and interpretive models.

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Part IV: Imagination

Associative Movement through the Site Selected Work of Stephan Hall

In the earliest stages of mapping I was intrigued by the word ‘drift,’ as it describes the drama I witnessed within the site as I wandered through the mill ruins and quarry.

After progressing through my studio work however, I realized that to drift and to wander are merely mechanisms to experience the site. To drift is simply the outcome of something greater.... I soon discovered that it was the layered associations and connections that were revealed along the way, which made the act of wandering so powerful. Therefore I adjusted the focus of my concept in order to set the stage and provide opportunity for varied levels of association (personal, shared, introspective, passive and active).

The pivotal point in the development of my design was when I began to think about the site as a series of moments in a cinematic sequence.

With ideograms that captured dramatically positioned “camera angles,” I was able to provide intriguing glimpses of the spatial and temporal qualities of the site.

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Unexpected Landscapes

The Narrative of Numbers Selected Work of Kourtnie Harris By way of numbers, I explored and discovered the layers of Marble. Texts and maps revealed definite information about the site and allowed for interpretation of the historical, political and cultural relevance, and location. My process was further grounded by visiting the site, and while walking through the grounds of excavated marble and into the portal, I began to get a sense of the experience.

I realized that the layers of human experience can be interpreted on various levels and that the only way to gain insight was to conceptualize a layer of context.

As symbols, the numbers directed my process and engaged thought of the third space: the space where only those that live it can begin to sense. Mappings and scenes of sequence revealed realities: the cold temperatures within the mountain; the finite amount of marble left for human extraction; the resulting environmental degradation; and the economic value of the marble as a commodity.

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Part IV: Imagination

Beginnings and Endings Proceeding without seeing, or seizing hold of things... keeps us open to innumerable mutations and unforeseeable possibilities, to incalculable ways of being and knowing, doing and seeing, exposed to potentialities of which we cannot presently conceive, to things improbable and incomprehensible, unimaginable and unplannable.

-John Caputo, Philosopher

As is true in all landscape endeavors the end of this studio was also an eye-opening beginning. Here we began the development of our skill in communication and exploration through drawing. This lesson was preceded only by the ability to generate truly unique, imaginative and inspiring design processes, generating new, unforeseen and inspiring design concepts.

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Unexpected Landscapes

Finding Relational Landscapes:Tim Davis’ Photoscapes Interview by Chad Summers, Freelance Writer

S

ome of the most engaging landscapes involve vast expanses of open space. We live in a cluttered, untidy world. When we get an opportunity to escape from our busy lives and seek open air, it is usually distanced from our cities. Tim Davis is an artist who understands the renewing importance of open space but has found it in the middle of his own city.

Davis’ art captures an unending series of unexpected landscapes in what he envisions as, “the illusion of depth to enter the landscape of the mind.” His work reflects the Japanese expression wabi-sabi, the appreciation of aging objects. Davis photographs the aging textures on industrial objects such as boxcars or boat hulls and transforms them into expansive landscapes of color and texture like in his “Trained Eye Series.”

While Davis started with boxcars, he has found many other objects to help him create art that he says, “continues with the viewer making his or her own context.” For example, Davis has found a Kansas storm sky on a tin pipe, a richly colored sunset on a boat hull, and a mountain scene on a concrete curb.

Davis says, “Although my initial pictures were from boxcars, I found compelling images on many different surfaces, particularly industrial surfaces that have had a life, been painted and repainted, scratched, gouged, oxidized, et cetera. I compose pictures of this randomness with my camera.”

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Collage with selections of Davis’ work by Fang-Yu Lee.

Davis wants his work (two-dimensional photographs printed on archival paper, canvas or satin) to engage viewers and evoke feelings in them. He understands that landscape architects work in three dimensions but believes their work can achieve the same goals: My landscapes evoke feelings for me, some of comfort or well-being, and others that are disturbing or feel dangerous.

Landscape architects most likely want to create the former rather than the latter, however, some of the most interesting and compelling landscapes combine both. Standing at a precipice allows us to feel peril but the railing, however slight, makes us feel safe. This contrast can be exhilarating.

Davis is always looking for landscapes and hopes his work will inspire other artists to do the same.

“It is one of the pleasures of being in the world,” he says. “Where I find a landscape is often unexpected.” www.timdavisartimages.com

R O OT www.root-land.org

faculty advisor ANN KOMARA editor and founder AMANDA JETER associate editor BRIAN STUHR copy editors ALISON KELLY ∙ JENNIFER BARBOUR aesthetic designer NICHOLAS DIFRANK production manager KOURTNIE HARRIS designers DOUG KAY ∙ STEPHAN HALL ∙ NATE RONEY SZUMIN YANG ∙ FANG-YU LEE photographer JEFF WEBB website designer KENT MARTIN pr manager KATIE MCKAIN additional support CHRISTINA CIAMPA ∙ EMILY GREENWOOD TREVOR HAMMRICH ∙ ERIN RICE

Ode to Joy (Poster Wall Detail). Photo by Tim Davis.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Resourceful Obstacles Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over. - Mark Twain Living sites cannot be held by unchanging images. Are they not still subject to the very movement from which they grew? We must therefore explore the wellspring of their actuation and grasp the opportunity that is thus offered us of subverting the threads of memory and of tradition. In bringing closer to the surface the cultural clays that are mixed in with the natural clays we keep alive sites wherein a distinctive mind has been at work. -Marc Claramunt and Catherine Mosbach The 2010 issue of R O O T will focus discourse on obstacles that inhibit innovation in design and the resourcefulness needed to overcome/transgress those obstacles in order to create distinctive places. Specifically in the West, the historic use and appropriation of water has lead to unsustainable practices and limitations on the way planners and designers can create water systems at various scales. (In Colorado, it is illegal to collect and store rainwater for residential garden irrigation use, and current policy limits the secondary use of grey water). In a different vein, how could the current techniques of representing landscape architecture engage the public more thoroughly, encourage distinctive design, and lead to the construction of innovative landscape that expresses ecological and cultural complexity? Submissions are requested to address the above topic, or to fill R O O T departments including: book reviews, landscape critiques, thesis research, scholarly papers, travel projects, design work, photo-essays or interviews. All submittals will be reviewed by the R O O T editorial staff and faculty advisors.

For information on submitting, please visit www.root-land.org or email ajeter@root-land.org.

The Landscape Narrative of Numbers, Kourtnie Harris (see page 36).

R O OT Our mission is to encourage the discourse of landscape architecture by highlighting the designs, challenges, and inspirations of students, faculty, and professionals through print and digital publications. www.root-land.org