Jake Geitner Portfolio, Spring 2022
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Produced on the traditional homelands of the Gayogohó:no’ (the Cayuga Nation). jakegeitner4@gmail.com // 315.415.6770
Education
Experience
Aug 2018 - Present // Ithaca, NY
Jun - Aug 2021 // Denver, CO – Projects worked on during this time are under NDA.
Cornell University
Expected graduation May 2022: Bachelors of Science in Landscape Architecture with Distinction in Research Minors: Film and Horticulture
Intern—Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
Teaching Assistant—Cornell University Landscape Architecture Sep 2020 - May 2021 // Ithaca, NY – Dr. Kathy Gleason, LA 1410: Grounding in Landscape Architecture – Duarte Santo, LA 2020: Medium of the Landscape
Intern—Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Jul - Aug 2020 // Denver, CO – Projects worked on during this time are under NDA.
Project Intern—Office of the Cornell University Architect Dec 2020 - Feb 2021 // Ithaca, NY
Construction Specialist—R+R Constructive Tradesman May 2018 - May 2020 // Syracuse, NY
Organizations
Cornell University American Society of Landscape Architects Jan 2019 - Present // Ithaca, NY
Director—LABash 2021: Compacted Grounds Aug 2020 - May 2021 // Ithaca, NY
Honors
Nominated—2022 LAF Olmsted Scholar Spring 2022
Top Ten Allied Organization Social Media Accounts: LABash 2021 Jan 2022
– Directed and produced graphic//written content for conference social media outreach.
Jennifer Birkeland RLA Assistant Professor Cornell University
Tyler Krob RLA
Senior Associate Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
Anne Weber
Assistant Professor Cornell University
Martin Hogue Associate Professor Cornell University
Dr. Michael W. Berns Undergraduate Research Award Dec 2021
– Awarded based on a proposal for HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED, a culturally-driven landscape studies thesis focused on U.S. Route 61 through the Mississippi Delta.
California Homebuilding Foundation University Scholarship Nov 2021
– Awarded by the California Homebuilding Foundation and Cornell University Department of Landscape Architecture for pertinent research studies.
Nominated—Upstate NY ASLA Distinguished Student Award Oct 2021
Marvin Adleman Internship Jul 2021
Addison G. Crowley (B.L.Arch ‘38) Prize Jun 2021
– Awarded by the Cornell University Department of Landscape Architecture for the best presentation of any junior design in the field of regional planning.
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PARKCHESTER, REMIX
Capping, Bridging, Eroding Design Studio // Fall 2021
HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED Undergraduate Honors Thesis // Ongoing
HYDROSOCIAL GEOGRAPHIES Erie Canal Design Studio // Spring 2021
HEX DECK
Site Assembly Design Lab // Spring 2021
PLACE THOUGHT PRESERVATION Indigenous Topographies Design Studio // Fall 2020
RIGHT OF WAY
Landscape in Film Seminar // Spring 2020
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PARKCHESTER, REMIX Capping, Bridging, Eroding Design Studio // Professor Jennifer Birkeland // Fall 2021
6.5 miles of eight-lane, divided highway through the center of the Bronx. Much like the current discourse on urban infrastructure would suggest, the Cross Bronx Expressway (CBE) represents a scar of social and economic inequity across the New York City landscape. Constructed between 1948 and 1972 under infamous city planner Robert Moses, the Cross Bronx is considered to be the first highway built through a crowded urban environment. At the time of its
construction, the roadway bisected a dense neighborhood, tearing up homes and businesses, lowering property values, and bringing with it additional barriers, on-ramps, overpasses, and roadways. After opening to traffic in the late-1950s, the CBE has failed to adapt to New York City’s rapidly expanding transportation and distribution networks. Fortunately, the Biden administration has made investing in American infrastructure a policy priority—placing the Cross
Bronx’s future as an exposed thoroughfare uncertain. Similar to projects like the Big Dig in Boston, or the Stitch in Atlanta, this studio examines capping proposals for the redevelopment of the CBE. Located in the central Bronx, the Parkchester community has been front-and-center to the Cross Bronx’s havoc since the neighborhood was developed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in 1942. A majority-minority community, it bears the burden
typical to marginal groups that live along the CBE corridor: air pollution, lackluster local transportation, and divestment from quality housing. With the regional center of Grant Circle anchoring the Parkchester community to the Cross Bronx, a layered (yet uncoordinated) transportation network already exists in Parkchester; with the Bronx’s rich cultural and infrastructural histories, this proposal asks the question, what if we made transportation more hip-hop?
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A Case for Hip-Hop Architecture “The true father of hip-hop is Moses. The tyrannical, mercilessly efficient head of several New York City public works organizations, Robert Moses, did more in his fifty-year tenure to shape the physical and cultural conditions required for hip-hop’s birth than any other force of man or nature. His grand vision for the city indifferently bulldozed its way through private estates, middle-class neighborhoods, and slums. His legacy: 658 playgrounds, 28,000 apartment units, 2,600,000 acres of public parks... all interconnected by 416 miles of parkways and 13 bridges (Sekou Cooke).”
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Robert Moses on the state thruway system in New York City New York State Archives
1979
Grandmaster Flash and the Three MC’S live at the Audabon Ballroom Hip Hop’s Original Recording, ABSTRAKT SOUNDZ
2020
Congressman Ritchie Torres on the Cross Bronx and Biden’s Build Back Better Plan CBS New York
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Phase Two, constructed between 1948-55 The second phase of the Cross Bronx cut through the Soundview and Parkchester neighborhoods, connecting the Bronx River Parkway and the Bruckner Expressway; featuring the only existing cap of the expressway at Grant Circle.
Parkchester Condominiums Commissioned by Metropolitan Life Insurance in 1938, the plans for the 129acre housing complex were completed by Richard H. Shreve—whose firm designed the Empire State Building. All 12,271 units were fully rented and occupied by 1942.
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The Cross Bronx Expressway Connected to the George Washington Bridge at its western terminus, the Cross Bronx is key to New York’s massive distribution network. The bridge handles roughly 320,000 vehicles each day—the majority of which are trucks destined for Hunts Point. South of the CBE on the Bronx River, the market at Hunts Point is one of the world’s largest food distribution sites, selling almost three-billion pounds of produce each year.
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Building surfaces for graffiti Liminal spaces to exchange information Apartment community rooms as performance areas Street corner as informal open space
RESIDENTIAL
RESIDENTIAL
8’
11’
10’
10’
11’
8’
ELEVATED MTA RAIL
RESIDENTIAL
Circulation Remix, Pt. 1 The project began at the scale of the Parkchester community district, encompassing a roughly two-mile stretch of the Cross Bronx. In capping the CBE, traffic needed to be realigned on the five bridges (including Grant Circle) and then through the adjacent neighborhoods. In line with the project’s broader ambitions, these streetlevel interventions focused on adaptable lanes and connections to the residential// commercial typologies.
COMMERCIAL
6’
3’
8’
11’
6’
3’
10’
LU TH ER A N ST PAU L’S
C H U RC H
PARKCHESTER PROJECT
ME TROP O LITAN AV E
VIRGINIA LAWN L AIN S W H IT E P R OAD
T H GR AN 4 5 HUG
ELEVATED TERMINAL
GRANT CIRCLE S TC H 18 8 8 W E
ESTER
ANK APPLE B
T H GR AN 88 HUG
01 SAMPLE
02 REMIX
03 PROJECT
Circulation Remix, Pt. 2 Just as Grandmaster Flash’s genre defining “The Message” choreographs through a shambled Bronx landscape, this project looks to redirect urban traffic along the capped CBE. Virginia Park features smallscale interventions to create spaces that encourage circulation through the neighborhood, and offer (in)formal social spaces. Above Grant Circle, an elevated pedestrian network connects community and transportation infrastructure; embracing the two-tiered neighborhood model. The revised traffic pattern strengthens local transportation with additional bus stops and bike lanes. The circle is transformed into an urban plaza—opening sight lines past the MTA-6 terminal and creating much needed space for the Bronx’s street vendors.
Grant Circle adapted for regional transportation and distribution
Grant Circle adapted for local transportation and commerce
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Virginia Lawn and Parkchester Hip-Hop Project
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For the Car Culture Can you be pro-public transit and reduced carbon emissions and still love New York’s insane car culture? Absolutely. For thousands of the Bronx’s Latino and Black residents, car culture is simply culture. Instead of pushing this activity to the outside, in neighborhood streets and parking lots—why not embrace it as an urban expression? The reimagined openconcept for Grant Circle creates a dynamic urban surface, one that is adaptable throughout the day to serve the Bronx’s unique (and often times loud) culture.
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HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED Undergraduate Honors Thesis // Advisors Martin Hogue and Anne Weber // Ongoing
What did it mean for Bob Dylan to ‘revisit’ Highway 61 on the 1965 album bearing the route’s name? What are the implications of revisiting the famed blues corridor today? Long before Dylan recorded the nine tracks that cemented Highway 61 into a contemporary consciousness, the people and landscapes intersected by the route endured a painful past. Not only does this encompass the Mississippi Delta’s violent racial history, but also the pattern of objectification
and further dehumanization of the region’s Black populations via cultural oppression and extraction. To properly introduce Dylan’s generation of countercultural leftists to a bygone era of legends, a handful of emerging musicologists and collectors had to first record blues music and produce it as a static, folkloric art form. As said by cultural historian Marybeth Hamilton: “the idea of something called the Delta blues, dates from the late
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twentieth century... discovered—or, if you like, invented— by white men and women” who were in search of an “uncorrupted Black singer, untainted by the city.” The ‘ethnographers’ at the receiving-end of Hamilton’s criticism (i.e. the cross-generational Lomax partnership with the Library of Congress), ultimately set forth a cult of authenticity. By identifying Highway 61 and its associated musical lore//landscapes as a subject for investigation,
it is crucial to interject upon those portrayals that have privileged myth over fact to best-preserve the sanctity of an ‘authentic’ blues object. Instead, this thesis traces Highway 61 as critical infrastructure for cultural transformation to best realign the corridor’s musical lineage and the artistry behind the Delta blues’ traditions with the relentless pursuit for cultural freedom endured by Black musicians of the American South.
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The Great Divide The line of inquiry propelling this thesis first began in Fall 2020, with an Independent Study in Landscape Architecture that focused on the relationships between rock and roll and notions of American middle-landscape. The study cited several countercultural ‘moments of definition’ as intersections between evolving genre semantics and notions of landscape. The 1969 Woodstock Festival demonstrated the counterculture believed that music would lead the way to a pastoral ideal. As Joni Mitchell sings in her 1969 song: “we’ve got to get ourselves, back to the garden.”
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Excerpt from THESE FILMS SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD In his 1978 collaboration with The Band, Martin Scorsese employs the film The Last Waltz to interrogate the generic conventions of the rockumentary, asking: how can the concert film contextually portray an artifact experience? As phrased by J.P. Telotte in his essay “Scorsese’s The Last Waltz and the Concert Genre,” the film largely exists within a “closed system wherein expressive energy is... irrevocably being expanded.”1 However, by omitting the need for extraneous story and ignoring the concert’s contextual landscape, “it is clearly impossible to fully restore, that sense of immediacy... which only comes from having ‘been there.’”2 With this in mind, Scorsese seems rather intent on underscoring the rockumentary’s inherent tensions, asserting a deeper awareness and acceptance of expression’s impermanence. Fittingly enough, Scorsese’s subjects are equally obsessed with the passage of time. The Band’s concert is a farewell performance, and this framework for the event only multiples the sense of loss which the film seeks to exploit. More significant to the film’s classification as a rockumentary, is what cultural critic Greil Marcus refers to as The Band’s “magic feel for history,” and the fact that their catalogue is largely “obsessed with the American past, American myth, and the sense of place so vital to American letters.”3 The film’s interviews put this notion on full display, framed against backdrops of Canadian and Confederate flags, a Dixie beer sign, and a mural of New York. These subtle allusions to an exterior context demonstrate how The Band “correlates their own history with the larger culture’s decidedly heteroglot history”—elevating the flags and images to become a symbolic landscape in the film’s compositional background.4 As Marcus says: “against a cult of youth they felt for a continuity of generations... they looked for the traditions that made new things not only possible, but valuable.”5 The expressive energy that originates from this heightened awareness for history is preserved onscreen by Scorsese; amidst the relentless passage of time, the film’s environment provides The Band with the space to properly close the door on their collaborative period. Scorsese wisely relies on the medium shot for most of the concert footage, allowing their music “to exist in its own realm, the musicians playing more for themselves than any particular audience.”6
1. Telotte, J.P. “Scorsese’s ‘The Last Waltz’ and the Concert Genre.” Film Criticism 4, no. 2 (1980): 9. 2. Ibid., 10. 3. Marcus, Greil. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music. New York: Dutton, 1982. 4. Sarchett, Barry W. “Rockumentary As Metadocumentary: Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz.” Literature/Film Quarterly 22, no. 1 (1994): 32. 5. Marcus, Mystery Train. 6. Ibid. 7. The Last Waltz. Warner Brothers, 1978. 8. Marcus, Mystery Train. 9. Sarchett, 33. 10. The Last Waltz.
These techniques formalize the film’s intentions, for it is not about closing the door on their artistic aspirations, but instead saying goodbye to decades along rock’s characteristic land typology: the road. As band members Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm reflect on all those who inevitably fell victim to the road’s dangerous allure, the list reads like the previous decades’ top-charts: “the road has taken a lot of the great ones, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Janis [Joplin], Jimi Hendrix, Elvis [Presley]… it’s a goddamn impossible way of life.”7 Marcus elaborates on The Band’s basic anxieties, for “the artist can accept the audience’s image of himself… [but] then he will only be able to confirm.”8 Scorsese embraces this desire to bid farewell to their iconized identity, and in order to properly do so, he understands that the film must exist free of landscape’s immediate aesthetic and sociocultural implications. Nevertheless, to establish a thematic framework, he consciously situates the film in the broader history of rock and roll. In fact, the film’s opening positions this overarching theme alongside its motif of degradation, as the camera tracks across “the vagrants, vacant lots, empty buildings, and desolation of urban San Francisco” before arriving at the concert.9 The sequence alludes back to the birth of the counterculture, when optimistic, colorful hippies made their pilgrimage to Monterey; however, as Robertson says, “it’s not like it used to be.”10 In contrast to the sixties’ pastoral idealism, The Last Waltz finds simple comfort in The Band’s enduring impulse for creative expression—acknowledging that like the decade’s counterculture, they can only be preserved within the American tradition through their music.
The Road As an effective transect through American musical traditions, the study cited the late-sixties to mid-seventies rock group The Band, to escape the immediacy of the counterculture. First introduced to popular audiences on Bob Dylan’s 1965 world tour, the group’s collective body of work provides a lens to explore the phenomena of middle-landscape: connecting music to a rugged pastoralism; finding muse in rock’s traditional southern imaginary; forging immediate connections to musical predecessors; and identifying with the conflicts posed by life the road.
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Clarksdale Meanders As the culmination of a semester-long inquiry into the roots of the folk and blues traditions that inspired mid-century rock and roll, this physical exhibit presented a cultural history of the Highway 61 corridor through north-west Mississippi—what is better described as the Delta. The exhibit utilized fabricated ‘mile-markers’ to link the exhibit boards to songs and audio recordings that supplemented the research and information presented by the four panels, allowing viewers to guide themselves through Highway 61’s social and cultural histories.
HIGHWAY61REVISITED.ORG (opposite) Following the presentation of the materials to an open gallery, the research was condensed to a digital platform: highway61revisited.org. This online exhibit mirrored the ambitions of the physical panels, presenting nine podcast-style episodes that trace the Delta blues through various landscape and cultural phenomena.
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Traveling Riverside Blues—Helena, AR “Lord, I’m goin’ to Rosedale, gon’ take my rider by my side. We can still barrel house baby, ‘cause it’s on the river side.”
Yellow Dog Blues—Drew, MS “I’m going where the Southern cross the dog... Some people say the Green River blues ain’t bad. Then it must-a not been the Green River blues I had.”
Cross Road Blues—Clarksdale, MS “I went down to the crossroads fell down on my knees... Asked the Lord above for mercy, take me, if you please.”
Highway 61, Visited To quite literally complete the project’s framework of re-visiting Highway 61, the research assisted in the coordination of a two-week field work exercise through the Mississippi Delta. The trip was planned as a series of meanders around Highway 61, accepting bends at significant sites not directly adjacent to the route. With the preliminary findings from the researchportion of the thesis, the trip was framed around three eras of state infrastructure: the Mississippi River; the railroad; and the highway system. Given the Delta’s longstanding history as one of the nation’s principle cotton exporters, not only could these infrastructure patterns be traced through the rise and fall of the Cotton Kingdom, but then directly through the canonization of the blues.
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Muddy Waters’ Cabin Site Stovall Plantation, Stovall, MS
REPORT OF THE
SECRETARY
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REPRINTS OF ECONOMIC
CLASSICS
AUGUSTUS M . KELLEY · PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 1968
HYDROSOCIAL GEOGRAPHIES Erie Canal Design Studio // Partner—Dom Malacaman // Professor Maria Goula // Spring 2021
With the success of New York’s 750-mile Empire State Trail, most of which utilizes abandoned Erie Canal infrastructure, this studio engaged with the cultural landscapes transected by the heritage corridor. It quickly became apparent how the state’s initiatives privilege a particular history: one of a colonial ‘empire’ that leveraged infrastructure projects to further dispossess the Haudenosaunee peoples of their territory. Before Governor DeWitt Clinton dug the canal
through the Mohawk Lowlands, an alliance of sovereign nations utilized the corridor as a central trail for trade and communications. Many broken treaties later, the canal successfully transported goods across the continental United States and further fortified colonial strongholds along the canal—birthing many of New York’s cherished canal cities: Buffalo, Syracuse, Utica, Albany, etc. This project locates itself in present-day Syracuse, located on
1811// DEWITT AT NYS HISTORICAL
1802 // FEDERAL INTERCOURSE ACT
1808 // PUBLIC ROADS+CANALS REPORT
1790 // FEDERAL INTERCOURSE ACT
1792 // AN ACT FOR LOCK NAVIGATION
1613 // TWO ROW WAMPUM 1799 // FEDERAL INTERCOURSE ACT
1789 // TREATY OF FORT HARMAR
03
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lies, and of nations, constitute Biography and
the most interesting departments of human knowledge. Allied to this principle, springing from the same causes, the same benign effects, is that curiosity we feel in tracing the history of the nations which have
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1796 // FEDERAL INTERCOURSE ACT TO INVESTIGATE
the traditional homelands of the Onondaga Nation. The Nation, who between 1788 and 1822 lost possession of approximately 95% of its land through illegal ‘takings’ by the state, suffered dramatically during Syracuse’s canalera. As the city’s salt industry boomed, the mineral was mined into the Nation’s territory, destroying much of the Onondaga’s water supply to this day. The proposal connected a persisting public attitude about water and
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REPORT
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1794 // TREATY OF CANANDAIGUA
President, and Gentlemen of the Historical Society:
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up our ancestry to as high and as remote a source as
1834 // FEDERAL INTERCOURSE ACT
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1784 // TREATY OF FORT SCHUYLER
1768 // TREATY OF FORT STANWIX 1790 // FEDERAL INTERCOURSE ACT Čit
This content downloaded from 74.69.50.76 on Sat, 17 Apr 2021 03:32:30 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
infrastructure in Onondaga County to the region’s complicated placement in the Erie Canal heritage corridor. Proposed as a master plan framework for the restoration of the Onondaga Watershed, the project forms an alliance between the Nation and residents of south-side Syracuse to identify eleven satellite sites throughout the watershed to restore Onondaga Creek from its headwaters in the Tully Valley to its outlet at Onondaga Lake.
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1870-1924 ERIE CANAL//BLACK SYRACUSE
ONONDAGA NATION
1969-2021 ONONDAGA CREEK//BLACK SYRACUSE
No Design on Stolen Land “Infrastructural systems are not only planned, engineered, or built on stolen lands. They are codified as state systems of erasure that lend the appearance of permanence of settler-colonial authority. They dishonor the original treaties by denying the basic, legal principles of consent and community consultation, let alone their intrinsic meanings. ‘Considering its impact on contemporary urban, political, economic, social, and cultural life, the historical experience of colonialism and imperialism is greatly under-researched.; Master-planned forgetting and bureaucratic stonewalling, set in and between the lines of colonial law and settler rule (OPSYS).”
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Plan for combined use of gray and g Joanne Mahoney electe
Partnership for Onondag Onondaga County announces plan to evict 35 lo Federal judge signs Amended Con Tully Valley mudboils add 30 tons of se
Ononda
Over 80 Allied Chem Federal Flood Control Act, authorize
Syracuse Intersecting Sewer Board argues f Syracus
ood control meas aves downtown
Onondaga Creek straightened through Onondag Barge Canal constructed through Seneca and Mo Flood event inundates Syrac NYS authorizes Syracuse Intercepting Sewer Board to channelize and clear Flood event inundates Syracuse’s southside along O
Syracuse begins constructing their combined sewer infrast
Solvay Process Company erected on south shore of Onondaga Lake (186 First Syracuse Sewage commission created (1868) Onondaga Creek Commission formed – goal, straighten the creek as much as possible (1867) Improvements made to original canal, widened to 70 feet (1862) Village of Syracuse and Salina form the City of Syracuse (1847) Utica-Syracuse rail line opens (1839) Auburn-Syracuse rail line opens (1838) NYS authorizes the drilling of brine wells (1838) Syracuse constructs culvert at the intersection of Onondaga Creek and the Erie Canal (1838) Oswego Canal opens (1828)
Erie Canal completes construction (1825)
Construction begins on the Erie Canal (1817) Albert Gallatin issues a federal report on Public Roads and Canals (1808) John Geddes surveys present-day Syracuse (1804) NYS authorizes the Great Genessee Road (1794)
Treaty of Canandaigua (1794)
Simeon DeWitt Surveys the NYS Military Tract (1793) Act for Establishing Lock Navigation (1792) Treaty of Fort Harmar (1789)
Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1788)
Treaty of Fort Schuyler (1784) Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768)
1880
1870
1860
1850
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Phase Two of the Onondaga Creekwalk declared complete, 2.2 mile extension of Phase One that parallels Onondaga Creek for 80% of its length (2020)
Honeywell completes NYS Cleanup program for Onondaga Lake (2017)
Phase One of the Onondaga Creekwalk completed, connecting Armory Square to south shore of Onondaga Lake (2011)
Federal judge dismisses the Onondaga Nation’s Land Right’s Claim, declaring it too disruptive (2010)
green infrastructure solutions and initiative to develop green infrastructure to reduce CSO pollution approved as the Save the Rain program (2009) ed as Onondaga County Executive – works with Onondaga Nation, POC, and ASLF to generate new approach for 1998 ACJ requirements (2007)
Despite opposition from POC, Midland RTF completes construction (2005) Onondaga Na es Land Right’s Claim in Federal Court (2005) U.S. Congress establishes Erie Canal Heritage Corridor (2000)
ga Creek (POC) formed by Syracuse’s southside community in opposition to Midland RTF (2000) ow-income Black residents at proposed site of Midland Regional Treatment Facility (RTF) (1999) nsent Judgment (ACJ) ordering Onondaga County wastewater treatment improvements (1998) ediment to Onondaga Creek daily, OLMC Mudboil Remediation projects begin (1991-94) First path of the Onondaga Creekwalk, roughly 0.4 miles, completed at the Barge Canal Terminal (1990) Continuous Tully Valley Mudboil activity documented (1987) Allied-Signal brine mining discontinued (1986) oods, banks overfl ow in City of Syracuse (1974) Onondaga Cre Passage of the Federal Clean Water Act, making Combined Sew ows illegal (1972) NYS DOT states eminent domain over land to expand I-81 through Onondaga Nation (1971) Fences installed in City of Syracuse along Onondaga Creek (1963-69) Interstate 90 designated through Syracuse as part of Interstate Highway system (1958) Penn-Yan Highway receives Interstate 81 designation through Syracuse (1957) Tully Valley Mudboils documented as active (1950)
aga Dam and Reservoir completes construction (1949)
mical brine pipelines break into Onondaga Creek during next 30 years (1948) es Onondaga Cre ood control project upstream Syracuse (1941)
sures along Onondaga Creek (1926) section of the Old Erie Canal (1926)
ga and Kirk Parks and Rich Street (1919-63) ohawk Rivers, bypassing Syracuse (1918) cuse’s southside to Salina Street (1915) r Onondaga Creek (1904) Onondaga Creek (1902)
tructure (1900)
68)
2020
2010
2000
1990
1980
1970
1960
1950
1940
1930
1920
1910
1900
1890
Reclaimed Onondaga Dam
Kirk Park wetland restoration
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INNER HARBOR 690 OVERPASS ERIE BOULEVARD ARMORY SQUARE
KIRK PARK
DAN FORTH
VAN DUYN
DORWIN AVE DROP STRUCTURE
ONONDAGA DAM
COMBINED SEWER
VALLEY FOREST
PHYTOREMEDIATE
WETLAND
TULLY VALLEY MUDBOILS
ONONDAGA CREEK HEADWATERS
CREEK ACCESS
REGRADED EDGE
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HEX DECK Site Assembly Design Lab // Professor Zaneta Hong // Spring 2021
Framed as a two-part investigation into materials and construction detailing, this project began as an intensive case-study of Guallart Architects and Máría Díaz’s 2007 “Microcoasts” installation in Vinaròs, Spain. The deck platforms installed on site are composed of two different pieces: (1) flat, (2) the other with a microtopography, which serves to generate surfaces that can be perfectly flat or partially//fully folded. The installation utilizes one basic
polyhedron module, formed by a hexagonal pyramid that has lost two of its six faces while another four triangular pieces have been added to it. The plan of the resulting figure presents a quite irregular parameter, that nonetheless, creates a perfect hexagon when combined with two other modules. After carefully research the precedent, its strict logic inspired a similar scripted approach to the detail design portion of the assignment—
applying an abstracted process to a typological skate piece, constructed from a set of finely detailed cuts and assemblies (also, let’s be honest, simple word association: hexagonal deck → skate deck). The process ran a series of decking permutations that featured four ‘pieces’, each representing a common skate typology: quarter-pipe, rail, ramp, and stair. Through analog and digital experiments, the pieces were selected to compress the four basic
typologies into two design moves—eventually arriving at a decking pattern that accommodated the needs of each skate type. With a final product dimensioned at roughly 6’x9’ and ideally constructed with Black Locust lumber, the deck adopts a tactical urbanism approach to creating a multi-functional installation—detailing that skateable landscapes make for dynamic, livable landscapes. Who says there are no rules in skateboarding?
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Microcoasts Guallart Architects+Máría Díaz Following the installation, people were quick to appropriate the new micro-coasts along the Vinaròs shoreline and utilize them in a variety of ways. The relationship between the size, orientation, and location of the platform and its users represents an interesting phenomenon in terms of the socialization of the space.
Analog Combinations After generating the digital permutations of the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal combinations via a Grasshopper script, a handful of decking models were selected from the 256 total combinations and modeled with balsa decking pieces.
HORIZONTAL DECK The—Hex Deck The final detail was selected to accommodate the four basic skate typologies: quarter-pipe, rail, ramp, and stair. The diagonal decking allows a skater to ride up-and-down the ramp; the horizontal boards on the lower tier makes a long edge that can be grinded on; and, then verticalhorizontal step creates a combination that can be jumped.
VERTICAL DECK
DIAGONAL DECK
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Skate as a hybrid element “Skateboarders’ transformation of cities can be seen in the introduction of legitimate skateboard areas, but also through the introduction of designed non-skateable spaces. The latter includes ‘no skateboarding’ signage and ‘skate stopper’ hostile architecture, [excluding] skateboarders from urban spaces. Urbanism now represents a hybrid interplay between skateboarders and their subculture. By seeing skateboarding as a way of comprehending and acting in the world that has complex, but discernible relations with urban space, it is possible to reimagine healthy, diverse, and accessible urban spaces (Glenney and O’Connor).”
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Place-Thought Preservation
Hum
Non-Human
Habitat Creation
Migration Patterns
+
+ Institutional background
+ Shallow emergent marsh
+ Recreation
+ Hero
+ Reedgrass//purple loosestrife marsh
PLACE-THOUGHT PRESERVATION Indigenous Topographies Design Studio // Professor Mitch Glass // Fall 2020
As a cumulative project for a semester-long investigation into the contemporary and historical struggles of Indigenous Peoples in Central New York, this design framework focused on decolonizing space along the Ithaca waterfront to allot agency back to land and nonhuman actors. The design approach was heavily informed by the studio’s introductory exercise, in which abstract representations were utilized to portray Gayogo̱hó:no’
lifeways. Additionally, this exercise necessitated an thorough reading of contemporary Indigenous scholars and understanding of the reclamation of cultural sovereignty— an act implicitly combated by how landscape architecture and its allied professions design the built environment. Centered on a close reading of Vanessa Watts’ essay “Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency Amongst Humans and Non-Humans,” the studio’s final design proposal
Traditional Lifeways
man
Societal Extensions Colonial Conflict
s Seasonal Changes
Land Wetland Ecologies
+ Spring swallow migrations
+ Osprey nesting Floodplain forest species
+ Hardwood swamp + Non-Human lifeways
on habitat + Fishing + Education + Existing causeway
+ American eel + Atlantic salmon
developed a land-based framework for contemporary sovereignty and decolonization. Utilizing Ithaca’s Newman Municipal Golf Course as a testing ground for the design process, the project integrates Indigenous cosmologies and ecologies with conventional landscape architecture practices to combat colonial distinctions between place and thought. Ultimately, the framework does not represent a means of “going backwards,” or simply resurrecting the
former ecologies of the site—this would imply there is a static place to return. It is not a question of accessing something, which through processes of colonial erasure has come and gone, but simply to listen to the agency circulating amongst non-human and land extensions. By integrating Indigenous cosmologies and ecologies into a holistic approach, design can work to reconcile with the colonial distinction between place and thought.
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1980 Gayogo̱hó:noʼ file land claim case against New York State, detailing a 64,000 acre area of stolen land. 1987 Gayogo̱hó:noʼ land claim establishes New York State liability in territorial dispossession.
The Law is in the Land The studio began with a threeweek exercise focused on producing representations of Indigenous-colonial conflict, rooted in the ancestral territory of the Gayogo̱hó:noʼ people. Sampled from an old-growth swath of Hemlocks and White Pines along present-day Fall Creek, this tree stump helped visualize the Gayogo̱hó:noʼ people’s history in the landscape.
1996 Cayuga Nation reclaims first tract of traditional territory after purchasing 14 acres in Seneca Falls. 2005-2006 Federal court rules that land claim is no longer valid and would be ‘too disruptive’, United States Supreme Court declines to review land claim case. 2020 Violent conflict occurs between Traditional Gayogo̱hó:noʼ and federally recognized Cayuga Nation in Seneca Falls.
1789 Simeon DeWitt dispossesses more than 2000 acres of lands
Early 1960s NYS Rt. 13 realigned to east Cayuga Lake Early 1900s Cayuga Inlet dredged
1821 Ithaca incorporated 1886 Cornell University founded
1971 Cass Park developed on land filled by flood control
Mid 1900s Ithaca Gun Co. deposits lead pollutants into Fall Creek 1935 Newman Municipal Golf Course opens
Education
2015 Cayuga Waterfront trail opens
Cornell University Newman Golf Course Renwick Park
Ithaca College
Village of Ithaca
Stewart Park Cayuga Waterfront Trail
Public parks and recreation
Cass Park Ithaca Airport
Land Commodification
Ithaca Railroad
Waterfront industry
Cayuga Inlet
Lighthouse Point
Flood control measures Interrupted migration patterns
Anthropocentric Worldview Disrupted Habitat
Renwick Wildwoods Bird Sanctuary
PROCESS-BASED
RECIPROCITY
PLACE-BASED//COMMUNITY-LED
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Sequestered Non-Human Presence
Engagement Framework With a studio focused on speculating towards sovereignty for the Gayogo̱hó:noʼ peoples, without engaging directly with traditional or contemporary members of the community, it was crucial to establish a detailed engagement framework before making design decisions. Adapted from Wanda Dalla Costa’s Indigenous Placekeeping Framework, the four principles of the project worked to reconcile with the limitations of the studio and leverage the skillset of a practical landscape architectural education, emphasizing tangible reciprocity.
C AY U G A
L AKE ST
EW
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PA
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STEWART PARK EXTENSION
ITH
AC
A
HA
RB
FA OR
LL
CR
EE
K
RENWICK BIRD SANCTUARY
I T H AC A H I G H
ROUTE 13
GANADADWE:NI:Ó POINT
MEADOW AND OUTDOOR GALLERY CA SS
CENTER FOR PLACE-THOUGHT
PA RK
CITY HARBOR DEVELOPMENT
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C AY U G A I N L ET Center for Place-Thought Preservation Considered in a broader regional and historical context, the site once embodied a sprawling wetland ecosystem, similar to the Montezuma marshes at the north end of Cayuga Lake. The studio’s final proposal focused on grounding the design in these circumstances, bringing wetness back to the southern end of the lake. The proposal is anchored, both formally and conceptually, by the Gayogo̱hó:noʼ Center for Place-Thought Preservation—a place of cultural infrastructure for the region’s Haudenosaunee peoples. The center’s relation to the reemerging wetland condition acknowledges traditional Indigenous lifeways, presenting itself as a social extension of the earth in harmony with land and non-human agents.
Indigenous Patterns
Natural Ecologies
Colonial Infrastructure
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Companion Species Bridging the gap between the cultural center and the wetland restoration, these bridge structures were informed by traditional Gayogo̱hó:noʼ netting practices. Shown in the above rendering, the design negotiates landscape and culture as an active declaration of sovereignty. Seneca Nation artist Marie Watt’s piece Trunk, exists in the background, while the functional bridge sculpture and wetland occupy the foreground. The depth created by these relationships lies at the heart of the center’s mission—crafting a space where human and non-human systems communicate freely.
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Connection to Cayuga Lake Waterfront Trail
Exhibition space for artistic and cultural sovereignty
Process-Based The project’s main goal was to pair infrastructure for culture sovereignty with the restoration of Cayuga Lake’s wetland ecologies. Completed primarily through a regrading of the site, a cut-fill approach is utilized to dechannel Fall Creek and redistribute the historic meanders throughout the present-day site. The fill is balanced to elevate the cultural center at the south-east corner of the site, both establishing visual sovereignty in relation to the surrounding Ithaca-community and opening sight-lines across the restored wetland ecologies.
Cultural center courtyard
0
400
800 ft.
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Osprey habitat creation
Wetland overlook
Interior galleries and community infrastructure
LP 387.5
HP 402.5
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RIGHT OF WAY Landscape in Film Seminar // Professor Martin Hogue // Spring 2021 // Vimeo Link
Defined in the terms of my grandfather’s 1973 agreement with the Niagara Mohawk Power Company as “the right to pass over, occupy, or use another’s land for placing and maintaining company facilities.” Outside of this definition, I struggled to understand the cleared corridor that ran through my family’s property in Upstate New York. My grandfather had told me the story a handful of times before: he originally purchased the 150-acres in the
summer of 1969 for six-thousand dollars, then a few years later, Niagara Mohawk offered him twelve-thousand dollars for a ten-acre right of way through the property to expand the county’s electrical grid. Ever since the lines were installed the land received little attention from the company; other than when they would occasionally send workers to clear-cut at the base of the towers, the land did not feel any more-or-less my grandparent’s property. If
anything, my grandfather made more of a consistent effort to maintain the right of way than Niagara Mohawk—posting PRIVATE PROPERTY signs along the towers and fending off the occasional trespasser. Despite the signed lease, an ambiguous sense of ownership hung over the land, but still, I carried an unexplainable connection to the power-lines. As I grew up, and my grandparents handed the property down to my aunt, the power-lines along the right of way
continued to carry many meanings, from the intended to symbolic—connecting people, landscapes, and my own memories. This short-film explores power-lines as a typically overlooked, yet ubiquitous, infrastructural element across the American landscape as markers of time and memory. Awarded the first-place prize at the 2020 Cornell Landscape Architecture Landscape in Film festival. Shoutout Gary Strang, #InfrastructureAsLandscape.
65’-0’
54
4 5°
USDA Electric Transmission Specifications 1. The engineer shall designate all danger trees which are to be removed or topped. The unit for clearing danger trees is “TM-13.” 2. The unit for clearing right-of-way of specified width is “TM-15.”
Scan the QR code above to view “Right of Way” (2020) on Vimeo.
5’-0’ Width TM-15
Shape of a Tour The cover drawing illustrates a visual footprint of Bob Dylan and The Band’s 1974 “Before the Flood” tour—tracing the evolving set-list across dates and venues. Adapted for the back cover, the diagram isolates the song “Endless Highway,” played exclusively at the last show of the tour. Produced as a part of an Independent Study in Landscape Architecture, Fall 2020.