Zina Fraser Portfolio by Zina Fraser

Zina Fraser Portfolio 2024 MLA 2023, Harvard GSD B.A. Arch. 2019, University of Toronto

CV ACADEMIC 2

Growing Together: Human and Ecological Healing in Therapeutic Landscapes

The Nourishing City: Food Sovereignty for Newmarket Square, Boston

Decay or Growth? A Cyclical Future for the American Cemetery

Climate Grief: Reconceptualizing the Future

PROFESSIONAL 29

University of Hanoi Campus, Vietnam / BASE Paysagiste, Paris

Guildwood GO Station, Toronto / Elias +, Toronto

PERSONAL 32

Graphic Design

ACADEMICS

EXPERIENCE

Harvard Graduate School of Design

Graduate Landscape Architect

Master of Landscape Architecture, 2023

Townshend Landscape Architects, London, August 2023-Present

University of Toronto Daniels School of Architecture B.A. in Architectural Studies, minors in French Literature and Environmental Geography

Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto Scholar-in-Residence, May 2019 Worked with Professor Christy Anderson to investigate the relationship between maritime architecture and power in the Early Tudor period.

University of Helsinki Intensive Summer Course on Gentrification (2018)

Working with a team to help create design options for a corporate roof terrace and public space using hand sketching and Photoshop, and creating client presentations to explain and advocate for design decisions. Creating and revising construction details using Revit and AutoCAD.

Archeological Field Artist Harvard University Dig Site at Falerii Novi Ancient City, Italy, July 2023 Created measured sketches of the walls surrounding an ancient Filiscan city that was conquered by the Romans in 241 BC. My role was to help archaeologists understand how the unit of the Roman block was incorporated into existing landscapes and sacred sites in order to better understand contemporary reactions and resistance to Roman imperialism.

Peer Mentor

SKILLS Adobe Suite AutoCAD Rhinoceros 3D

Revit ArcGIS Lumion

PUBLICATIONS Landmarks Journal U of Toronto Undergraduate Geography Journal Contributed article “An Enclave Left Behind: Koreatown for Whom?”, available at https://landmarksjournal.geog.utoronto. ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Fraser-2019Koreatown-for-Whom.pdf

Harvard Graduate School of Design 2022-2023

AWARDS

Michael Cunningham Travel Fellow Hart Howerton Architects, New York, Summer 2022

Harvard Graduate School of Design, 2020-2023

Spent two months in residence at Hart Howerton helping with their design projects. Travelled to Prince Edward Island, Canada for three weeks to study the impacts of coastal erosion on communities. Presented research findings to the firm.

Graduate Award of Academic Merit

Council of Student Sustainability Leaders

University of Toronto Daniels Faculty of Architecture

Harvard Office for Sustainability, 2020-2023

Award for Outstanding Academic Performance

Landscape Architecture and Teaching Intern

University of Toronto Deparment of Geography

Elias + Landscape Architecture, Toronto, Jan-June 2020

Deckhand on a Tall Ship

Dean’s List Scholar

Worked with the office’s principal to translate concepts into design and construction drawings. Assisted with project admin. Helped research and administrate a course about women in architecture at the University of Toronto.

Rainbow Day Camp, Guelph, ON, Summer 2016

Dean’s Merit Full-Tuition Scholarship

University of Toronto, 2016, 2018, 2019

President’s Entrance Scholar

Landscape Architecture Intern

University of Toronto, 2015

BASE Paysagiste, Paris, France, Oct-Dec 2019

Kiwanis Strings Scholarships

Helped draft a master plan of the University of Hanoi campus in AutoCAD, and researched the drought- and flood-tolerant plants that were selected. Helped create renderings for a design competition.

2011, 2013, 2014

OTHER First Violinist Harvard GSAS Orchestra, 2022-2023

Gallery Attendant Banksy Exhibit, Toronto, Summer 2018

Great Lakes Schooner Company, Toronto, Summer 2017

Special Needs Inclusion Counsellor

Rowing Team John F. Ross C.V.I., 2012-2013

ZINA FRASER CV 1

GROWING TOGETHER Human and Ecological Healing in Therapeutic Landscapes

Fall 2022, GSD Landscape Option Studio, Advised by Gina Ford and Anyeley Hallova

and understands that offenders have often been harmed themselves. This approach involves helping youth heal from their personal traumas.

Brief: This option studio course asked students to reimagine the landscape of Parrot Creek, an 80acre residential treatment center for incarcerated youth, through the lens of Trauma-Informed Design. Our work was also informed by a sequence of virtual community engagement meetings.

I propose that in order to connect these journeys, human and non-human healing must be understood as interwined. My framework plan brings fire ecology back to the landscape through a mosaic of controlled burns. The burns are staggered so that all stages of succession are present onsite at any given time, supporting biodiversity and setting the stage for a fire ecology co-op program that the youth can enter at any time.

Project Description: Parrot Creek Child and Family Services sits on a forested site in Clackamas County, Oregon. The therapeutic center was established in 1968 with the goal of preventing youth from becoming re-incarcerated as adults. My proposal began with understanding the overlapping journeys happening on the site. The regional landscape is gradually being restored to its native fire ecology, which supports biodiversity and resilience. As an institution, Parrot Creek is working toward a more equitable justice system by using a restorative justice approach, which focuses on healing communities from harm

The variety of spatial conditions created by the fire mosaic align with the youths’ need for both open and closed-feeling spaces, and a network of pathways to programmed spaces respond to the youths’ desire for opportunities to move through the landscape. Like the meadows and forests, who become strong again after each fire, Parrot Creek becomes a place where crisis is the beginning of the healing story, not the end.

LANDSCAPE JOURNEY BACK TO FIRE ECOLOGY

INSTITUTIONAL JOURNEY TO RESTORATIVE JUSTICE 3

grassland burn areas

woodland burn areas

FIRE MOSAIC AS FRAMEWORK 4

Bi-lateral stimulation calms the nervous system

Experiencing post-fire superbloom as a group

Exploring the charred landscape together

surviving the crisis

stabilization and safety calming the body’s state of hyperarousal

TRAUMA HEALING PROCESS

sudden impact of traumatic event

integration and reconnection rebuilding identity and reconnecting with community mourning and remembrance processing and finding meaning

Experiencing and supporting the landscape’s regeneration could help youth find meaning in their own journeys

Sources: The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk; “The Stages of Trauma and Recovery”, Clarity Therapy NYC; graphic adapted from “Phases of Collective Trauma Response”, Institute for Collective Trauma and Growth

HUMAN & NON-HUMAN HEALING Fire Ecology & Restorative Justice Interwined

FLYING SQUIRREL-INSPIRED SPACE

SALMON-INSPIRED SPACE 8

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT SYNTHESIS

NOURISHING CITY Food Sovereignty for Newmarket Square, Boston

Spring 2022, GSD Core IV Studio, Rose Monacella

as citizens participate in compost creation and elect to contribute part of their yard to create biodiversity corridors. Seed banks become important community hubs.

Brief: This core studio asked students to create a kit of parts for the near-future city and test them in a series of urban assemblages on sites in Boston.

The driving force of Nourishing City is a land ownership structure that gives power to the community. A city-level land trust manages the Federal Community Cultivation and Biodiversity Fund as part of the Green New Deal to pay public works teams. A neighborhood-level land trust manages composting and biodiversity corridors.

Project Description: Nourishing City explores a future shift in Newmarket Square from using land to distribute food from other places toward using that land itself for agriculture to establish food sovereignty. White the site is currently embedded in a harmful global food system with unjust labor practices and significant environmental impact, this project imagines a future in which half of all food consumed in Boston is grown in place. Agricultural land, warehouses-turned green houses, and soil creation infrastructure (pine groves and compost windrows) produce fresh fruit and vegetables that are gathered and distributed from existing distribution centers throughout the growing season. The residential home transforms

Finally, a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) system at the block level manages a seed bank and runs farming operations. The CSA works by allowing residents to buy a share of farming operations at the beginning of the growing season, and every week they receive a share of the harvest. The Nourishing City is a place where nutrition is accessible and secure, green space is abundant, and the community is strong and powerful.

Existing: Homogenous Global System

Proposed: Local System with Seasonal Diversity

CITY LAND TRUST Managing federal funding, maintaining citywide infrastructure

MULTI-BLOCK CSA Tending to crops in works teams, buying into Community Supported Agriculture groups

NEIGHBOURHOOD LAND TRUST Coordinating harvest, maintaining backyard biodiversity corridors

AGRICULTURAL LAND

DRIP IRRIGATION SYSTEM

FALLOW LAND

INTER CROPPING

water for irrigation

fresh produce

SEED BANK

SWALE BUFFER SYSTEM

RESIDENTIAL KITCHEN

SHARED HARVEST/ DISTRIBUTION CENTRE

BACKYARD COMPOST

BACKYARD NETWORK

food waste

fresh + canned produce

composted food

LUMBERYARD

PINE GROVES FOR SOIL CREATION harvested pines

COMPOST WINDROWS stripped bark

GREENHOUSES

ELECTRIC TRUCK RECHARGE

soil medium

CULTIVATION INFRASTRUCTURE

KIT OF PARTS FOR URBAN FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE BLUE INFRASTRUCTURE

a) elementary school b) seed bank

crop grouping 1 crop grouping 2 fallow biodiversity corridor roadside bioswale productive growth existing trees greenhouse temporary clearing

agricultural fields

biodiversity corridor

seed bank

roadside buffer

ASSEMBLING PARTS: GROWING FOOD + BACKYARD BIODIVERSITY

winter produce flow summer produce flow clearing biodiversity corridor

compost windrows

lumber yard

harvest center

roadside bioswale

greenhouse

productive growth

canning center

existing trees

greenhouse

ASSEMBLING PARTS: CREATING SOIL + SHARING FOOD

pine grove

DECAY OR GROWTH? A Cyclical Future for the American Cemetery

Spring 2021, GSD Core II Studio, Paola Sturla Brief: This second semester core studio asked students to reimagine Boston’s Franklin Park as burial space in the context of a crisis in availability of interment space in the US. Project Description: In nature, growth and decay are intertwined. However, North Americans tend to resist this idea in their attitudes toward death. Upon the death of a loved one, a family will purchase a “permanent” plot and the gravesite is expected to remain as it was on the painful day of interment – mown grass and a heavy stone marker. However, the process of grief is dynamic: mourners move through a series of non-linear stages over time. This proposal mobilizes processes of change in the landscape to create a cyclical forest burial program that grows and changes alongside mourners as they move toward acceptance and hope, ultimately ending with the re-use of the plot: a new beginning. The

site becomes a tool to persuade the public that gravesite re-use is the solution to Boston’s critical shortage of burial space. Within the proposed site, fourteen smaller areas are rotated through for natural burial. Every three years, a new area opens for interments and the previously used area is closed and planted with Trembling Aspen. Each site is cleared and re-used thirty years after its opening, long after the body has returned to the Earth. Two additional sites are reserved for ash graves and planted with Paper Birch, rotating every five years and re-used every ten. Interment groves are enclosed by fruiting shrubs, attracting birds and pollinators. As years pass and loved ones return to the site, the aspen and birch grow alongside the healing process. Their dynamism is animated by the changing colors of the landscape and the sounds of birdsong and rustling leaves, helping the site to lay the groundwork for a more sustainable future of death practices.

ECOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS OF TRADITIONAL BURIAL

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATIONS OF THE BOSTON METRO AREA: WHO CAN RE-USE INTERMENT SPACE?

PSYCHOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS OF TRADITIONAL BURIAL

THE CASE FOR CYCLICAL BURIAL

NATURAL BURIAL CYCLING

ASH GRAVE CYCLING 19

Woodland Pathways and Markers

Ash Scattering Meadow

Woodland Chapel

Forest Ceremony Space

RITUAL SPACE 20

Natural Burial Grove

Ash Grave Grove

INTERMENT SPACE 21

pet

community group

CLIMATE GRIEF Reconceptualizing the Future of Prince Edward Island, Canada

favorite beach

friend

Dynamic Relationship with World

parent

self

house

work

community group

parent

self

favorite beach

house

Moment of Loss

parent

self

work

Grief As Emotion

parent

self

house

friend

friend work

partner

community group

house

pet

partner

hiking trail

friend work

Grief As Process

Grief as Process of ‘Relearning the World’ Based on Tom Attig’s 2011 monograph How We Grieve: Relearning the World

GRIEF AS PROCESS OF ‘RELEARNING THE WORLD’ Based on Tom Attig’s ‘How We Grieve’

Spring 2023, Landscape Architecture Thesis, Harvard GSD, advised by Pablo Perez-Ramos Our contemporary landscapes are permeated by loss, both past and anticipated. As part of a fellowship sponsored by Hart Howerton Architects in July 2022, I spent three weeks in Prince Edward Island, Canada interviewing people about climate grief. This land is eroding at an average rate of about one foot per year. People are grieving the losses, both past and future, of meaningful places embedded with memory. While the field of landscape has often separated climate change adaptation projects from work focused on human healing, this thesis brings the two sides together in a community-centered landscape regeneration project on PEI.

The meaning of loss is different for every individual on the island, whether human or nonhuman. At the root of environmental degradation is the property line, a legacy of ongoing colonial practices that continue to facilitate deforestation at the edge and exacerbate land loss. These imagined lines motivate landowners to stop erosion, and limit many other peoples’ access to the shoreline. However, steady levels of erosion are also part of a broader ecology of disturbance that supports biodiverse habitat. This project imagines how environmental strategies can be integrated across property lines to reweave the ecological gradient from the inland forest to the intertidal zone, creating new relationships with healthy erosion. As the fabric of the island is rewoven, human and ecological healing become intertwined.

Prince Edward Island, Canada 23

“I’ve been coming here since I was a baby. […] We used to be able to see the dunes even further across. […] The whole landscape and the beach is all changed now, because of the erosion.”

“The tide comes up really high now. It’s incredible. We never had any of this type of erosion before. Yeah, it’s kind of heartbreaking.” “I think the next big nor’easter we get, I think the water from the ocean will go right over [the dunes].”

Community Interviews: Understanding the Impacts of Coastal Erosion

mown

low-diversity secondary forest

Current Edge Condition Lack of plant material speeds up erosion and reduces biodiversity, sea walls scour seaf loor

Pre -Settlement Edge Condition Ecological gradient creates diverse habitat and keeps erosion levels low

Defining the Problem: Disrupted Ecological Gradient 25

Low-diversity secondary forest dominated by early successional White Pine

Harvest patches of a width equal to canopy height, plant later successional species

Over time, forest biodiversity increases

Upland Strategy: Patch Disturbance for Forest Health

Edge Strategy: Lawn Rewilding

Environmental Strategies: Reweaving the Ecological Gradient 26

Forestry Patch harvesting and planting of later successional hardwood species strengthens and diversifies the industry

Residential

Agricultural

New shared buffer zones reestablish the ecological gradient, slow erosion, and broaden access to shoreline

New buffer zones reestablish ecological gradient, slow erosion, and attract pollinators

Public / Abandoned Lands The newly established gradient opens new opportunities for recreation and connection to place

Social Strategies: Implementation Across Property Types 27

New Human and Ecological Relationships to the Coastal Edge The reestablishment of the coastal ecological gradient slows land loss and reframes erosion as part of a broader healthy process

UNIVERSITY OF HANOI CAMPUS BASE Paysagiste, Paris, France, Oct-Dec 2019

Over the course of my three-month internship at BASE, the main project on which I worked was the University of Hanoi Campus, Vietnam. The landscape plan is designed around the site condition of seasonal flooding and drought. Plantings that can tolerate both conditions are placed around the edges of the central lake, including Vetiver grass for slope stabilization.

I began with the task of adding to a plant list already begun by the University of Hanoi (UHV) team at the office, researching stress-tolerant species in particular. Next, I assembled the plants into blends for the different areas of the site based on program and water stress levels, which the team at BASE finalized. The product was the list below, which corresponds to the master plan on the right.

BASE Above: tree list drawn by Zina Fraser, tree species selected by UHV team. Blend list created by Zina Fraser and UHV team Right: master plan created by the UHV team at BASE, shown here for context only.

BASE

Using a master plan created by the UHV team at BASE, I created several planting details in plan and section, a selection of which are illustrated here. Sections by Zina Fraser, based on master plan designed by UHV team and planting blends designed by Zina Fraser and UHV team.

GUILDWOOD GO STATION Elias + Landscape Architecture, Toronto, Spring 2020

Using linework created by Caitlin Cooper at Elias +, I created a section render for Guildwood GO Station, designed by principal Ina Elias. The station’s green roofs allow it to emerge seamlessly from the green corridor that makes up the railway.

GRAPHIC DESIGN University of Toronto, 2019

Throughout my time at the University of Toronto, I collaborated with a few student organizations to create promotional materials. To the right, I have included an example from January 2019, when I worked with Munk School and Trudeau Centre representatives to create a poster that represented their vision for a conference centered around sustainable development.

THANK YOU zinafraser@gsd.harvard.edu +1 857-928-1684