Permeated Field: Florida Landscape

Shell Mound, Cedar Key, FL

The story of moving through the Florida landscape can be followed in the conditions of Shell Mound. Around noon, the journey begins, with a path leading into a shallow, marshy landscape. Mud is more than a foot deep, including reeds, broken shells and microscopic animals. The layers of the saturated landscape are complex and historical, and immediately apparent through sight, touch, even smell and sound. Within a few hours, the kayak floats into deeper water, sandbanks have disappeared, and the grasses dance beneath the deep water as the high tide rolls in.

The Florida landscape presents itself in a wide variety of manifestations. In the vast fields of Paynes Prairie, the depths of Blue Springs and the cyclical tides of Shell Mound, the human body coincides with forces of nature in dynamic and delicate ways that inform how thoughtful architecture might be imagined within these various conditions. Travelling with a kayak, one becomes a part of the vessel itself. It is an extension of the human body that allows us to move through sacred spaces such as the threshold between the mainland and the field of the Shell Mound site. Intentional constructs within the landscape can allow us to use these vessels to navigate through and experience being in nature in a way that leaves minimal traces in the landscape.

Paper-making

Through the process of making our own paper, we were able to observing how elements of water, pulp, dust and other natural objects change:

levels of saturation, the process of desiccation, evaporation, turgidity, and adaptation.

Paper, mesh and plaster: ‘knitted’ horizontal layer and system study Plan of shell mound site, with markings for potential intervention, and travel paths.

Can we inhabit a fluctuating horizon?

Section of bridge from mainland into open water. The different levels of the bridge are a response to the changing tides, with high points always visible, floating platforms, and Kayak ramps

Resting place and bird blind

“To-day I reached the sea. While I was yet many miles back in the palmy woods, I caught the scent of the salt sea breeze...and my whole childhood, that seemed to have utterly vanished in the New World, was now restored amid the Florida woods by that one breath from the sea.”

-John Muir, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf

Paper relief models exploring thin section

Destination and Ascension

The journey comes to a rest at the vertical datum of the tower. From a gentle entrance into the landscape, to a moment of pause, or several, to the final resting spot within the tower. An experience of the landscape can be enjoyed from different physical levels as one ascends the tower. At the highest point, the traveler is in a retreat: within the calm but ever-moving field around, until the return journey.