How the Fields Meet Archive

H T F M

O H I

E E

L

D E

W E S T

a r c h i v e & p r e - c o n c e p t Graham Foundation 2020 / Joon Ma

Table of contents Premise What is at Stake?

Critical Review Field Station Emergence of Place-based science Development of Field Station as a type Place-based vs Lab-based Plant Sensing What is Plant Sensing?

Reception Opposition Implication & Impact Design Parameters Site The Role of the Architect Programatic Parameters Spatial Parameters Domains of Investigation

PREMISE

Premise Arthur Worthington - fluid splash experiment

4

“[...] Perfect symmetry made sense.

Even if it could be trapped by the latent image left in Wotrhington’s eye after the spark had emptied into the dark, why would one want accidental specificity of this or that defective splash? Worthington, like so many anatomists,crystallographers, botanists, and microscopists before him, had set out to capture the world in its types and regularities - not a helter-skelter assembly of peculiarities.”

Peter Gallison, Objectivity

5

PREMISE

William Cheselden - Osteographia, 1733

6

“The "eyes" made available in modern technological sciences shatter any idea of passive vision: these prosthetic devices show us that all eyes, including our own organic ones, are active perceptual systems, building on translations and specific ways of seeing, that is, ways of life.�

Donna Harraway, Situated Knowledges, 1987

7

PREMISE

Trevor Paglen, Machine Readable Hito, 2017 8

“.... These technologies are ways of life, social orders, practices of visualization. Technologies are skilled practices.

How to see? Where to see from?

What limits to vision? What to see for? Whom to see with? Who gets to have more than one point of view? Who gets blinded? Who wears blinders? Who interprets the visual field? What other sensory powers do we wish to cultivate besides vision? Moral and political discourse should be the paradigm for rational discourse about the imagery and technologies of vision.�

Donna Harraway, Situated Knowledges, 1987 9

PREMISE

white synthetic cover on Chamonix to prevent melting 10

Science is constantly evolving with shifting cultural, economic, and political environment, and we are currently at such critical juncture as we are facing the systematic homelessness of animals, insects, plants, and humans from climate change.

In this regard, field station as an architectural type presents an appealing challenge because it could potentially provide a new vantage point to how the scientists situate themselves in the natural environment.

11

FIELD STATION

FIELD STATION

12

13

FIELD STATION

Jean Michel Moreau, Portrait of J.J Rousseau, in the field, 1779

14

In 19th century Germany, push for place-based science from amateur scientists and ecologists took scientists in urban universities out to the field. The spatial turn of scientists studying animals, plants, and humans in their natural habitation shifted our attention to the influences of the milieu/context/umwelt.

This spatial turn resulted in the emergence of new modern scientific fields as limnology, environmental science, and cultural anthropology.

15

FIELD STATION

2. Crow catcher

3. satire of place based research

1. Herman Hann, Exploring Dogon

16

4. Franz Boas (anthropologist)

Development Of Place Based Science

1. early depiction of vivarium-laboratory in Concarneau

2. The “flying� laboratory of Antonin Fric (1894)

3. Driving Laboratory of Franz Ruttner (1933)

Emergence of Field Station as a type

17

FIELD STATION

18

Since its emergence as an architectural type, field stations have evolved and now carries its own rich history: stations that harvest energy, that map layers of the surroundings, that demarcate different territories etc. As an apparatus to monitor, observe, register, extract, and harvest information from its surroundings, the design of stations require specific spatial strategies to work with the larger ecological, physical, and now digital networks.

19

FIELD STATION

Zoological Station Illustration, Nunn Whitman, 1886 20

“Good intuition is the first requirement for meaningful experiments. The best way to develop that intuition is by observing organisms in the field.

Sadly none of us ‘has the time’ to spend observing nature...

[He suggests] to observe process that have occurred over larger spatial and temporal scales and ask whether these observations support our data from modeling and doing experiments at small scales.”

Richard Karban, How to do Ecology, 2014 21

FIELD STATION

Could return to placea new understandin environment? How participate in the environment

22

-based science trigger ng of our changing w can architecture e interdisciplinary tal research?

23

PLANT SENSING

Plant Sensing

24

PLANT SENSING

The Intelligent Plant Michael Pollan, New Yorker, 2013

Radio Lab, 2016

26

The Hidden Life of Trees, 2015

Do Trees Talk to Each Other?

Frank Viviano, National Geographic, 2017

National Geographic, 2018

Ted Talk, 2016

PLANT SENSING

28

Dying Cedar Stacks, 1919

“Since Darwin, we have generally thought of trees[& plants] as striving, disconnected loners, competing for water, nutrients and sunlight, with the winners shading out the losers and sucking them dry. The timber industry in particular sees forests as wood-producing systems and battlegrounds for survival of the fittest.�

PLANT SENSING

30

Kim Whan Ki, Universe 1971

“[cont’d] There is now a substantial body of scientific evidence that refutes that idea. It shows instead that trees of the same species are communal, and will often form alliances with trees of other species. Forest trees have evolved to live in cooperative, interdependent relationships, maintained by communication and a collective intelligence similar to an insect colony.”

Richard Grant, Do Treest Talk to Each ohter?, Smithsonian Magazine, 2018

PLANT SENSING

32

Plants have electrical and chemical signaling systems, may possess memory, and exhibit brainy behavior in the absence of brains. Such Technology is now widely used in horticulture and agriculture to engineer food and crops.

Understanding how plants react and respond to various environmental insults could significantly improve how we preserve and engineer the natural habitations.

PLANT SENSING

Scientists are often uncomfortable talking about the role of metaphor and imagination in their work, yet scientific progress often depends on both. “Metaphors help stimulate the investigative imagination of good scientists,” the British plant scientist Anthony Trewavas wrote in a spirited response to the Alpi letter denouncing plant neurobiology.

“Plant neurobiology” is obviously a metaphor—plants don’t possess the type of excitable, communicative cells we call neurons. Yet the introduction of the term has raised a series of questions and inspired a set of experiments that promise to deepen our understanding not only of plants but potentially also of brains.

“The mother tree protecting its little ones?” he says with gentle scorn. “It’s so anthropomorphized that it’s really not helpful.

The case is overstated and suffused with vitalism. Trees do not have will or intention.

They solve problems, but it’s all under hormonal control, and it all evolved through natural selection.”

On my way out of the lecture hall, I bumped into Fred Sack, a prominent botanist at the University of British Columbia. I asked him what he thought of Gagliano’s presentation. “Bullshit,” he replied. He explained that the word “learning” implied a brain and should be reserved for animals: “Animals can exhibit learning, but plants evolve adaptations.”

He was making a distinction between behavioral changes that occur within the lifetime of an organism and those which arise across generations. At lunch, I sat with a Russian scientist, who was equally dismissive. “It’s not learning,” he said.

“So there’s nothing to discuss.”

34

In 2007, Taiz and 32 other plant scientists published an attack on the emerging idea that plants and trees possess intelligence.

He is willing to “be liberal and go along with the idea” that trees exhibit a “swarm intelligence,” but thinks it contributes nothing to our understanding, and leads us down an erroneous path toward tree consciousness and intentionality.

“The appearance of purposefulness is an illusion, like the belief in ‘intelligent design.’ Natural selection can explain everything we know about plant behavior.”

“Yes, plants have both short- and longterm electrical signalling, and they use some neurotransmitter-like chemicals as chemical signals,” Lincoln Taiz, an emeritus professor of plant physiology at U.C. Santa Cruz and one of the signers of the Alpi letter, told me.

“But the mechanisms are quite different from those of true nervous systems.” Taiz says that the writings of the plant neurobiologists suffer from “over-interpretation of data, teleology, anthropomorphizing, philosophizing, and wild speculations.” He is confident that eventually the plant behaviors we can’t yet account for will be explained by the action of chemical or electrical pathways, without recourse to “animism.” Clifford Slayman, a professor of cellular and molecular physiology at Yale, who also signed the Alpi letter (and who helped discredit Tompkins and Bird), was even more blunt. “ ‘Plant intelligence’ is a foolish distraction, not a new paradigm,” he wrote in a recent e-mail.

While our understanding of the plant’s capacity has improved significantly, there are significant oppositions toward anthropomorphizing plant behaviors.

The most common argument is that plants cannot be intelligent nor sense anything since they do not have a brain or neurons.

PLANT SENSING

36

“You see, scientists had just discovered in the laboratory in vitro that one pine seedling root could transmit carbon to another pine seedling root. But this was in the laboratory, and I wondered, could this happen in real forests? I thought yes. Trees in real forests might also share information below ground. But this was really controversial, and some people thought I was crazy, and I had a really hard time getting research funding. But I persevered, and I eventually conducted some experiments deep in the forest, 25 years ago.�

Suzanne Simard, How Trees Talk to Each Other, 2016

PLANT SENSING

While most scholars o conducting experime Dr. Karban and Dr. Sim place-based research

Could the design of a fi sensing further validat our understanding of h with their surroundi

38

on plant sensing are ents in laboratories, mard have pioneered h on plant-sensing.

field station on plant te, question, or reject how the plants work ing environments?

DESIGN PARAMETERS

DESIGN PARAMETERS 40

DESIGN PARAMETERS

SAGEHEN CREEK FIELD

SITE 42

Sagehen Creek Field Station Situated on the eastern slope of the northern Sierra Nevada approximately 20 miles north of Lake Tahoe, the Sagehen Creek Field Station has been dedicated to research and teaching since its establishment in 1951. From that beginning, the University of California has operated the station under a long-term, special-use permit from the USDA Forest Service, which owns the land; in 2004, the station joined UC’s Natural Reserve System (NRS). The surrounding Sagehen Experimental Forest is also available to researchers and to instructors with classes through an agreement with the Forest Service.

Sagehen serves as the hub for the Central Sierra Field Research Stations, a broad network of research areas that gives researchers access to a transect across the crest of the Sierra Nevada range. These sites include the Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, the Onion Creek Experimental Watershed, and another UC NRS site, the Chickering American River Reserve. ă…‡ Dr. Richard Karban conducts fieldwork on plant sensing at this station.

Facilities:

STATION

Open year-round with 53 beds. All sleeping areas and all buildings are fully winterized with propane heat. Most beds are twin-size; limited faculty space with full- or queen-size beds. Up to 10 tentcamping spaces also available.

Other facilities include library/ computer lab; two indoor and one outdoor classrooms; communal kitchen, eating area/deck; office space; fish observation house. Extensive environmental monitoring network covers much of the basin. Electricity, wireless network w/satellite Internet service, telephone (with long distance via calling cards), VCR, slide and LCD projectors. Flush toilets, showers, sinks, washing machines.

DESIGN PARAMETERS

THE ROLE OF THE ARCHITECT

44

1

2

3

DETERMINE THE SCOPE OF RESEARCH

DETERMINE THE SPATIAL NETWORK OF THE FIELD

DETERMINE THE BOUNDARIES OF THE SITE

Identify the spatial parameters of the research to create an optimal experiment

Establish proper network amongst the stations and nodes for safety and connectivity.

Understand how deep, wide, and high the subject needs to be engaged

4

5

6

DETERMINE THE ENERGY, WATER, AND THERMAL RETENTION STRATEGY

How to retain energy, clean water, and thermal comfort in field stations are the central concerns in operating a field station.

IDENTIFY THE CONSTRUCTION AND LOGISTICAL CAPACITIES

Most field stations are remote, and it is important to know how things can get transported before designing.

CREATE THE FLOOR PLAN

Equipment, site dimensions, and anticipation of future changes are primary factors for floor plan.

DESIGN DOMAIN ?

NEW DESIGN DOMAIN

DESIGN PARAMETERS

OBSERVATION MACHINE INTIMIDATING ORGANIZED OPAQUE CENTRALIZED FUTURISTIC MONO-FUNCTIONAL GENERIC ANONYMOUS STATIC INTROVERT FORMAL

HUMAN WELCOMING FREE TRANSPARENT DE-CENTRALIZED NOSTALGIC MULTI-FUNCTIONAL SYMBOLIC ICONIC FLEXIBLE EXTROVERT INFORMAL

CLOSED

PERMEABLE

VISIBLE

MIMETIC

BOX VERNACULAR SOBER

46

MANIPULATED

LANDSCAPE MODERN FLAMOBYANT

“The best of modern ecology combines observations, models, and manipulative experiments to arrive at more complete explanations than any single approach could provide. You are after the best cohesive story you can put together.�

Richard Karban, How to do Ecology, 2014

DESIGN PARAMETERS

scientists

context

equipment

plants

field station site

conventional field station configuration

48

scientists

context

equipment

plants

field station site

proposed field station configuration

DESIGN PARAMETERS

1. science derived from everyday living

50

2. birth of labs, separation between field and scientists

3. emergence of place base

ed science and field stations

4. tool based science, distancing of field and scientists

5. (proposed) diffusion of field station, field, and scientists

scientist context site equipment plants station

DESIGN PARAMETERS

DOMAINS OF INVESTIGATION

52

Documenting Plants

Registering Site

Engineered Surface

Structure

Programmatic Variations

Spatial Occupation

DESIGN PARAMETERS

DOCUMENTING PLANTS

54

on

under

in

DESIGN PARAMETERS

56

cover

portable

over

Reference / Bibliography Agamben, Giorgio. “What Is the Contemporary.” What Is an Apparatus? And Other Essays. Stanford University Press, 2009.

Agamben, Giorgio. “The Open: Man and Animal.” Stanford University Press, 2002.

Bruther.“99 Notes.” 2G76. Koening Books, 2017 Banham, Reyner. “The Great Gizmo” Design by Choice. Academy Editions, 1965 Canguilhem, Georges."Knowledge of Life." The Living and Its Milieu. Fordham University Press, 2008 Edwards, Paul “A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming.” The MIT Press, 2010.

Eigen, Edward “The Place of Distribution: Episodes in the Architecture of Experiment” in Architecture and the Sciences: Exchanging Metaphors edited by Antoine Picon and Alessandra Ponte, New York: Princeton Architecture Press, 2003, pp. 52-79.

De Bont, Raf "Stations in the Field: A History of Place-Based Animal Research, 1870-1930" Chicago: The Chicago University Press, 2015.

Frampton, Kenneth. “The Rise of the Tectonic: Core form and Art Form in the German Enlightenment.” Studies in Tectonic Culture. The MIT Press, 1995.

Galison, Peter. "Objectivity." The MIT Press, 2010.

Haraway, Donna, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective," Feminist Studies, Vol. 14 No.3 (Autumn 1988): 575-599.

Holling, C.S, "Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Vol 4 (1973): 1-23.

Kohn, Eduardo. "How Forrest Think." University of California Press, 2013.

Mancuso, Stefano. "Brilliant Green." Island Press, 2015.

Uexkull, Jakob Von, "A foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans." University of Minnesota Press, 2010.