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AUG 2021 / VOL 111 NO 8 US $7 CAN $9

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE

TIME LINE

A Swiss urban park weaves a historic past into a vibrant present

BEYOND PROMISES Canada’s reconciliation in landscape

THE BUMPY ROAD A profile in perseverance

CREATIVE CROSSROADS Meeting AI in the design process

THE MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS

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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE

THE MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS

LAM 10 INSIDE 12 LAND MATTERS

46 PLANNING

Piece by Piece Wisconsin’s Ice Age National Scenic Trail is a glorious homage to the state’s geology and conservation history. So why is it so hard to get it finished?

BY DAWN REISS

16 LETTERS

FOREGROUND 22 NOW Seagrass is a carbon sink; a river puzzle for Exhibit Columbus; Denver park makers get it right the second time; a new graduate program in a city that has surprisingly few; and more.

EDITED BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

60 INTERVIEW

The Outside Track For minority students on the path to the profession, exceptional persistence and mentors are as important as design skills.

BY JAMIE MASLYN LARSON, ASLA

68 GOODS

Movers and Shakers Park equipment that sparks work and play.

BROOK MCILROY

BY EMILY DAVIDSON

4 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

“ THEY SAID VERY CLEARLY, ‘THAT’S NOT HOW TR’ONDËK HWËCH’IN TELL THEIR STORIES.” —CHRIS GROSSET, P. 78

FEATURES 78 PATHS FORWARD The Canadian landscape is shaped by histories and losses of Indigenous peoples, which the government is only beginning to confront.

Landscape architects at NVision and Brook McIlroy steward two master-planning efforts meant to embody the principles of reconciliation in action.

BY KATHARINE LOGAN

96 TIME GOES BY Biel, Switzerland, was once a center of Swiss time makers; today it’s a multicultural city with a new urban magnet by Fontana Landschaftsarchitektur. Schüssinsel Park entwines a constructed, flood-controlling island with elements designed to be wild.

BY JESSICA BRIDGER

THE BACK 120 I, DESIGNER? Investigations into the use of artificial intelligence in landscape architecture dance around the idea of AI creativity. Two researchers argue we have something to learn.

BY PHILLIP FERNBERG, ASSOCIATE ASLA, AND BRENT CHAMBERLAIN

134 BOOKS

Weather Conditions A review of Atmosphere Anatomies: On Design, Weather, and Sensation,

by Silvia Benedito.

BY ELISSA ROSENBERG

162 ADVERTISER INDEX 163 ADVERTISERS BY PRODUCT CATEGORY 176 BACKSTORY Eating Local in Dubai As part of Expo 2020, a landscape architect launches a yearlong experiment in urban foraging.

BY CLAIRE TURRELL

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021 / 5

THE MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS

202-216-2325 SALES MANAGER Gregg Boersma / gboersma@asla.org

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Landscape Architecture Magazine (ISSN 0023-8031) is published monthly by the American Society of Landscape Architects, 636 Eye Street NW, Washington, DC 200013736. Periodical postage paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Landscape Architecture Magazine, 636 Eye Street NW, Washington, DC 20001-3736. Publications Mail Agreement No. 41024518. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to PO Box 503 RPO, West Beaver Creek, Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4R6. Copyright 2021 ASLA. Subscriptions: $59/year; international: $99/year; students: $50/year; digital: $44.25/year; single copies: $7.

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TREASURER Michael D. O’Brien, Honorary ASLA TRUSTEES Aaron A. Allan, ASLA Shawn Balon, ASLA W. Phillips Barlow, ASLA Robert D. Berg, ASLA Jonathan Bronk, ASLA David H. Contag, ASLA Amy Cupples, ASLA Jitka Dekojova, ASLA Michele Elfers, ASLA Scott V. Emmelkamp, ASLA Geoff Evans, ASLA Melissa M. Evans, ASLA David Flanagan, ASLA Michael Gaunt, ASLA Jonathon Geels, ASLA Joni Giese, ASLA Nick Gilliland, ASLA Tina Gillman, ASLA Thomas A. Hall, ASLA Gail L. Henderson-King, ASLA Chester B. Hill, ASLA Todd Hill, ASLA Jim Jackson, ASLA Lucy B. Joyce, ASLA Jenn Judge, ASLA Omprakash Khurjekar, ASLA Randy Knowles, ASLA Chad Kucker, ASLA Joy M. Kuebler, ASLA Marieke Lacasse, ASLA Daniel McElmurray, ASLA Baxter E. Miller, ASLA Erin Monk-Tharp, ASLA Jennifer Nitzky, ASLA Amin Omidy, ASLA Holley Bloss Owings, ASLA Vaughn Eric Perez, ASLA John D. Roters, ASLA Cheri Ruane, FASLA Jan Saltiel-Rafel, ASLA Stephen W. Schrader Jr., ASLA Jean Senechal Biggs, ASLA Brian H. Starkey, ASLA Judith Stilgenbauer, ASLA Adam A. Supplee, ASLA Robert B. Tilson, FASLA Patricia M. Trauth, ASLA Alan Watkins, ASLA Andrew Wickham, ASLA LAF REPRESENTATIVES Barbara L. Deutsch, FASLA Lisa Switkin NATIONAL ASSOCIATE REPRESENTATIVE Nate Byro, ASLA NATIONAL STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE Adriana Hernandez Aguirre, Student ASLA PARLIAMENTARIAN Kay Williams, FASLA

6 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

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LAM

INSIDE

/

CONTRIBUTORS BRENT CHAMBERLAIN (“i, Designer?” page

120) is an assistant professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning at Utah State University, where he conducts research on computational approaches toward design and planning. You can view his work at brentchamberlain.org.

“The vastness of our current and inevitable (unintentional) consumption of artifical intelligence makes me wonder how this will fundamentally shi design thinking.”

PHILLIP FERNBERG, ASSOCIATE ASLA,

(“i, Designer?” page 120) is a PhD researcher at Utah State University’s Visualization, Instrumentation, and Virtual Interaction Design (VIVID) Lab, where he studies human– environment interactions and conceptualizes artificial intelligence systems for landscape architecture. You can contact him at phillip. fernberg@usu.edu.

CLAIRE TURRELL (“Eating Local

in Dubai,” page 176) is a freelance journalist with work published

by National Geographic, Harper’s BAZAAR, Newsweek, and the BBC. You can follow her on Twitter @turrell_claire.

“I have driven past a Ghaf tree in the UAE many times, but I only thought it offered shade to goats.

I never knew that this desert tree, which battles sun and sandstorms, was a source of nutrition.”

GOT A STORY? At LAM, we don’t know what we don’t know.

If you have a story, project, obsession, or simply an area of interest you’d like to see covered, tell us! Send it to lam@asla.org.

Visit LAM online at landscapearchitecturemagazine.org.

Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @landarchmag and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ landscapearchitecturemagazine.

LAM is available in digital format through landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/ subscribe or by calling 1-888-999-ASLA.

10 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY, TOP; SARAH SINCLAIR, CENTER; CLAIRE TURRELL, BOTTOM

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LAM

LAND MATTERS

/

IN MEMORY I

t was probably sometime last fall when the editors at LAM began to notice the swell of memorial proposals coming across the transom. By the break of 2021, what had been a steadying trickle of story pitches about memorials had become a wave, and then a flood. By the summer, we were thinking about how to even cover them all without invoking reader fatigue. While many memorials celebrate overlooked events and figures, by far the driving theme is trauma. After the murder of Heather Heyer at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, civic and political institutions began to wake up to the fact that the American landscape was soaked in monuments to white supremacy and misogyny, and over the past several years, there has been a movement not just to take them down, but to offer a corrective. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s recent $250 million initiative, the Monuments Project, to transform the histories told in public spaces will tip the scales significantly.

recently appeared in the magazine. The architectural historian Dell Upton has written about the way memorials must be read as an assemblage rather than as single statements, and that “they tend to be erected in flurries during times of extreme unrest.” Colleagues in historic preservation know that the memorials we build have as much to say about the present moment of their conception as they do about the past actions they highlight, and it will be interesting to see what future historians make of this contemporary phenomenon.

Proposals for alternative histories have existed informally—in graffiti and street art, and in violence and vandalism against standing monuments. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder last summer, dozens of Confederate monuments have been toppled or removed. And over the past decade, designers and historians have been shifting the narrative of slavery from the slavers to the enslaved and toward a new language of commemoration that is rooted in landscape architecture. Sara Zewde’s 2017 proposal to memorialize Valongo Wharf in Rio de Janeiro signaled a move away from didactic, scripted, narrow interpretations to choreographed, experiential memorials that are open-ended and adaptive.

In this issue, Katharine Logan’s article on Canada’s efforts at reconciliation in action through interpreting Indigenous sites can only touch on the overwhelming grief erupting as hundreds of Indigenous remains, many of them children, are documented at the sites of residential schools.

Gun violence has been a particularly resonant subject for the new memorials being built. Stories on The Embrace in Tucson, Arizona, by Chee Salette with the visual artist Rebeca Méndez; a memorial to the children and teachers massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary by SWA Group; and Andy’s Unity Park in Santa Rosa, California, by RHAA are among those that have

12 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

Grief can be creatively generative and productive. From the anguished delusions of Marvel’s WandaVision to the frenzied postrestriction street parties in major cities, grief ripples through this cultural moment. As the citizenry struggles to come to terms with the appropriate forms for expression, I look forward to messy unresolved attempts to grapple with the losses of the pandemic.

I hope that in our race to plant socially acceptable forms of grief in the landscape, we don’t lose sight of the fact that there are less acceptable forms of grief—violence, addiction, rage, failure—that must also be acknowledged. As designers and the public explore avenues for commemorating ideas rather than individuals, the challenge to tell the true story is before us.

JENNIFER REUT ACTING EDITOR

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LAM

LETTERS

/

A DISCIPLINE REDEFINED

I

sat down this weekend to browse the latest LAM issue, June, only to find myself not only reading and rereading pieces but wanting to share it widely. Your piece for Land Matters on the stewardship by Indigenous communities of the American landscape resonated immediately as I, too, was inspired by David Treuer’s piece in the Atlantic and had put it on my list of new works to include in teaching landscape history. I had not expected to see the same piece appreciated in our professional magazine. I was wrong and delightfully so. I continued to read as I identified other choices of essays and images that ought to be highlighted in a moment when we are so often called upon to critique and challenge. I am honored to instead take a moment to compliment and encourage you and the LAM staff (writers, photographers, and designers included).

I want to note the increasing depth of exploration of the challenges of equity and justice in the various NOW pieces, including the brief on the Tulsa project to reconnect communities (“One Stitch in Time”), and the simple effort in the trading card project (“Trading Faces”) to think differently about who we are and what we do. The piece on the Green-Wood Cemetery (“Let the Graveyard Grow”) evokes and argues well and includes in its history of the site the presence of Lenape people, an acknowledgment that is easily done but nonetheless rare. And the piece “Power Player” lays out a powerful engagement for landscape architects, a role that we have too often claimed but not practiced. Shaping the public realm is a political act, and it is critical that we acknowledge the power and respon-

16 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

sibility of the practice. These stories reflect vibrant discussions that are so deeply essential if we are to build a more just and healthier world for all.

Yes, as a profession, a practice, and a discipline, we have a lot of hard work to do to address a complex history of who we are and how we have come to stand where we are, and yet I see in the evolution of LAM a flow of new energies that includes a willingness to take risks so that we might do differently in contribution to a visionary future. Thank you to you and to your colleagues who bring this magazine to life and to my reading table each month and, more importantly, who help to bring vision and visibility to the powerful and productive work that we can engage in as practitioners, scholars, and stewards of land and landscape.

SUBMIT LAM welcomes letters from readers.

Letters may be edited and condensed.

Please e-mail comments to LAMletters @asla.org or send via U.S. mail to: AMERICAN SOCIETY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS 636 EYE STREET NW WASHINGTON, DC 20001–3736

THAÏSA WAY, FASLA WASHINGTON, D.C.

POWER ON

A

s someone who has spent an entire professional, research, and academic career addressing solar, renewable energy, and sustainability issues in the landscape, I must say how impressed I am with the June article “Power Player.” Professors Nicholas Pevzner, Yekang Ko, and Kirk Dimond, ASLA, have produced an admirable road map for achieving the positive energy transition that is absolutely necessary, while emphasizing the magnitude of the physical changes that must occur to bring this about. Not only do

I believe this article is essential reading for all landscape architects, but it also paints a highly specific, focused picture of these physical changes, lessening the threat of that change and replacing it with an optimistic tone that can serve as a guiding light for us all.

Bravo! Bradford Williams Medal material!

ROBERT THAYER, FASLA DAVIS, CALIFORNIA

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FOREGROUND

CAMERON GILLIE

SAUK COUNTY, WISCONSIN

The Ice Age National Scenic Trail winds through diverse glacial landscapes, in PLANNING, page 46.

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021 / 21

FOREGROUND

/

NOW

EDITED BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

STUDY THE SEAGRASS

BY LISA OWENS VIANI

U

nderwater eelgrass beds can fight climate change impacts by buffering ocean acidification and sequestering carbon, according to researchers from the University of California, Davis, in a new, six-year study of seven eelgrass meadows on the West Coast. The researchers found that the meadows can reduce local acidity by up to 30 percent, even at night.

“There are immediate and long-term carbon benefits from eelgrass,” says Melissa Ward, one of the study’s authors and now a postdoctoral researcher at San Diego State University. “There’s a local benefit to species that use eelgrass on a daily to weekly time scale where they are gaining a pH benefit.

And then there is blue carbon, or long-term sequestration, acting on a decadal to millennial time scale. Eelgrass can do both, and in California it’s doing a pretty good job.”

Eelgrass is one of more than 70 species of seagrass worldwide and the most common seagrass on both coasts of the United States. Over time, eelgrass beds have been lost to coastal development. Wastewater treatment plants, urban runoff, harbor dredging, severe storms, and marine heat waves have all taken a toll. On the East Coast, where eelgrass grows from Virginia northward,

22 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

LEFT

Eelgrass flourishes along the Virginia coast. In many places, it is vulnerable to coastal development.

MICHAEL CORNISH, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

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FOREGROUND

/NOW

“IT’S PRUDENT FOR LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS TO BE EVALUATING OPPORTUNITIES AT THE WATER’S EDGE FOR CREATING NEW HABITAT, INCLUDING EELGRASS.” —SARAH MOOS THOMPSON

restoration work begun in the late 1990s has been highly successful, particularly in the shallow coastal bays and lagoons along the eastern shore of Virginia, in which there is very clean water, according to Karen McGlathery, the director of the University of Virginia’s Environmental Resilience Institute. Bob Orth, now faculty emeritus with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, led an initial seeding of about 500 acres that has expanded to a lush 10,000 acres. “We just nudged nature along,” McGlathery says.

Landscape architects are becoming involved in eelgrass restoration through their work on living shoreline projects. Sarah Moos Thompson, a senior associate with Bionic, has partnered with ecologists on

24 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

pilot projects in the San Francisco Bay. She suggests that landscape architects interested in restoring this type of subtidal habitat reach out to university researchers. “Especially as we see sea-level rise, I think it’s prudent for landscape architects working on any waterfront site to be evaluating opportunities at the water’s edge for creating new habitat, including eelgrass,” says Moos Thompson.

The new study has sparked increased interest in eelgrass restoration, Ward says. However, while seagrass is protected under the federal Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, activities like dredging still occur. Mitigation is required whenever eelgrass habitat is destroyed, but in a recent survey, Ward found that only about 50 percent of restored sites succeed, indicating that conservation of eelgrass beds should be prioritized over restoration. As Ward puts it, “It takes a really long time to sequester 600 years of carbon.”

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FOREGROUND

/NOW

WATERSHED MOMENTS

A PUZZLE-LIKE MODEL OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER BASIN HELPS TO REVEAL CONNECTIONS.

T ABOVE

An installation for Exhibit Columbus

by Derek Hoeferlin, Affiliate ASLA, exaggerates the vertical dimensions of the Mississippi watershed.

his month, on the riverside terrace of a former pump house in Columbus, Indiana, an exaggerated topographic model of the Mississippi watershed will be installed. It is a hardier object than models meant for conference rooms or museum galleries. In fact, the model’s designer, Derek Hoeferlin, Affiliate ASLA, encourages visitors to pour a glass of water, or beer, over the landscape, to see how much pilsner the Ohio River can take, or how many ounces of stout it requires to overtop the Missouri River. Or, “if it’s coming from the Northwest,” Hoeferlin says, “it might be an IPA.”

split into six lobes that fit together like puzzle pieces, representing the Mississippi and its tributary watersheds. It’s an extension of a long-term effort to create an atlas of the Mississippi River Basin, in which Hoeferlin is working to map the basin at a variety of scales and examining the control measures that make the watershed a tool for commerce. The installation, dubbed Tracing Our Mississippi, also includes expository boards, and Hoeferlin plans to host public programming themed on Indigenous rights to the land and water with artists from opposite ends of the Mississippi watershed: Angie Tillges from Minnesota and Monique Verdin from Louisiana.

At about 12 square feet, the installation is a tactile and inInstalled as part of this year’s Exhibit Columbus, formal experience that explores regional identity through a biennial celebration of the Indiana city’s trove the continent-spanning scale of watersheds, reinforcing this of midcentury modern architecture, the model is year’s Exhibit Columbus theme, “New Middles: From Main

26 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

DEREK HOEFERLIN, AFFILIATE ASLA; NATE STANFIELD

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FOREGROUND

/NOW

LEFT

UPPER MISSISSIPPI OHIO

In the model, the Mississippi watershed is divided into six tributary lobes.

MISSOURI

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Street to Megalopolis, What Is the Future of the Middle City?” Hoeferlin, the chair of the landscape architecture and urban design programs at Washington University in St. Louis, is one of nine University Design Research Fellows across seven teams that are part of this year’s program.

Hoeferlin’s model will maintain the stark white, black, and red color scheme of the atlas with the goal of creating a “strange, gallery-white object,” a counterpoint to the leafy outdoor environs at Upland Brewing Company along the Flatrock River.

Dams and levees are rendered in red blocks, defiant monoliths in the sculpted topography, and the vertical plane of the model is radically exaggerated. Valleys and hills become hyperbolized into canyons and peaks, more like the Rocky

28 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

Iker Gil, who curated Exhibit Columbus this year with the critic and LAM contributor Mimi Zeiger, says that this year’s event calls for multiscalar explorations of Columbus and the Midwest, with a special focus on how the region is connected by the Mississippi watershed. Hoeferlin’s project is the most literal encapsulation of this goal. “We thought that this idea of using the Mississippi watershed would be a great way to reveal, explore, [and] understand how some of the things that might be unique to Columbus are also intertwined with other things happening in other places,” Gil says.

Hoeferlin says he hopes this easy-going presentation of common ground shows people that the function and continual management of the Mississippi watershed “is a collective effort. A watershed is a constructed condition. It’s infrastructural, it’s political, and it’s gotten to the point with the Mississippi that it is such a designed and engineered system that it isn’t the classic definition of a watershed. Emphasizing the contrast between ‘natural’ topography and the more rigid river management structures will provide clues to where the river may want to shift its direction. I think there are clues that it can become more dynamic again.”

DEREK HOEFERLIN, AFFILIATE ASLA; NATE STANFIELD

ARKANSAS/WHITE/RED

Mountains than river bluffs and alluvial fans. “The only way to really get an understanding of the topography at such a huge scale is to exaggerate the vertical dimension,” Hoeferlin says.

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FOREGROUND

/NOW

FARMING THE MARGINS IN RICHMOND, BLACK-LED ORGANIZATIONS LOOK TO URBAN AGRICULTURE TO ADDRESS FOOD INJUSTICE.

BY TANEASHA WHITE

“I ABOVE

Taylor Scott (right), the founder of RVA Community Fridges, and a volunteer partner stand in front of their second free community fridge.

f this current climate has taught us anything, it’s that we can no longer wait on our elected officials to make those critical decisions for our neighborhoods. We have to keep us safe,” says the Richmond, Virginia-based Sunrise Movement organizer and photographer Christian Carter-Ross. “[These] efforts to help low-income areas are often the poor helping the poor. More affluent areas typically isolate their communities through financial avenues. It’s by design that you’ll never find a Whole Foods in the ’hood.”

The barriers to quality food are just one of the reasons behind the chronic health conditions that plague communities of color at staggering rates.

Quite often, the Black community is blamed for its high rates of diabetes, high cholesterol, and other chronic health conditions when there are significant historical and systemic reasons why Black and Brown communities have higher rates of disease.

These include trauma and mistrust of the medical system, the inaccessibility of health care, and the way that trauma manifests in Black bodies.

Richmond-area advocates are working to address One of the more noticeable examples of the racial these barriers, with several initiatives aiming not inequities that persist in southern cities like Rich- only to increase accessibility to food but to equip mond is the varied access to basic necessities ex- residents with the knowledge to both grow and

32 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

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emplified by the city’s rampant food deserts. Areas of the city predominantly occupied by white and affluent community members, such as the West End or the Fan District, have several grocery stores within blocks of one another. On the Northside and the Southside, seemingly a world away, markets are rare, and the nearest locations for food are convenience stores. For many, the closest option would require traveling to one of the aforementioned locations, which could take at least 30 additional minutes by bus after walking to a bus stop.

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FOREGROUND

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“[THESE] EFFORTS TO HELP LOW-INCOME AREAS ARE OFTEN THE POOR HELPING THE POOR. IT’S BY DESIGN THAT YOU’LL NEVER FIND A WHOLE FOODS IN THE ’HOOD.” —CHRISTIAN CARTER-ROSS

A particularly significant initiative is that of the HBCU (Historically Black College or University) Virginia State University and its Urban Agriculture and Cooperative Extension programs, where the focus is on ensuring that Richmond-area residents can both learn and teach each other about agriculture. Leonard Githinji, an associate professor and extension specialist in sustainable and urban agriculture, leads the Sustainable and Urban Agriculture program. With a doctorate in agronomy and soils and a master’s degree in physical land resources, Githinji wants to demystify the concept of growing your own food and to equip residents with the ability to teach others.

“Gardeners, community leaders, and a lot of other educators want to learn how to teach or how to start those raised-bed gardens. Especially in this era of COVID-19, where many people found themselves with a bit more time inside the house but not better access to food, a lot of people are going toward the direction of self-reliance instead

34 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

of having to rely on someone to supply your food,” Githinji says.

VSU is also exploring microfarming as a way to maximize land availability. Githinji says he anticipates this changing the way urban agriculture efforts are implemented. The project will make use of the numerous parking lots throughout the city that go unused. “It’s going to be a concept we call CropBox. CropBox is like an indoor facility, which is a modified shipping container that has a farm inside of it. If you have a 30-foot by 70-foot container, you are able to produce equivalent to one acre of land.”

Those living within urban communities have been conditioned to think that growing their own food is difficult and have become dependent on larger systems. “Self-resilience, in this conversation, is a necessary safeguard against bureaucracy. It could also ensure generational stability,” Carter-Ross says.

Success may depend on whether or not communities wait on policy to shift—programs that push for hands-on community education like Githinji’s and organizations like the Sunrise Movement support both direct action and policy change. Both of these efforts are going to be what it takes to change the tide in underserved cities like Richmond.

ABOVE

A microfarming concept called CropBox is being piloted at Virginia State University.

LEONARD GITHINJI

cook their own. There are farm-based programs such as Shalom Farms, Black-led efforts such as the open access food pantry RVA Community Fridges, community-supported agriculture programs such as Diverse CSA, and environmental justice organizations like the Sunrise Movement that Carter-Ross organizes with in both Richmond and Washington, D.C.

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FOREGROUND

/NOW

LESS TOXIC TRANSIT WHEN IT COMES TO AIR QUALITY, SUBWAYS ARE JUST AS BAD AS FREEWAYS.

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

T

he notion that mass transit systems, and subways in particular, reduce air pollution in cities feels so logical that a person might not even think to question it. And yet, while mass transit does reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled and therefore the amount of fine particulate matter in a city’s atmosphere, new research from New York University’s Langone Health has found that the air quality in U.S. subway stations can be as bad or worse than even the busiest highways, in some cases exposing riders and workers to particulate levels an order of magnitude higher than those found near freeways.

“These values were so high, we couldn’t believe them,” says Terry Gordon, a professor of environmental medicine at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and a coauthor of the study. “They were as high as a really bad air-quality day in Beijing or Delhi, over 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter.”

The researchers measured fine particulate matter (PM2.5) during rush hour in 71 subway stations across four cities: Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. They found that particulate levels

36 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

were generally between two and seven times higher than the EPA standard for daily ambient exposure.

Even though a commuter spends far less time on a subway platform than, say, a child does in a poorly ventilated school, the researchers estimated that a daily average of 15 minutes on a platform and 40 minutes on a train could increase cardiovascular mortality by 11 percent.

States, but Gordon says informal data collected in a San Francisco BART station suggests that pollution levels in subway systems are similar across the country. Although subways have fallen out of favor in a lot of American cities, largely because of the high cost of digging tunnels, new lines continue to debut in cities such as Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. How these stations are designed, Gordon says, can help That’s a considerable increase, says mitigate air pollution exposure, most Kathy Fallon Lambert, a senior simply through increased ventilation. adviser at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environ- As lawmakers and President Biden ment at Harvard University’s T. H. neared an agreement on a $579 bilChan School of Public Health. “The lion infrastructure plan, Fallon Lamlevels reported in this study are ex- bert, whose work focuses on quantremely high and very concerning, tifying the public health impacts of especially for subway system work- transportation policy, says this is a ers,” who might spend their entire crucial time to “think about what shifts underground, she says. The our public transportation systems findings are also worrisome, Fallon need in order to maintain public Lambert says, because “immigrants confidence and to protect the health and people of color, who already bear of those who rely on [them].” The an unacceptably high burden for air study, she says, suggests that “impollution exposure, are among the proving the safety of public transpormost frequent public transit users.” tation systems, including ventilation, should be high on the list.”

The study, which was published in Environmental Health Perspectives in TIMOTHY A. SCHULER, THE EDITOR OF NOW, CAN February 2021, focused on subway BE REACHEDAT TIMOTHYASCHULER@GMAIL.COM systems in the northeastern United AND ON TWITTER @TIMOTHY_SCHULER.

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FOREGROUND

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FEEDBACK LOOP

A MISMATCH BETWEEN PLACE AND PLAYGROUND MATURES INTO A VIBRANT COMMUNITY PARK FOR DENVER’S WEST COLFAX NEIGHBORHOOD.

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

ABOVE

The steep slope of Paco Sanchez Park necessitated a change to the competition design team and a reconfiguration of its signature play loop.

dents mobilized against the city, citing concerns about impacts to parking, to noise levels, and to a green space that they felt was already overstressed. Eventually, the city withdrew.

Now, almost 10 years later, the play loop concept has been realized in a different park in a different neighborhood—this time with community support. Far from a failure, the reconstituted design is seen by the city and its consultants as an improvement on the original design, one with implications for future competitions. “I’m really excited about how this all played out,” says Scott Gilmore, the deputy It was exactly the kind of idea the city was looking for. The same manager of parks for DPR, “because the comcould not be said of the surrounding neighborhood. Local resi- munity that truly needed it got it.”

40 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

PAUL WEDLAKE

I

n 2012, Denver Parks & Recreation (DPR) sponsored a design competition called Re-imagine Play. Meant to increase outdoor recreation by inspiring all-ages play, the competition site was a dilapidated playground in the corner of Denver’s historic City Park, a 330-acre green space and cultural campus that includes the Denver Zoo and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The winning design, by PORT Urbanism and Indie Architecture, was based on a simple idea: Rather than concentrate active play in a single structure, why not integrate it into the entire park space? Formally, the idea was expressed as a play loop, a half-mile-long walking and jogging path punctuated by what the design team described as a series of “microenvironments for play and social interaction.”

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FOREGROUND

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“I’M REALLY EXCITED ABOUT HOW THIS ALL PLAYED OUT, BECAUSE THE COMMUNITY THAT TRULY NEEDED IT GOT IT.”

ABOVE

Custom play features like this microphoneshaped climbing tower honor the activist and DJ Francisco “Paco” Sanchez.

Custom play features including a microphone-shaped tower and rainbowhued climbers—meant to evoke the swirling skirts of folklórico dancers— interpret various aspects of the life and career of the park’s namesake, Francisco “Paco” Sanchez, a local community activist and affordable housing advocate who created Denver’s first Latinx-owned, Spanish-language radio station. Other elements, such as a tiled The new site is Paco Sanchez Park, an existing 30-acre green kiosk that allows visitors to check out play equipspace located in West Colfax, a neighborhood with a large ment, respond directly to the financial situations Latinx population where historic disinvestments have con- of community members. tributed to high rates of childhood obesity and other health disparities. The park was selected following a citywide review One major difference between City Park and of health data and DPR properties in poor condition, along with Paco Sanchez Park is the latter’s 45-foot change in significant lobbying by then-city councilperson Paul López. grade. It slopes dramatically from north to south, making the original play loop design incompatHad the city simply taken PORT’s original design and imple- ible with the topography. That complexity is what mented it unchanged, this could be one more story of a vague, drove the city to hire Dig Studio, says Michael culturally empty design concept foisted upon a neighborhood Bouchard, DPR’s assistant director of design without the political power to fight it. But Lee Thomas, who and construction. “As we got into topography, lives blocks from Paco Sanchez Park and at the time was the we really wanted to make sure we had a strong principal at a local elementary school, says the city had learned [landscape architecture] presence,” he says. In its lesson. “They were so cautious,” she says. the new park, an ADA-compliant path zigzags down the slope, with play “pods” embedded at The new design, by PORT and Dig Studio, is a direct reflection every switchback. of months of community engagement in which the city worked with local nonprofits, schools—including Thomas’s—and Reflecting on the competition’s uneven path, community members to adapt the idea of the play loop to Paco Bouchard and Gilmore say it’s an example of Sanchez Park. “We wanted to make sure that the program- how design competitions can prize ideas over ming matched what the community wanted,” says Gretchen community need. “There is a place for a design Wilson, ASLA, a principal and partner at Dig Studio, which competition,” Bouchard says, “but it needs to be was brought on after the new site was selected. very intentional and thought through.”

42 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

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FOREGROUND

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A NEW MLA FOR NYC PRATT INSTITUTE WILL OPEN A NEW GRADUATE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE PROGRAM IN JANUARY.

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

The new MLA program, which will welcome its first students in January 2022, is only the second graduate landscape architecture program in New York City, along with the graduate program at City College of New York. Developed as a three-year program, with a two-year option for students with a four-year preprofessional degree and a high-quality design portfolio, the program has explicit emphases on social justice and the climate crisis. Students will have opportunities to work collaboratively across disciplines and on hands-on, community-led projects through partnerships with the Pratt arriet Harriss, the dean of the Pratt In- Center for Community Development, the Spatial Analysis and stitute’s School of Architecture, believes Visualization Initiative, and the Inclusive Ecologies incubalandscape architecture’s preeminence over all tor, founded in 2019 to integrate historically marginalized other built environment disciplines is inevitable. perspectives into climate change discourse and to test the That’s why when Harriss, the former head of limits of multispecies design. research at the Royal College of Art, joined Pratt in 2019, one of her first initiatives was to create Currently, the school is actively seeking a full-time landscape a master in landscape architecture (MLA) degree architecture professor to coordinate its new graduate proprogram—a program, she says, that should al- gram. As design programs around the world undergo reckonready have existed. ings with regard to racial and gender equality, Harriss sees the nascent program as an “opportunity to grow in a very healthy “In cities as dense as New York, landscape’s power, and necessary way the diversity of my faculty.” in terms of addressing issues of equality, is so undertapped,” says Harriss, citing interconnected Among the landscape architects who will teach in the new concerns such as food poverty, mental health, program is Signe Nielsen, FASLA, a longtime faculty member and environmental justice. “It made complete in Pratt’s School of Architecture and a founding principal sense to not only open a program in landscape at MNLA in New York. David Erdman, the chair of Pratt’s architecture, but to do so as a means to confront Graduate Architecture and Urban Design department, says all of these challenges. Landscape architecture it is faculty members like Nielsen—many of whom, he says, has every opportunity to become the pinnacle maintain research-based practices—that will distinguish program within schools of architecture, and that’s Pratt’s MLA program from others. “Our faculty,” he says, “are a thesis we’ll be testing.” a big part of what will give this distinction.”

ABOVE

A deep section of a site in Hudson, New York, produced for the design studio “MicroCity: Climate Crisis and the Post-Natural Waterfront.” Pratt’s new MLA program will increase the school’s focus on climate justice.

44 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

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FOREGROUND

/

PLANNING

PIECE BY PIECE THE ICE AGE NATIONAL SCENIC TRAIL WILL TRACE WISCONSIN’S CONSERVATION LANDSCAPE—EVENTUALLY.

BY DAWN REISS

ABOVE

In 2019, more than 2,000 Ice Age Trail Alliance volunteers contributed 82,880 hours of service on behalf of the Ice Age Trail.

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“I don’t know why,” says John Cannella, the National Trails System program manager for the National Park Service.

“Once you get past the Triple Crown— the Appalachian Trail, the Continental Divide, and the Pacific Crest—I think there’s less awareness of the National Trails System, that it is bigger than the Interstate Highway System.”

The Ice Age National Scenic Trail is a patchwork of trails that follows a roller-coaster path through 30 counties from Interstate State Park on

the Saint Croix River in northwestern Wisconsin to Potawatomi State Park on Green Bay. Approximately 675 miles of completed trail are connected by road segments that can be thru-hiked as some “thousand milers” have done.

More than 88,000 miles of national trails crisscross the United States.

Eleven, including the Ice Age Trail— as it is more commonly known— are National Scenic Trails because they traverse significant terrain that

CAMERON GILLIE

H

ardly anyone outside the state realizes that there are more than 1,000 miles of glacial trail in Wisconsin. For more than 60 years, conservationists, landscape architects, and politicians have tried to get a trail built to highlight Wisconsin’s stunning glacial features, and unless something changes drastically, it is still decades away from completion.

Despite their best efforts and a spike in hiking during the pandemic, the Ice Age National Scenic Trail remains little known.

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LEFT

An observation tower offers a 360-degree view in the Lapham Peak Segment of the Ice Age Trail in the Kettle Moraine State Forest.

BELOW

A partially filled kettle along the Lapham Peak Segment of the Ice Age Trail.

highlights spectacular natural resources and stunning beauty.

ridges known as moraines (hence the Kettle Moraine region). The ice crafted snakelike eskers, earthen ridges, and the remnants of streams that flowed through ice-walled tunnels and left behind mounds of sand and gravel. Massive boulders, called erratics, now dot the land, coupled with kames, or dome-shaped hills.

Unlike the flat land that characterizes much of the middle of the country, the ground in Wisconsin is jagged and rustic, with forested ravines and rolling hillsides more akin to the Great Smoky Mountains than the typical midwestern landscape.

When glaciers abruptly halted their journey more than 10,000 years ago, a portion of Wisconsin was glaciated Land untouched by the glaciers is and part wasn’t. the Driftless Area, where the ground is hard and filled with clay, a stark The glaciers cut gorges (the Wiscon- contrast to the fertile land raked over sin Dells) and filled kettles, and sliced by glaciers.

48 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

The diverse landscape of Wisconsin, home to 11 federally recognized tribes, inspired environmentalists, ecologists, and naturalists including Gaylord Nelson, the Wisconsin senator who founded Earth Day and championed the National Trails System Act of 1968 that established the scenic trails system. The boyhood home of John Muir can be seen at John Muir Memorial County Park within a 1.7-mile loop segment of the Ice Age Trail in Montello. The beauty of the glacial land so impressed Muir, he said, “The beauty of its lilies and orchids is so pressed

BRAD WILKINS

Compared to the larger, more wellknown trails, the Ice Age Trail is uniquely sublime, says Jonathan Bronk, ASLA, a landscape architect with the University of Wisconsin– Madison’s Campus Planning and Landscape Architecture department.

“It’s much more intimate,” Bronk says. “But I think people underestimate it.”

FOREGROUND

/PLANNING

LEFT

A hand-built stone staircase along the Devil’s Lake Segment near Baraboo.

BOTTOM

into my mind I shall always enjoy looking back at them in imagination, even across seas and continents, and perhaps after I am dead,” according to the 2014 Ice Age Trail Guidebook.

50 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

“What makes the Ice Age Trail unique is Wisconsin’s unique conservation heritage,” Huffaker says. “When you walk the Ice Age Trail you are treading on the same ground of conservation legends. It places you in that Aldo Leopold purchased an aban- same landscape that inspired so many doned farm in the sandy soils of others to work hard to secure public Sauk County, repaired land depleted lands and trails for all of us.” by row crops and overgrazed by dairy cattle, and rebuilt a chicken coop, Pam Schuler is a landscape architect also known as “The Shack,” as his who served as the trail manager and weekend retreat. It is now a National landscape architect affiliated with Historic Landmark. The restoration the Ice Age Trail for the National experience formed Leopold’s conser- Park Service, at the Ice Age Complex vation ideology. at Cross Plains. “Someday when this trail is complete, I believe [it] will be About 15 miles south of Leopold’s as big of a draw as the Appalachian Shack is Devil’s Lake State Park in Trail and Pacific Crest,” she says.

Baraboo, which includes a 10.9-mile Ice Age Trail segment with dramati- That’s what Ray Zillmer, a Milwaukee cally impressive views from 500-foot lawyer turned conservationist, envipink and purple quartzite bluffs over- sioned in the 1950s when he dreamed looking a lake. Buddy Huffaker, the of creating a national park following executive director of the Aldo Leopold the glacial landforms in Wisconsin.

Foundation, says the organization hopes to eventually do a connective He created the Ice Age Park and Trail path between the Ice Age Trail and Foundation in 1958, now called the the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center.

Ice Age Trail Alliance, and politicked

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the Milwaukee congressman Henry Reuss, who convinced Congress— after Zillmer died of a heart attack— to recognize nine glacially significant geological sites as Ice Age National Scientific Reserve units in 1964.

In 1980, Congress, led by Reuss, amended the National Trails System Act to establish the Ice Age National Scenic Trail. It began with 151 miles, according to Schuler.

TOP LEFT

The Ice Age Trail stretches more than 1,000 miles.

TOP RIGHT

Hikers along the Table Bluff Segment in Dane County, which includes native prairies and rock outcroppings with views of the Blue Mounds.

The legislation included a caveat: No federal agency, including the National Park Service, could spend funds on land acquisition to help build the trail, says Tom Gilbert, who served as superintendent of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail and the North Country National Scenic Trail for more than 20 years.

“It was shocking,” Gilbert says. “Because the first thing you need for a trail is land.”

52 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

In the 1980s, there was a backlash against the federal government owning too much land. Many congresspeople and senators were nervous about the U.S. government invoking eminent domain to create federal land corridors across the country, which was the instrument used to create the Appalachian Trail but barred later trails, like the Ice Age Trail, from doing something similar, says Steve Elkinton, the author of The National Trails System: A Grand Experiment and a veteran of the park service.

which has local chapters that deploy crews of volunteers who repair and hand build new trails throughout the state—created a memorandum of understanding.

The National Park Service began allocating money from the Land and Water Conservation Fund to the state of Wisconsin, Schuler says. The state of Wisconsin then funds the DNR’s Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program, which administers stewardship grants to help protect natural and wildlife habitats, including work The legislation had a loophole—it on the Ice Age Trail. didn’t stipulate that federal funds couldn’t be spent on purchasing land. “It’s a unique relationship,” Elkinton “So, you just had to get somebody else says. “The park service found itself to do it [instead of a federal agency], administering this trail, which is relike a state like Wisconsin,” Elkinton ally a Wisconsin idea.” says.

After decades of effort, 16 of the 30 As a work-around, the National Park counties with the Ice Age Trail now Service, the Wisconsin Department have a County Corridor Planning and of Natural Resources (DNR), and the Trailway Protection Strategy Plan in nonprofit Ice Age Trail Alliance— place, Schuler says.

ICE AGE TRAIL ALLIANCE , TOP LEFT; CAMERON GILLIE, TOP RIGHT

FOREGROUND

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FOREGROUND

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LEFT

Volunteer chapters help with trail improvements, including making structural repairs, creating new segments, and rerouting trails.

BOTTOM

An Ice Age Trail Alliance volunteer uses a McLeod tool to work on a trail in the Ringle Segment in Marathon County.

the Appalachian Trail had 35 people working full-time for about 20 years.”

Funding cuts have also had an impact.

The Wisconsin DNR, with 275 miles of trail, is the largest landholder for the Ice Age Trail. During the past decade, Wisconsin’s state capital budget, which covers all lands that Wisconsin DNR manages, including the “We’d all love to see the trail done in Ice Age Trail, shifted downward by 10 years,” Schuler says. “But given “tens of millions” and had a “signifithat we have 500 miles left to go, cant effect,” says Missy Vanlanduyt, there’s still a long way to go.” the recreation partnerships section chief for the Wisconsin DNR. Part of the problem is not having a dedicated person at a government For example, between 2011 and agency whose job is solely focused 2020, the DNR spent $2.9 million on purchasing land for the Ice Age on Ice Age Trail land acquisitions, Trail, says John Harrington, a pro- according to its data. That’s less than fessor who recently retired from the a quarter of the $12.7 million the Department of Planning and Land- DNR spent on Ice Age Trail acquisiscape Architecture at the University of tions from 2001 until 2010.

Wisconsin–Madison. “A handful of us have spent part of our time doing land Currently, about 2.3 miles of the Ice acquisition,” Harrington says. “And Age Trail are owned by the National

54 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

CAMERON GILLIE

Originally, the National Trails System Act wanted all the plans done by 1982, Schuler says, two years after the Ice Age Trail was authorized. Because of the “ebb and flow in governments,” with staffing, personnel, and land acquisition dollars, it’s made it difficult, says Schuler, who began working on the trail in 1985.

Park Service, says Eric Gabriel, the superintendent for the Ice Age National Scenic Trail. The other approximately 400 miles of the trail are owned by more than 30 entities, with 42 miles of trail going through Chequamegon– Nicolet National Forest, says Drew Hanson, a recreation liaison for Wisconsin DNR’s bureau of parks and recreation management. Included in those trail miles is the Ice Age Trail

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ABOVE

Hikers stand on the 500-foot Baraboo quartzite bluff overlooking Devil’s Lake.

/PLANNING

Alliance and its affiliated partners, which have 12.5 miles of protected trail and easements on another 15.5 miles of trail, according to Kevin Thusius, the director of land conservation for the Ice Age Trail Alliance.

At the current pace of land acquisitions, Thusius says, it will likely take more than 100 years to finish the Ice Age Trail. The reason: 10 properties are usually acquired per year, he says, for the Ice Age Trail.

As parcels of land become smaller and more expensive to purchase, Thusius estimates another 1,200 to 1,500 land transactions will be needed to complete the trail.

In an attempt to fill the void, Thusius says the Ice Age Trail Alliance has amplified its land acquisition. For example, after years of negotiation, the Ice Age Trail Alliance convinced four landowners in Dane County—

56 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

known as the Swamplovers—to bequeath to the public a 433-acre property originally purchased as hunting and hiking grounds. In November, the property officially transitioned to the Ice Age Trail Alliance, making it the largest privately acquired property by the nonprofit for the Ice Age Trail Alliance, says Mike Wollmer, the executive director and CEO of the Ice Age Trail Alliance.

whelming every trailhead across the state, his best anecdotal estimates are at least a 50 percent increase, if not more, since the pandemic. Ice Age Trail Alliance membership grew 41 percent between March 2020 and 2021. If there’s a relationship, that would equate to almost an additional 943,000 new users of the trail, Wollmer says.

The Wisconsin DNR has also seen a significant increase in outdoor recreation use, sometimes as much as 60 percent on the weekends, since the pandemic.

“This was just too precious a piece of property to keep to ourselves,” says Jerry Goth, one of the Swamplovers property owners. “We’re interested in getting young people interested in nature, so maybe they’ll be advocates.”

“That’s really highlighted the Ice Age Trail,” Vanlanduyt says. “Because you don’t have to train for three months to hike it. Visitors to the state and residents are putting a much greater value on the Ice Age Trail and outThe explosion of hiking during the door recreation. I think that’s going coronavirus pandemic may help that to continue to grow.” cause and create future conservationists. Pre-COVID users of the Ice DAWN REISS IS A CHICAGO JOURNALIST WHO Age Trail numbered 2.3 million a LOVES THE OUTDOORS AND SPENDS EVERY year, Wollmer says. With users over- SUMMER IN ELKHART LAKE, WISCONSIN.

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FOREGROUND

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FOREGROUND

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INTERVIEW THE OUTSIDE TRACK A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO DESIGNERS UNDERSCORES THE CHALLENGES TO ENTERING THE PROFESSION.

BY JAMIE MASLYN LARSON, ASLA

Jamie Maslyn Larson: Can you tell me a little more about the family you come from and your background? Is there any tie to landscape, but also more importantly, how you tackle obstacles?

J

amie Maslyn Larson, ASLA, met Gabe Jenkins, Student ASLA, when he contacted her last summer through LinkedIn. Jenkins, then a BLA candidate at Clemson University, was interested in an internship at BIG, her former firm. He asked if she had “any advice about landscape architecture, because I’m always willing to learn.” In subsequent conversations, Maslyn says, “Gabe’s life stories and his tenacity and positivity made such an impact on me. I learned that I need to work harder to give platforms for the next generation of voices in our profession.” In September, Jenkins will be starting as a landscape designer at Sasaki in Boston.

60 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

It really had a profound impact on me, and she always taught me to look out for people. And even though we didn’t come from much, I thought we grew up in a pretty substantial family, because we didn’t use the language associated with poverty. It was always about encouraging your dreams, going after it.

Jenkins: I had a mentor that came up to me and my brother randomly while we were just in our own world, playing sports. We started meeting periodically, and that had a profound [effect] on my life. I would say I had coaches that really poured into me.

And just seeing my past, or what my family’s past was, that was a primary motivator…people not going to college, not finishing school, and just having all these unfortunate situations. So I was like, “I want to be the one to change that. I want to be the one to trailblaze that whole regime.”

Forcing us to go to church early on, we used to fall asleep all the time, and then one day I started to stay awake and to pay attention to what was happening. And [faith] really became the backbone of everything for me, even with the hard situations or seeing the true colors of friends in Maslyn: You and I sort of share a high school. It was a pretty tough background in economic insecurity....

VICTORIA MARKEL, TOP LEFT; DAWSON PHOTOGRAPHY, BOTTOM RIGHT

realization, seeing how God was still there when everybody else seemed to let me down. That kind of propelled me to stay optimistic because there [were] a thousand reasons for me not to be optimistic, or be in good spirits because of the unforGabe Jenkins: Growing up, I was tunate situation that I had come raised in a single-parent household. up with.

My mom was the mom and the dad for us, and she did a phenomenal job Maslyn: Your mom sounds like a with being the mother, provider, and very powerful force in your life, but disciplinarian. Those weren’t always were there any other leaders in your good times, but I learned valuable life, or supporters in your life, that lessons in those moments. really pushed you to succeed?

STReaMS INTERACTIVE

FOREGROUND

/INTERVIEW

“I WAS JUST PERSISTENT; I WAS GOING TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN REGARDLESS.” —GABE JENKINS, STUDENT ASLA

But a lot of people react differently with economic insecurity. Some people, it makes them afraid or hold back out of fear of scarcity or loss, but it sounds like in the face of that, you continue to take risks. You talked about your rootedness in faith, but at the same time you do take risks that a lot of people wouldn’t take. How do you feel in that moment, and how do you overcome that fear?

Jenkins: So, sports created that chip on my shoulder, right? And then a lack of resources created the possibility for abundance.

Maslyn: That’s an amazing point of view.

Jenkins: People started to show [me], you have to really go out and get on life’s edge to get what you want. And I started reading books, or just surrounding myself with people that were doing things I aspired to do. That had a really big influence on me, like, “All right, if they can do it, I can do it.”

Jenkins: Coming out of high school, I didn’t have any scholarships, really. I was like, “Wow, this is quite devastating.” I was at the lowest point. I applied to only four schools.

I was trying to figure out, with every worst-case scenario there’s an alternative, so how could I figure out what that is, and maneuver and navigate around that?

And I think what helped, too—I didn’t surround myself with a lot of naysayers. I think people often have, in their circle, a supportive system, but if you look at it, those people don’t necessarily want the things that you want for yourself. And also trying to figure out an innovative way to get what I want in life.

So, okay, I wasn’t given this fair share, in my opinion. So what I [thought] was, all right, I’m not going to let that stop me. I’m going to be determined.

I’m going to literally try to give it my all. And that just formed within me, and I will say, when I applied three times to Clemson, that was another Maslyn: I was just going to ask you, low point, because I’m just like, “Am because no doubt, you have so much I really this uneducated?” energy and optimism, but there have got to be dips in the process. There So, changing my mindset, I really are these ways that you get out of started focusing on things that I it, but maybe you can talk a little bit could control. I’m naturally pretty more about the low points. Let’s say, high-energy, optimistic, and things maybe [there are] obstacles that are of that nature. It became contagious, out of your control, right? How do and then people along the way startyou tackle that? ed to also shape my perception on

62 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

things that were positive, and just continued to instill that confidence within me. And while people were doubting me, that was hard. I was just persistent; I was going to make this happen regardless. It was just wired in me. So I guess that just fuels me to really go after things.

Maslyn: I replied to you on LinkedIn because I saw that you had posted that you’re a design coach at Clemson.

I asked if you would be my design coach, and you said no, but that’s okay. [laughs] Jenkins: The design coaching is a new initiative that our department at Clemson put together, trying to help transition first-year students in landscape architecture. I was presented with this opportunity a few times in the summer, and I [thought], “How can I pay it forward and help people that are coming along in the same way I was?” Because growing up, I didn’t have these people in my life to give me that direction, to navigate through this whole design industry.

[The coaches] don’t know too much, but we still all have some significant understanding of the things that we’ve learned over our few years being in school, and it’s been just a really rewarding thing to see how the upcoming students are valuing what we’re saying. You probably can relate to this.

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FOREGROUND

/INTERVIEW

“WE AS A PROFESSION HAVEN’T REALLY ADDRESSED A WAY TO BE MORE INCLUSIVE.” —JAMIE MASLYN LARSON, ASLA

“Wow, these people are actually listen- Jenkins: I wanted to ask, what are ing to me. I have something credible some of the biggest challenges of and valuable to say. This is wild.” your role, and how do you harness your position to help others?

Maslyn: Sometimes, coaching on design is really hard. I did it quite a Maslyn: When you get to be 24 bit, and it can be really personal, or years into the profession, your role people might be trying to do some- changes. I used to be very hands-on thing different and new. It seems in making drawings, and details, like you have the kind of personality and all that stuff, and being on the where you try to draw out the best job site. One thing that has defiof what people are trying to get at. nitely shifted for me is trying to be somebody that’s setting the bar for Jenkins: I would say it’s a mixture other people to learn and grow, to be of all of those things. But I will say their own designers. I want to try to it definitely is something intuitive. find out what makes somebody tick I really look back on my insecuri- and bring out those strengths. So it ties and I start there. What was I requires a lot of time getting to know insecure [about] coming up? If it’s someone’s motivations and passions drawing, or sketches, or something and interests, and then trying to conlike that, I’ll try to figure out, “What nect that to a project. kind of line weights are you using?”

Because I know, I had one medium It seems pretty obvious that we, as a pencil that I was using. And just profession, haven’t really addressed changing those [things] and being or tackled a way to be more incluable to experiment really increased sive and have our industry reflect the and improved my work significantly. population that we’re serving. Do you have any advice for landscape archiMaslyn: It’s good advice. [There are] tects on being more welcoming and two things that I always recommend inviting to minorities, underserved that are sometimes not a part of de- communities, and other disadvansign process explicitly. One is just taged groups? playfulness and having fun, and that can be expressed in drawing, as you Jenkins: I think it’s something that said. The other thing is gestation— definitely should be talked about letting things rest. If you explore a more. That’s another thing that bunch of ideas, letting them rest, drives me, because I know I’m one let a little time pass, and let your for one, as a person. And that just subconscious do this work. speaks to me embracing that indi-

64 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

viduality, embracing that I’m unique and that I am significant.

I look at it as, there’s a big market for underrepresented groups, and not just from an economic perspective, but as far as how they need more people, besides myself and others that are trailblazing in different industries, to inspire people. So my suggestion for employers would be, don’t be apprehensive about giving opportunity to people [who] may not be that qualified, because you probably will be blown away with how they turn around your organization, or how they provide a dimension that you never thought you would get.

I think now is the time to get outside of your comfort zone and really make a substantial leap, or an effort, at least. You gave me the opportunity to let you know who I am and share some of my stories that could possibly inspire, or to even enhance your work that you’re doing. And it’s not a matter of hierarchy or position. I think it’s just a matter of having a humane approach to people and not going off of the news. Understand it for yourself and you’ll definitely be blown away.

JAMIE MASLYN LARSON, ASLA, IS A LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT AND PRINCIPAL AT LIONHEART PLACES IN AUSTIN, TEXAS, AND TUCSON, ARIZONA, AND A COFOUNDER OF WXLA.

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FOREGROUND

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GOODS MOVERS AND SHAKERS PARK EQUIPMENT FOR WORK AND PLAY.

COURTESY KRIVENS

BY EMILY DAVIDSON

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Bring the office outdoors with Boostershell’s line of solar-powered work space pods. The collection consists of single and two-occupant models that can be arranged to accommodate entire teams. Inside, a ventilation system and built-in speakers are included, and sliding windows open up to the pod’s exterior counter with additional seating.

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FOREGROUND

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ANNIVERSARY

FEATURES

BROOK MCILROY

SCOURING RUSH

Reconciliation projects in Canada embrace Indigenous knowledge, page 78.

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021 / 77

GOVERNMENT OF YUKON

78 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

PATHS FORWARD AS CANADA COMES TO TERMS WITH A BRUTAL COLONIAL LEGACY, TWO LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT– LED PLANS LIGHT THE WAY TOWARD RECONCILIATION.

BY KATHARINE LOGAN

ABOVE

NAOMI RATTE, INSET

Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in elders shared their stories at significant sites along the Top of the World Highway.

OPPOSITE

Tors and other rock formations were navigational markers for a people constantly walking the land.

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021 / 79

RIGHT

P OF TO

YUKON—CANADA

ALASKA—UNITED STATES

The plan proposes a range of site infrastructure and interpretation, including a downloadable app with narration by Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in elders.

LITTLE GOLD, YUKON

A

CROSS THE YUKON RIVER from Dawson City, up around 64 degrees latitude, the Top of the World Highway wends its way over 65 miles of unglaciated landscape to the border with Alaska. Unlike the Yukon Territory’s typical highways, which track the river valleys, Top of the World runs along a ridgeline. For hundreds of miles in all directions, travelers look out over forested valleys, subalpine meadows, distant mountain ranges, and spectacular vistas that comprise the traditional lands of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in people.

Long before Top of the World was graded and graveled and designated a territorial highway, Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in walked this path on seasonal journeys between the river and the mountains— hunting caribou, harvesting berries and wild rhubarb, gathering for celebrations, telling stories. When gold prospectors began arriving in the late 1890s, the leader of Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, Chief Isaac, growing concerned for the heritage

80 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

CANADA

DAWSON, YUKON

YUKON

THE WORLD HIG

HWAY

YUKO NR IVE

R

KO YU

GRAPHICS: NVISION INSIGHT GROUP; PHOTO: HEMIS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

N

RI VE R

DAWSON, YUKON

YUKON RIVER

INTERPRETIVE LOCATIONS FULL-SERVICE PULL-OUT AREAS SPECIAL PLACES POINTS OF INTEREST HIGHWAY INFORMATION

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021 / 81

LEFT

A collaborative process rooted in the local community’s history with the land.

ABOVE

Wild rhubarb is an important traditional food, high in vitamin C. OPPOSITE

of his people, entrusted their songs, dances, and gänhäk (dancing stick, a symbol of their culture) to a related branch of the larger Hän nation. Top of the World is the route along which this treasure was taken into the mountains for safekeeping.

More than 3,400 miles to the southeast, the traditional lands of the Saugeen First Nation form part of Ontario’s Mixedwood Plains Ecozone, once temperate deciduous forest, and now the most populous and commercially and industrially productive region in Canada. A three-hour drive from Toronto, at the base of the Bruce Peninsula (where a popular national park protects the re-

82 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

gion’s last unbroken stand of forest), the Saugeen River flows into the eastern edge of Lake Huron.

Upstream of the river mouth, in a 100-acre park on Saugeen First Nation’s reserve, a stone amphitheater and 20 acres of terraced gardens overlook the wide river valley. Built in the 1970s with nearly a million tons of locally quarried limestone, the project, known as the Creator’s Garden, was created as a place to foster understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.

As a setting for gatherings, ceremonies, music, and theater, the site welcomes thousands of visitors a year. But over the decades, it has fallen into disrepair.

NAOMI RATTE, TOP LEFT; WENDY SHEARER, ASLA, TOP RIGHT

The lemon-yellow taproot of Pedicularis lanata can be eaten raw or cooked and its stem boiled as a potherb.

NAOMI RATTE

These two landscape interventions—Top of the World and the Creator’s Garden—at different scales and in different bioregions, are each the subject of recent, landscape architect–guided master plans. Through both their substance and processes, these plans illustrate the potential for the profession to help heal the injustice and strife that stem from the colonial history of North America.

Developed in collaboration with local Indigenous communities, the Top of the World Highway Interpretive Plan, by NVision Insight Group with the cultural heritage specialist Wendy Shearer, ASLA, and the Saugeen First Nation Creator’s Garden and Amphitheatre Restoration Master Plan, by Brook McIlroy—both winners, in 2020 and 2021, respectively, of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects’ Award of

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021 / 83

RIGHT

Excellence—have created frameworks for shar- the sites of former residential schools has been ing the stories and meanings that imbue their described as Canada’s George Floyd moment, landscapes. In doing so, they exemplify a form bringing renewed urgency to calls for change. of reconciliation in action.

For reconciliation to occur, says the 2015 report, Reconciliation refers to the process of establishing there has to be awareness of the past, acknowland maintaining a mutually respectful relation- edgment of the harm that has been inflicted, ship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal atonement for the causes, and action to change peoples, according to the 2015 report of Canada’s behavior. The report’s 94 calls to action identify Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The com- some of the ways governments, faith groups, unimission was set up in 2008 to document the versities, media, and businesses can participate. effects of government-sponsored, church-run residential schools. Operating between the 1880s “Reconciliation from a non-Indigenous perspecand 1996 with the aim of educating, converting, tive is not, I believe, to make you feel guilty,” and assimilating Aboriginal youth, the schools says the landscape architect Chris Grosset, a severed more than 150,000 children from their non-Indigenous partner with NVision, a majority families, language, and culture. Compounding Indigenous-owned consulting firm that’s based this psychological and spiritual trauma, the chil- both in Canada’s capital, Ottawa, and in the northdren were often physically and sexually abused— ern city of Iqaluit (see “In the Hunt,” LAM, Januit’s estimated that more than 6,000 died—with ary 2019). “It’s to invite you to go on a journey impacts ricocheting down through the genera- of learning, and to do some self-reflection. The tions. The discovery this year of the remains of process is not to knock you down; it’s to lift us all more than 1,000 children in unmarked graves at up. But you have to be open to that.”

84 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

WENDY SHEARER, ASLA

From left to right: Wendy Shearer, ASLA, Chris Grosset, and Naomi Ratte beside existing signage that will be overhauled with the new plan.

RIGHT

The interpretive framework seeks to recognize and celebrate a shared heritage.

BELOW

NAOMI RATTE

Top of the World offers a window on the Yukon for residents and visitors alike.

The Top of the World Highway Interpretive Plan that NVision developed for the Government of Yukon (YG) aims to enrich local and visiting travelers’ experiences.

The hope is that fostering awareness and understanding of this spectacular drive and the landscape it traverses will provide a boost to the economic and cultural sectors of the region. The plan provides a framework for stories and messages,

interpretive media, design, and phased implementation.

In terms of reconciliation, a turning point arose early on, at the initial meeting with Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in leaders, when NVision introduced the YG’s template for highway interpretive plans. The template entailed identifying a series of themes and subthemes and introducing them at points

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021 / 85

SAUGEEN CREATOR’S GARDEN

along the route; First Nations’ history and presence on the land would typically be one such theme. But it quickly became apparent that the template wouldn’t fit this unique landscape and culture. “They said very clearly, ‘That’s not how Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in tell their stories,’” Grosset says. “‘That’s not our narrative.’”

shift once a contract is in place, with the advisory board including representation from Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, the Klondike Visitors Association, and the YG Department of Tourism and Culture, “they were right on board with it,” Grosset says.

“They recognized that this is what reconciliation in action looks like.”

TOP

Located in the heart of Saugeen territory, the Creator’s Garden is intended as a locus of cultural and economic renewal.

In response, NVision recommended rebuilding the project’s terms of reference. “You need to give a place for the First Nation to find their voice in the design, and to do it in their own time and their own way,” Grosset says. And while not every client has the flexibility to make such a

86 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

The project team—including Wendy Shearer and Indigenous MLA student Naomi Ratte (University of Manitoba), in addition to Grosset—drove the highway 10 times in three days in the company of Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in elders. Stopping at points along the way, the elders shared stories about

Overlooking the Saugeen River Valley from the amphitheater site.

BROOK MCILROY

ABOVE

“ RECONCILIATION FROM A NON-INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVE IS NOT TO MAKE YOU FEEL GUILTY. IT’S TO INVITE YOU TO GO ON A JOURNEY OF LEARNING.” —CHRIS GROSSET

the land and the animals, the river and the mountains, the journeys along the route, and the cycles of the year. “It takes time and patience for how we want to tell our story,” says Debbie Nagano, the heritage director with the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in government, “but the consultants were eager to understand. They knew that we are the holders of that information, and they listened to us in a respectful way.”

whenever possible) that provides cultural, historical, contemporary, or legendary context for a location or region. Evidence pertaining to each story—rock formations, geology, glacial history, or other landscape aspects that interpretive programs would typically start with—provides more detail.

For example, a panel about a distinctive tor might begin with a story about its use as a navigational marker for the people who constantly walked the land and then supply The resulting interpretive plan provides for information about its geology. “Much more a program that is narrative based. It starts than an interpretive plan for a highway, it’s with a story or quote (in the first person really rooted in a recognition of the local

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021 / 87

3

MEDICINE PLANTING: NATIVE ONTARIO SPECIES

4

MEDICINE PATH: INTERPRETIVE SIGNAGE WITH PLANT IDENTIFICATION AND CHILDREN’S STORYBOOK TRAIL

5

1

6

ACCESSIBLE DRY STONE RAMP AND VIEWING PLATFORM

BRIDGE OVER RAIN GARDEN

NATURE TRAIL ACCESS

RAINWATER FEATURE WITH REFLECTING POND CULTURAL GATHERING PLACE: ANCESTRAL TEACHING AND CEREMONIAL FIREPIT

RESTORED SPRING-FED WELL

8

BROOK MCILROY

2

7

88 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

9

MONUMENT TO MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN AND GIRLS 10

DRY STONE SIGN (EXISTING) 13

CHILDREN’S NATURE PLAY SPACE

15

16

COMMUNITY GATHERING CIRCLE WITH FIREPLACE (EXISTING)

THE CLEARING: OUTDOOR WEDDING VENUE, WINTER SKATING OVAL

WEDDING PAVILION

CULTURAL CENTER DRY STONE AND TIMBER BUILDING

EXISTING CHURCH

VISITOR CENTER

SEED COLLECTION/ STORAGE

14

STONE AMPHITHEATER

11

PERFORMANCE STAGE/ PLATFORM

17

ENTRANCE GARDENS: NATIVE MEADOW PLANTING AND TREES

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RIGHT

The Creator’s Garden master plan provides for incremental transformation within a holistic, ecological framework.

BELOW

community’s history and involvement with the ation has to be a tangible response in our work,” landscape,” Shearer says. he says, “but perhaps the most tangible thing is to empower the voice of the people and to respect In the end, many of the Indigenous influences what they say.” on the plan—the elder-led research process, the story-first paradigm, even the inspiration for the A multistranded theme of empowerment also program’s color palettes in the landscape and in runs through the Saugeen project. The amphiTr’ondëk Hwëch’in beading work—may not actu- theater and garden revitalization aims to support ally be legible to visitors. But Grosset’s okay with and celebrate the community’s cultural heritage that. “There’s a tendency to think that reconcili- while expanding the opportunities for economic

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BROOK MCILROY, THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE

Interpretive signage along the Medicine Path will inform visitors about Indigenous knowledge of plants.

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The Indigenous plant expert Joseph Pitawanakwat advised on opportunities for using traditional medicine plants in the landscape.

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Landscape architects at Brook McIlroy’s Toronto office worked closely with the firm’s fourmember, Winnipeg-based Indigenous Design Studio, which led the community engagement and concept design. “As a landscape architect who has been working for some time,” says Andrea Mantin, a senior associate at the firm, “it’s been wonderful to be learning something so different, and approaching landscape architecture through this new lens.”

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The project’s cultural adviser, the Saugeen elder Duke Redbird, describes the resulting master plan as integrating traditional and contemporary concepts to model ecological and design excellence. Based on a hierarchy of creation in which the Earth, rather than humanity, is primary, the Creator’s Garden will restore Indigenous plant knowledge and demonstrate heritage teachings.

For example, Redbird says, “older trees grew high and protected other plants—maple, walnut, beechnut. In that canopy was wisdom. The second canopy, fruit trees, are fragile in many cases, and yet they always bring in a harvest, which shows courage.” The different types of berry bush all grow together in a metaphor for respect. Abundant, nourishing food is seen as transparency and honesty. From the benign and poisonous plants of the forest carpet, “we learned about truth: how to separate fact from fiction and good from bad,”

ABOVE

A series of gathering places will interpret heritage teachings and accommodate celebrations.

OPPOSITE

Stone retaining walls throughout the steep site will be built by the First Nation’s certified masons.

BROOK MCILROY

growth. Extensive community engagement has resulted in a plan for a series of connected, accessible gardens for teaching and gathering and for new facilities, including a visitor center, wedding pavilion, and a seed repository. The amphitheater restoration and new stone walls are being executed by community members who have trained and certified as skilled drystone masons.

“ FOR US IT WAS IMPORTANT THAT ANY PROJECT WITH INDIGENOUS CONTENT BE LED BY INDIGENOUS DESIGNERS.” —CALVIN BROOK

BROOK MCILROY

Redbird says, while “all the food that’s available when we dig down to the earth to find roots and tubers teaches us humility. And when we see the vines and the ferns that run through the forest and embrace the other plants, that’s where we learn about love.” These ideas offer the potential for improved environmental decision making and the emergence of innovative, distinctive, and beneficent approaches to design, he says: “The project represents the best of Indigenous ways of being, brought together with modern technology and techniques.

It’s a blend that offers a new way of looking at the 21st century.”

The Indigenous Design Studio, led by the Indigenous architect Ryan Gorrie, is part of Brook McIlroy’s response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action. The firm is also the first design office to certify, at the Gold level, under the Progressive Aboriginal Relations (PAR) program of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business. “We recognized

an issue where non-Indigenous designers were being asked by clients to take Indigenous themes and interpret them through design,” says Calvin Brook, the firm’s cofounding principal. “This often led to tokenism, cultural appropriation, and a pan-Indigenous approach which overlooked the diversity of Indigenous cultures and worldviews. For us it was important that any project with Indigenous content be led by Indigenous designers.”

For those designers, Gorrie says, “it’s incredibly rewarding to design with communities who have shared history, culture, and languages. We are able to dive in more directly and begin in a place that is beyond the introductory.” This common foundation fosters trust and pride on both sides, he says. The design process provides a way for Indigenous designers to meaningfully connect with elders and knowledge keepers; to research and rediscover traditional cultures, placemaking practices, and worldviews; to redefine design processes; and to play a significant role in restoring Indigenous presence in the fabric of communities.

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LEFT AND BELOW

Work to complete the amphitheater and surrounding drystone walls is under way.

OPPOSITE

Brook McIlroy has considered the legitimacy of a non-Indigenous company integrating an Indigenous practice, and the question of whether only Indigenous-owned firms can truly empower Indigenous designers. Such firms in Canada are generally smaller practices and are estimated to number fewer than a dozen. “What we’re doing offers young Indigenous professionals an opportunity to work at a full range of scopes and scales within a larger multidisciplinary practice, without having to take on the risks and liabilities of owning a company— which is a substantial commitment, especially if you want to raise a family,” Brook says. Thinking seriously about how Indigenous and nonIndigenous professionals can collaborate in the same practice has been transformational, he says: “It means the practice has to be redesigned; the corporation has to be rethought. And that’s what the PAR certification process has helped us to do.

Thinking about reconciliation, we want to work together so all of us receive the benefits.”

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The Saugeen Creator’s Garden and amphitheater restoration and the Top of the World Highway interpretive program are now seeking funding to implement their master plans. For Saugeen, Redbird says, implementation “would carry us into the 21st century in a good way.” For Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, “it would mean that we’ve told our story and they’ve heard,” Nagano says. Elders have told Grosset the project could be one of the signs that it’s safe for their songs to return along that ancient path and reinhabit the land.

KATHARINE LOGAN IS AN ARCHITECTURALLY TRAINED WRITER ON DESIGN, SUSTAINABILITY, AND WELL-BEING BASED ON CANADA’S WEST COAST.

BROOK MCILROY, THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE

When restored, stone steps and paths will link native plant demonstration and teaching gardens.

RIGHT

Schüssinsel Park in Biel, Switzerland, is keeping time as part of an area’s evolution.

AN ISLAND PARK MAKES SPACE FOR LEISURE WHILE PROTECTING BIEL, SWITZERLAND, FROM RISING WATERS.

BY JESSICA BRIDGER

“I

says Massimo Fontana, the designer of Schüssinsel Park in Biel, Switzerland. He excitedly walks down a path created ad hoc by visitors to the inner-city public space, between the formal circulation paths and the riparian edge of the Schüss River.

The island-as-park was completed in 2017 and is now starting to grow into its use. “Anyone can say, ‘Let’s put this cool design element in the project,’ but I like to understand what is on site, to bring it up and emphasize it,” Fontana explains. This includes the evolution of the park, of parts kept intentionally primed for change wrought through use and user, time and growth.

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© SWITZERLAND TOURISM

LOVE TO SEE THIS,”

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Schüssinsel Park runs 650 meters (nearly half a mile) and is about 5.35 hectares (13.2 acres) in size. It is a park, between river and canal, but also an embankment flood protection measure for the neighborhood behind—and a generous new open space for one of Switzerland’s most unusual cities. Biel is also known as Bienne and is one of the only

true dual-language cities (57 percent German, 43 percent French, many bilingual) in a nation with four official languages. Biel straddles the so-called Röstigraben, or potato pancake trench, that supposedly divides Germanic-cultured Eastern Switzerland and Francophone-cultured Western Switzerland, named for a beloved food. About 56,000 people

FONTANA LANDSCHAFTSARCHITEKTUR/ROBERT ADAM

An astounding number of things go by as you sit at the entrance of the long linear park. Ducks. Hawks.

A teen Rollerblading in retro 1990s black armbands, octogenarians with scooters carrying groceries. Cargo bikes. Recumbent bikes. Electric bikes. Bicycle bikes. Teens on motorized skateboards, parents with multiple child strollers. Water. Time.

LEFT

The constructed island encourages rich interaction and growth along the Schüss River.

BELOW

The park stretches nearly half a mile in the center of the city.

call Biel home, hailing from more than 140 different countries. Every third person in Biel is a foreigner.

Everyone in Biel benefits from its lakefront open space—and from a spate of development bringing public spaces such as Schüssinsel Park into the heart of the city. In an era when public space did its own advertising during the pandemic,

the importance of parks could not residential area to the northeast of be clearer. the city center. Pathways and plantings woven into the topography The island of Schüssinsel Park is unite the program-rich areas. The isroughly divided into three program- land park connects to the surroundmatic areas: a connection to the in- ing area with six bridges and one set dustry and city in a path-rich area of stepping-stones. Schüssinsel Park that opens into meadow recreation, is not glamorous or trendy; rather it a woodland-to-be, and a large play- has a feeling of being essential. It ground and water area that abuts a provides valuable ecosystem services

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MASTER DRAWING GRADING

1

2

3 1 CHAPELLE NOUVEL BY JEAN NOUVEL 2 BUVETTE CAFÉ AND PLAZA AREA 3 RELAXATION MEADOW “BEACH” 4 WOODLAND AREA 5 PICNIC MEADOW 6 GRAVEL BEACH 7 PLAYGROUND

and is simply a nice place to play, to hang out, and to relax. The Schüss River (Suze in French) starts in the Jura Mountains and joins Lake Biel, and the park is an important part of a long-term project to create a green connection between the start of the Schüss in Taubenloch Gorge and Lake Biel. Official yellow walking and hiking signs link the local visual language and signage of the park with the national-level signage present throughout Switzerland.

transform it into an island-cumembankment. The island abuts new residential development and a new campus for the Swatch Group on one side. The opposite side of the river, still bounded by mixed industry, was cleverly drawn on the plans though technically not in the scope of the project. Its riparian edge feels as if it could be part of the park, extending the green impact of the project, and its desire line pathway mirrors those on the island itself.

“The big early realization was that this is a project about water,” Fontana says. This realization took the park beyond a river edge and helped

The island park started as the Mühleinsel, a small island that dates back to Roman times: Artifacts were found on site. “If you dig in Swit-

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zerland, you’re going to find something,” Fontana says, admitting with some relief that the finds did not delay work considerably. By extending the island to become the park, the water element was fully integrated, breaking down the fully channelized Schüss into a gentler form. Working with the hydrologists Emch+Berger, Fontana established a flood protection barrier keyed to the 100-year flood line. While recent years have seen record low levels of rainfall and correspondingly low river levels—in 2018 ship traffic on the Rhine almost ground to a halt during a nearly rainless summer—the general trend is toward more frequent and intensive

FONTANA LANDSCHAFTSARCHITEKTUR

8 TOILETS AND CANAL CONTROLS

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7 5

4

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storms, ones that could make the normally sedate Schüss rise up to five meters. In Switzerland many rivers begin in the mountains, where alpine meltwater and violent storms make for wild rivers that live out lives channelized but not completely tamed by the human hand.

A flood control canal runs down the opposite side of the park island, based on what was the existing Stebler Canal industrial infrastructure.

As people enter the park from the west, they pass over the floodgate where the Stebler Canal flows into the Schüss River, complete with a functional waterwheel, echoing its

industrial past. This is the most urban zone of the park, and the Buvette, a café kiosk, was an important addition. “I was very clear that we needed to have it as a focal point, a place where people could congregate,” Fontana says. The model is from Basel, where the many buvette riverside casual cafés lend a convivial air—and ample snacks. At Schüssinsel the Buvette is housed in a green metal trapezoid designed by :mlzd, the Biel architecture office that led the urban design of the surrounding area. A small plaza-like area is complete with a fountain— used for drinking like any fountain with brass fixtures is throughout

Switzerland—along with café seating and bike parking. An inverted U-shaped chapel designed by the architect Jean Nouvel in rust-colored steel sits across from the Buvette.

This is a remnant of the 2002 national exposition Swiss Expo.02, which was present on the site before construction and is now repurposed as a multifunctional space.

Across from the program-heavy area, an expansive wild lawn slopes down to the Schüss. The lawn furniture dates from Fontana’s time at Zulauf, Seippel, Schweingruber Landscape Architects, working on Oerliker Park. Appointed to design interesting

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2010

TOP

The industrial and residential area, seen here in 2010, was slated for significant change.

BOTTOM

2019

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GOOGLE EARTH

By 2019, the urban transformation included new Swatch Group buildings, residential development—and Schüssinsel Park.

RIGHT

A large model helped all stakeholders understand the spatial conditions of the park-to-be.

BELOW

Significant hydrological and topographical changes enabled the new island park to take shape.

FONTANA LANDSCHAFTSARCHITEKTUR/ROBERT ADAM

PATHS WEAVE INTO THE LANDFORMS AND PLANTED AREAS, SINUOUS AND FULL OF RIVERINE ENERGY. seating from a municipally available kit of parts, Fontana came up with outsized reclining loungers, along with picnic tables and seating benches, all in untreated larch wood and metal tubing. On a late spring afternoon, sunbathers, readers, and one large family gathered for a picnic sprawled on the loungers.

Switzerland means grasses and flowers erupting in successive blooms, and this is often lost in the cities where manicuring and pavements preside. Schüssinsel has this wildness at the riverbanks where the riparian is expected and quick to sprout, but also throughout the project where the landscape is allowed to evolve.

There’s a wildness in the lawn and meadow areas. The initial seed mix is starting to transition as volunteer grasses and forbs move in. Spring in

A scattering of trees dots the sun meadow, thickening into the second zone of the park, a grove-to-be in the middle section of the island.

The majority of the planting in the project is native. The grove has small-leaved lime, English oak, and alder amid high grasses and forbs.

The trees are young and grow independently, but over time they will become a unit as their canopies join above the paths and island edges.

The paths weave into the landforms and planted areas, sinuous and full of riverine energy, echoes of a freely flowing watercourse. All of the paths are made from decomposed granite, which was enriched with cactus

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The final zone of playground and picnic lawn with wading beach is emphatic in its embrace of fun and exploration. The picnic lawn is quiet, and set into a stand of trees that could be saved—many were removed to repair the ecological function of the area and create the embankment— and as a result deep shade and a feeling of the potential of finding a private corner reign. The playground is

untreated Robinia tree trunks rising up like the ghost trees of an extremely cheerful swamp. These are connected by play equipment and textile “sun sails” for shade. The ground rises in places to make walls for sitting or climbing. A diverse group of kids plays in the playground with parents ringing the outer reaches—it is apparent that a wide range of Biel’s international population uses the park.

FONTANA LANDSCHAFTSARCHITEKTUR/ROBERT ADAM

fibers to increase its water absorption capacity—appropriate for an embankment island park designed to accommodate varying water levels. In this zone one of the bridges connects to a large elderly care complex area, and the park has become a well-used and beloved place for residents to sit or stroll. The park was designed with accessibility and a broad range of visitors in mind.

WATER LEVELS

LOW WATER LEVEL

MEAN WATER LEVEL

HIGH WATER LEVEL

FONTANA LANDSCHAFTSARCHITEKTUR

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Plantings of moisture-friendly ash, swamp cypress, and pecan anticipate the “wet feet” from the fluctuating water levels. There are options for programmed and free play, and kids flow seamlessly between the two, chasing wildlife and each other.

beach at the eastern edge of the Schüssinsel. Here the landscape slopes gently down to a gravel edge where the river idly flows over, with the grading ensuring a wide swath of shallow, play-friendly water. A child floats a red plastic boat in the Schüss River as adults dip their feet in the This water reconnection is present bracingly cold current. The main cirthroughout the project, but nowhere culation path traces the top of the so poignantly than at the bank-as- embankment. Two more green metal

structures are at the midpoint and eastern end of the park, designed in green metal rhomboid forms by :mlzd. The metal structures contain public toilets and a technical room for water control mechanisms. Schüssinsel is functional in a contemporary, pragmatic way—even as the romantic landscape notions of change and temporality sprout up everywhere.

ABOVE

The park is also an embankment, flexible to high water with the central path always above the flood line.

OPPOSITE

Schüssinsel Park establishes a new wild place in the center of Biel.

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RIGHT

More than 650 new trees and shrubs layer with volunteer and riparian plants to create a rich landscape that evolves over time.

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FONTANA LANDSCHAFTSARCHITEKTUR, TOP; FONTANA LANDSCHAFTSARCHITEKTUR/ROBERT ADAM, BOTTOM

PLANTING CONCEPT TREES

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TREES IN THE PARK AND ON THE NORTH BANK OF THE SCHÜSS RIVER

Acer platanoides (Norway maple)

Juglans regia (English walnut)

Tilia cordata (Winter linden)

Acer pseudoplatanus (Sycamore maple)

Pinus sylvestris (Common pine)

Ulmus laevis (White elm)

Alnus glutinosa (Black alder)

Populus tremula (Quaking aspen)

Carpinus betulus (Hornbeam)

Prunus avium ‘Plena’ (Bird cherry)

TREES ON THE SOUTH BANK OF THE SCHÜSS RIVER

Carya illinoinensis (Pecan)

Prunus padus (Grape cherry)

Populus alba (White poplar)

Celtis australis (Southern hackberry)

Quercus robur (English oak)

Populus nigra (Black poplar)

Fraxinus excelsior (Common ash)

Salix sepulcralis ‘Chrysocoma’ (Weeping willow)

Populus nigra ‘Italica’ (Pyramid poplar)

Gleditsia triacanthos (Honey Locust)

Sophora japonica (Japanese pagoda tree)

Salix alba (White willow)

Gymnocladus dioicus (Antler tree)

Taxodium distichum (Bald cypress)

The majority of significant projects with public components in Switzerland are awarded to designers through a competition and public tender system. Schüssinsel Park is part of an urban zone made up of the Gurzelen, Gygax, and Omega areas and is a major part of a longrange plan for city redevelopment and revitalization in Biel, with new housing, an expanded school, jobs, and public amenities. In 2008, :mlzd won the tender for the urban design

of the area around Schüssinsel Park, and Fontana Landschaftsarchitektur was appointed landscape architect on the project in 2010. The strongest urban nodes in Biel are the Lake Biel waterfront and old town/commercial center close by; the area around Schüssinsel is residential and industrial. There are small-scale factories, workshops, and warehouses, along with apartments of low- and middleincome residents. Schüssinsel Park is a new node for this developing area.

Fontana developed the landscape design following acceptance of the general conceptual plan by the city planning office. As part of the approvals process, the office departed from the normal drawing-reliant methods. Instead, Fontana built a large foam core, modeling sand, and pressed cardboard model, measuring about 3.5 meters (about 11 and a half feet) so everyone involved could begin to get a feeling for the spatial realities of the park-to-be.

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PARK SECTIONS

SECTION A

SECTION B

SECTION D

FONTANA LANDSCHAFTSARCHITEKTUR

SECTION E

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LEFT

Careful tuning of the island topography, program, and planting provides human-scale variety with urbanscale impact.

AN EVEN BALANCE OF CUT AND FILL CREATED A DRAMATIC RECONFIGURATION OF RIVERBANK AND ISLAND. Fontana Landschaftsarchitektur was founded in 2008 in Basel. Massimo Fontana was apprenticed first as a landscape gardener then followed with a degree from the Rapperswil University of Applied Sciences, including a stint abroad at Louisiana State University. The office is known for high-quality projects at various scales, ones that demonstrate Fontana’s commitment to letting the landscape evolve in whatever form, be that the (semi) temporary park Klybeckquai on former port land in Basel or geologically permanent work in Biel. With an eye toward an even balance of cut and fill creating a dramatic reconfiguration of riverbank and island, planting more than 650 trees and shrubs, and the hydrological need to place gigantic boulders in the Schüss River, it is clear that a park

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CARE AND MAINTENANCE CONCEPT PLAN

PERIMETER RENATURATION SCHÜSS RIVER

EXTENSIVE TURF

MAINTENANCE PERIMETER

PRAIRIE EXTENSIVE

BICYCLE RACKS

GRASSES

STOP POLE

REEDS

MANUAL STOP TERMINAL

RIPARIAN VEGETATION

AUTOMATIC STOP BOLLARD

CANARY GRASS/FALSE REEDS

LOUNGE CHAIR/TABLE

SOFTWOOD RIPARIAN

BENCH

WILD HEDGES

TRASH CAN

HEDGE PLANTING

FOUNTAIN

GRAVEL SHORE

TABLE TENNIS

WATER

INFORMATION PANEL

WINTER SERVICE

WOODEN MASTS (PLAYGROUND)

PLAY SAND

STEPPING-STONES

SAFETY SURFACE

SHORELINE PROTECTION MEASURES

STABILIZER (GRAVEL WITH ORGANIC BINDING AGENT)

ERRATIC BLOCK

WOODEN BRIDGE

SLIDE

CONCRETE POURED IN PLACE

EXISTING TREE

NAIL AERATED CONCRETE

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FONTANA LANDSCHAFTSARCHITEKTUR, TOP; FONTANA LANDSCHAFTSARCHITEKTUR/ROBERT ADAM, BOTTOM

LEGEND

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built over Roman remains will stay in place for a long passage of time.

The generously scaled park was almost not to be, save in 2006 when the city planning department came up with a plan to adjust and swap development parcels to win the long riverside public space, allow developers the construction of new apartments, and facilitate an expansion

by Swatch. This plan was approved by public vote in 2008. Jobs in Biel are sorely needed. The city has long had one of the highest percentages of social assistance recipients in Switzerland, coupled with an unemployment rate consistently above the Swiss average. A new Swatch Group headquarters building and daughter brand Omega Museum, branded as the “Cité du Temps,” created new

LEFT

The main path connects the park with regional biking and hiking trails—and reinforces an important commuter artery in the city.

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LEFT

Kids have their own space for growth and development in a free-flowing tree trunk wonderland.

RIGHT

jobs. Both also further anchor Gurzelen development and strengthen the accessible public face of the multinational hometown company.

in informal, creative, and alternative activity, and Biel is now known for offering relative affordability and a progressive, positive future.

Biel was once a major center for Swiss watchmakers and is recognized for this with UNESCO World Heritage Site status. However, heritage does not trump modern tastes for cheap timepieces, and in the late 1970s and early 1980s the traditional mechanical watch industry collapsed with the rise of inexpensive quartz timepieces, taking many jobs in Biel down with it.

Recovery has come in fits and starts in Biel. In the shadow of this economic reality there has been growth

The up and down fortunes of Biel following clockwork boom-and-bust are obvious at Schüssinsel Park.

From the near collapse of the Swiss watch industry, the Swatch company was born in 1983, led by CEO Nicolas Hayek. The inexpensive quartz crystal watches proliferated around the world, just as the company consolidated traditional mechanical watchmakers under its umbrella, including Omega, Longines, and Blancpain. The showpiece of the

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JESSICA BRIDGER, LEFT; FONTANA LANDSCHAFTSARCHITEKTUR/ROBERT ADAM, RIGHT

The picnic meadow offers deep shade for the many nearby residents in one of Switzerland’s most diverse cities.

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All ages are accommodated at Schüssinsel Park—ample seating and bridges offer respite and escape from the everyday.

OPPOSITE

Untreated wood weathers as time goes by, and the city park grows into its prime.

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FONTANA LANDSCHAFTSARCHITEKTUR/ROBERT ADAM

ABOVE

JESSICA BRIDGER, RIGHT

new Swatch development was designed by Shigeru Ban, completed in 2019, and is located at the eastern end of the park. The new face of Swatch in Biel is set in a landscape designed by Fontana to complement Schüssinsel Park. While a security fence separates the property, the design flows seamlessly down to the main street where Lebanon cedars stand tall outside of Lebanese-SwissAmerican Hayek’s industry salvaging and still-family-owned company.

Fontana was awarded the private project following the success of Schüssinsel Park.

The total cost of Schüssinsel Park was just over 15.2 million Swiss francs (about US $16.8 million).

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EVEN A NEIGHBORHOOD PARK CAN BE EXEMPLARY. RIGHT

Swapping the land parcel ownership was accomplished through barter— and the Swatch Group purchased land from the city, netting revenues of approximately 7.6 million Swiss francs for construction. The avowedly excellent design, the creation of city center public space at a significant scale, and the creative land and financing model led to the project earning the coveted Flâneur d’Or award in 2017. The park was also recognized with a “goldenen Hasen” (Golden Rabbit) from the Swiss architecture magazine Hochparterre in 2017. Even a neighborhood park can be exemplary, a marker of changing times and hope for the future of a complex city.

JESSICA BRIDGER IS A WRITER AND URBANIST.

Project Credits CLIENT CITY OF BIEL, SWITZERLAND. DESIGNER FONTANA LANDSCHAFTSARCHITEKTUR, BASEL, SWITZERLAND. HYDROLOGY EMCH+BERGER AG, BIEL, SWITZERLAND. ECOLOGY LANDSCHAFTSWERK BIEL-SEELAND, BIEL, SWITZERLAND. PAVILIONS AND BRIDGES :MLZD, BIEL, SWITZERLAND. ENGINEERS TSCHOPP INGENIEURE, BERN, SWITZERLAND.

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FONTANA LANDSCHAFTSARCHITEKTUR/ROBERT ADAM

The ecological benefit of the park marks time for all urban life, as a new feature of Biel’s urban environment.

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THE BACK

LAND ART: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURES

September–November 2021 Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada, and online The Nevada Museum of Art comes roaring back with its signature event, the triennial 2021 Art + Environment Season, Land Art: Past, Present, Futures. Embracing the new hybrid models of both virtual and in-person programming, the museum leans into its nationally significant collection of land art archives for a diverse multimonth program that expands the issues and definition of land well beyond its early, masculinist oeuvre. At the museum galleries are five exhibitions of work that include Disturbances in the Field: Art in the High Desert from Andrea Zittel’s A-Z West to High Desert Test Sites (CA Truck Heads, Sarah Vanderlip, is shown here); Judy Chicago: Dry Ice, Smoke, and Fireworks Archive; and Gianfranco Gorgoni: Land Art Photographs, which will also be published as a monograph by the Monacelli Press in the fall. Three months of virtual programming include panels with artists on overlooked contributions to land art by women and Indigenous artists, and future trajectories.

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ADVANCEMENTS IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CREATIVITY SHOULD MAKE US RETHINK THE FUTURE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE PRACTICE. MARKUS BUEHLER AND ISABELLE SU

BY PHILLIP FERNBERG, ASSOCIATE ASLA, AND BRENT CHAMBERLAIN

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I

f you were to thumb through old issues of Science magazine, once you hit 1967 you would come across an obscure article coauthored by Allen Newell, an esteemed pioneer of artificial intelligence research, arguing for the validity of a new discipline called computer science. In the article, Newell and

his colleagues Alan J. Perlis and Herbert A. Simon address some fundamental objections within academia to the idea that the study of computers was, in fact, a science or even a worthwhile pursuit. The questions are simple but fundamental: Is there such a thing as computer science? If so, what is it?

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An overlay of 3-D-printed spider webs, from an AIassisted project at MIT to analyze and interpret the “language of spiders” from vibrations they use to navigate.

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Is it not just a branch of some other discipline like engineering, mathematics, electronics, etc.?

Isn’t it just the study of algorithms rather than computers?

“The term ‘computer’ is not well defined, and its meaning will change with new developments, hence computer science does not have a well-defined subject matter.” The authors’ reply is astute and resonant: “The phenomena of all sciences change over time; the process of understanding assures that this will be the case. Astronomy did not originally include the study of interstellar gases; physics did not include radioactivity; psychology did not include the study of animal behavior.

Mathematics was once defined as the ‘science of quantity.’” So too is the phenomenon of landscape architecture; it just happens to work on an accelerated timeline. The field is ever shifting, retooling, and reassessing our place as our understanding of our medium and our instruments evolves. Before Olmsted, landscapes were gardens rather than systems; before Ian McHarg’s Design with Nature, those systems were not intertwined with ecology; before CAD, GIS, or Adobe, our only tools were pen and paper.

As you read the objections and their respective responses, you might begin to think as we did about the similar line of questioning that has been employed in landscape architecture. Substitute the computer speak with our own professional jargon and you have near carbon copies of themes from licensure advocacy meetings, ASLA conferences, or academic treatises on the state of the discipline. Computer science and landscape architecture have a surprising amount in common. They are both relatively new (at least in the official sense), they have both evolved in significant ways over the past century, and they both have been in an ongoing existential discussion about their position amid peer disciplines. This is nice to know Landscape architecture is in one of those shifts now. Alongside the social and ecologibut not revelatory. cal issues changing paradigms of practice, the Yet the intersection gets more interesting. field is in the midst of another great technoOne of the objections in the article states: logical leap. But it’s not happening in the

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PHILLIP FERNBERG, ASSOCIATE ASLA, AND BRENT CHAMBERLAIN

AI IN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

way you might think. Most readers of designcentric news can probably guess the usual suspects of our perceived landscape-tech revolution. New computational approaches like BIM and parametricism are gaining traction, drones are becoming a go-to office tool for collecting site data, virtual and augmented reality walk-throughs are starting to show up on RFPs, and adoption of stillmultiplying design software programs or plug-ins is rising precipitously. These innovations are all fascinating, but maybe not the new sliced bread for anyone who experienced the pivot to computer-aided design (CAD) or the algorithmic designs trickling over from architecture in the 1990s and early 2000s.

To us, these are pieces of a larger technofuturist puzzle that weaves together computer science, psychology, and design—one driven

by a more profound technology: artificial intelligence (AI).

It is no secret that AI has pervaded the AEC industry; landscape architecture is no exception. But what is perhaps less obvious, or at least underestimated, is the extent to which it has changed and will be changing the way we practice in the near future. Past discussions of AI in landscape architecture have mostly focused on AI-driven tools such as SWA’s Darkflow or the automated ecology of Bradley Cantrell, ASLA, and his colleagues.

Even since LAM last published about these (see “Live and Learn,” LAM, February 2019), new advances in AI or AI-adjacent statistical learning applications have sprung up to assist with anything from site inventory, reuse of construction materials, and urban

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The authors’ conceptualization of future AI integration into landscape practice.

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THE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE FIELD IS IN THE MIDST OF ANOTHER GREAT TECHNOLOGICAL LEAP. BUT IT’S NOT HAPPENING IN THE WAY YOU MIGHT THINK. 124 / LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE AUG 2021

design to terrain modeling, planting design, autonomous construction, and measuring emotional responses to the built environment. This is a trend worth paying attention to. But we want to go a little beyond the tools and reflect on how the coming ubiquity of intelligent systems in the profession necessitates a rethinking of the creative acts we hold so dear as designers and even the idea of creativity itself.

One of the things that makes the idea of artificial intelligence so elusive is the way we constantly shift the baseline for what counts as “thinking” or “intelligence.” As the AI historian Pamela McCorduck states in her book Machines Who Think, “It’s part of the history of the field of artificial intelligence that every time somebody figured out how to make a computer do something—play good checkers, solve simple but relatively informal problems—there was a chorus of critics to say, ‘That’s not thinking.’” Such reactions, she writes, created an odd paradox where “computational programs that actually achieved intelligent behavior were soon assimilated into whatever application domain they were found to be useful in, and became silent partners alongside other problem-solving

approaches,” and promptly considered mere computation rather than intelligence. The esteemed computer scientist Larry Tesler had a great aphorism for this AI effect: “Intelligence is whatever machines haven’t done yet.”

Something a machine (or even an animal) can conceivably do can’t possibly be intelligent behavior because human intelligence is unique and too complex to be replicated. Perhaps the most famous example of the AI effect in recent memory is the 1997 chess match where IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue beat the world champion Garry Kasparov and was almost immediately accused of cheating on the part of the developers, then delegitimized for using brute force (pure computational power) rather than real intelligence, then dismissed as sheer luck.

There are a number of reasonable explanations for why we constantly move the goalposts for intelligent behavior. One is that we haven’t totally decided on a definition of human intelligence and that such advances in computation help us refine that definition. After all, the idea that Deep Blue beat Kasparov by brute force is not wrong. Chess is a game of strategy based off a vast but finite number of possible paths to victory with a

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