2

CONSEQUENCE
GROUND UP: ISSUE 07

LAST NAME(S)

GU : ISSUE 07
 GROUND UP TEAM ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF The seventh issue of GROUND UP was made

David Koo possible by the generous support of:
Kate Lenahan The Beatrix Farrand Fund for Public Education in
Alexa Vaughn Landscape Architecture
Department of Landscape Architecture &
GRAPHICS LEADS Environmental Planning,
Greta Aalborg-Volper College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley
Serena Lousich
Special thanks to:
EDITORIAL LEADS Jessica Ambriz
Dana Davidsen Karl Kullmann
Courtney Ferris Susan Retta

TEAM MEMBERS GROUND UP is curated and produced by students

Miriam Arias of the Department of Landscape Architecture and
Molly Butcher Environmental Planning, College of Environmental
Cheyenne Concepcion Design, UC Berkeley.
Zack Dinh
For inquiries, contact
4
Sarah Fitzgerald
Josh Gevertz groundupjournal@gmail.com
Jiaqi ‘Lucky’ Li
Arturo Ortiz Visit us online at
Julia Prince www.groundupjournal.org

Printed in Canada

© Copyright 2018, The Regents of the University

of California. All rights reserved.

FACULTY ADVISOR No part of this publication may be reproduced in any

KARL KULLMANN
Associate Professor of Landscape
Architecture & Environmental
Planning, UC Berkeley
form by any means without the prior permission of the
publishers. Articles, photography, and image copyrights
are retained by their authors or original owners. The
opinions expressed in these articles are those of the
contributors and staff, and are not endorsed by the
Regents of the University of California.
FOREWORD

A moment of sublime nothing and then ...

The Big Bang and then ...
An Ice Age ended and then ...
Our ancestors harnessed fire and then ...
The euclidean grid and the world is parceled and then ...
Perspectival drawing is invented and then ...
Rome fell and then ...
The allied forces won the war and then ...
A nuclear bomb and then ...
A man on the moon and then ...
A drought and then ...
A spring rain and then ...
It’s 2018.

And then …

Where do we locate the beginning of a story? The middle?

Can there ever be an end?
5

Ground Up Issue 07 seeks to understand, confront, and retell

dominant narratives of consequence. Read in conversation with each
other, the featured authors call into question linear understandings
of cause and effect, shedding light on the interstitial relationships
that shape our natural, built, and psychological environments. Their
dialogue traverses scales and time—from an itemized receipt for a
park bench to sea level rise, from mud to queer experience.

Most articles are earthbound, while others reach out into our solar
system. Their mediums and modes of representation, from tapestry to
poetry to prose, suggest that the way a story is told, and by whom, is
consequential in and of itself.

As we grapple with consequences of generations past, we must

consider those for which we will be inevitably responsible in the future.
Moving forward, we are challenged as designers, artists, policymakers,
mothers, scholars, stargazers, optimists, and imperfect humans to
find new ways to preserve the agency of landscape—to expand it,
to empower it—through our unique voices and untold narratives.
Because ultimately, no matter the storyteller, our agency is determined
by how we situate ourselves within the arcs of consequence.

GU : ISSUE 07
 01
DESIG PA G
N FA I L E

06
02
THE H PHIL
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ARM O E VA N S
F DOI
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08
CLAI R E L AT
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GREG
03
THE W
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KOCH
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THE P
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 01 DESIGN FAILURE

PHIL EVANS

8
 9

EVANS

GU : ISSUE 07
 02 THE HARM OF DOING
NOTHING
CLAIRE LATANÉ

10

MY TRUANT

I received the phone call so often that just seeing the number on
my phone screen made me tense.

“This is Eagle Rock High School. Your son, Levi, was tardy or absent
for one or more classes today.” The recorded, impersonal voice
then read the list of missed classes. Usually all of them.

“Why are you skipping school?” I asked him.

“It feels like a prison,” he said. “If there wasn’t a fence, I wouldn’t
feel like jumping it.”
He was in ninth grade at the time, and a third year
of spiraling grades and increased absences.
Levi was not the only one to liken Eagle Rock High
School to a detention center. A dear friend and
neighbor with elementary school children told me
she wouldn’t send them to the high school because
“it looks like a prison.” In a Lyft on my way to a
meeting, my driver mentioned he went to Eagle
Rock High School.
“Did you like it?” I asked.
“No. It felt like a prison,” he replied.
At parent night, I sat in classroom after classroom
trying to listen to Levi’s teachers, but consumed
with unease. The rooms were crowded with too
many desks. Most had no windows. Those that did
had posters or paint or security grates blocking the
daylight and life outside. I was depressed after
two hours.
RESEARCH OF CONSEQUENCE
It has been almost five decades since psychologists
Rachel and Stephen Kaplan proposed attention
restoration theory to describe the restful attention
people gain from watching leaves moving in a
breeze, the sound and sight of water, a natural view.
Their work influenced the therapeutic gardens and
green schoolyards movements, as well as research
on public housing and high school landscapes.
Drs. Frances Kuo, William Sullivan, Andrea Faber-
Taylor, and their doctoral students connected green
views and access to nature with improved attention,
social cohesion, self-esteem, impulse control,
test scores, and graduation rates while reducing
stress and criminal behavior in public housing and
schools. Richard Louv’s 2005 book, Last Child in
The Woods, popularized the idea of nature-deficit
disorder, or the negative mental and physical
impacts of leaving children inside. In his 2010
doctoral thesis on Michigan high schools, Rodney
Matsuoka associated open campuses and views
of trees or shrubs from high school classrooms and
cafeterias—a cut grass yard or athletic field won’t
do it unless it also has garden-like plants or trees—
with reduced anxiety, quicker recovery from stress,
less criminal behavior, better test scores, and higher
graduation rates. What better use for this research
than to improve high school environments?
THE CONSEQUENCE OF RESEARCH
Bring up ‘high school’ or ‘teenagers’ in almost any
conversation, and you’ll get a groan of sympathy or
wagged head. Teen-hood is infamously awful. I’ve
survived parenting two and am midway through
guiding my third teenager to adulthood. I’m
continually struck by how hard our young people
have it today.
In 2017, the Child Mind Institute reported suicide
as the leading cause of death worldwide for girls
between 15 and 19. Nearly one-third of teenagers
will suffer an anxiety disorder, eighty percent
untreated. Sixty percent of depressed youth
go untreated. 11
After months searching for a high school (or any
school) designed for mental health, I called
Dr. Sullivan.
“Do you know of any schools or communities
designed specifically with mental health in mind?” I
asked him.
“I don’t know of anyone doing this work,” he said
by phone. “If [parents] knew that green views
were roughly equivalent to a dose of Ritalin, even
for students without ADHD (Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder), they would demand that
districts get rid of classrooms without windows and
put in gardens at every school.”
Instead, too many urban schools remain physical
manifestations of fear. In Los Angeles, tall fences
made of chain link or steel bars line school
perimeters. Exits are gated and locked during
LATANÉ
school hours. The main entry is guarded by cameras
GU : ISSUE 07
 ABOVE Eagle Rock High School, 1927. Image courtesy of Eagle Rock Valley Historical Society.
RIGHT Eagle Rock High School student entrance, 2017
or staff. The Los Angeles Unified School District
(LAUSD) has its own police force that patrols
middle and high school campuses. Students are
searched randomly and they are forbidden to leave
campus. The largest green spaces are reserved for
competitive sports like football, which is getting
increasing attention for causing brain injuries with
12 violent side effects.
As a journalist, I write about connecting people to
nature. In landscape architecture, I design school
landscapes. But being a mother is what drives me
to use my writing and design to advocate for high
school and community environments that support
mental and community health.
A FORGOTTEN LANDSCAPE
Eagle Rock Junior Senior High School lies against
tree-covered hills over an old stream bed. From
1923 through 1969, a long and elegant Spanish
Mediterranean building fronted the main road with
broad steps presenting a collegiate-like campus to
its community. It was replaced in 1970, a reaction to
the 1960s riots, student walkouts, and concern over
seismic activity, with a Brutalist structure designed
(not surprisingly) by a prison architect. An eight-
foot-tall chain link fence and the backs of temporary
buildings now front the main road between a
football field and baseball diamonds. The entry is at
the far back of a dead-end, where the new building
was built over the old road that once continued
around the block.
TEENAGE TRAUMA
In Los Angeles and across the nation, Black
teenagers fight for their lives against a law
enforcement system that is supposed to protect
them. Brown students and students of different
faiths are afraid of being abandoned by a country
that immigrants founded on religious freedom.
Women, young and old, rail against misogyny.
LGBTQ+ youth and adults are teaching us to
recognize them as the individuals they are. Our
melting pot has become a pressure cooker. And our
teenagers are drowning in it.
High school students experience stress differently
than the adults in their lives. Dr. Frances E. Jensen
writes in The Teenage Brain that stress causes the
body to release tetrahydropregnanolone (THO),
which modulates anxiety in adults … but actually
increases anxiety in adolescents.
Children and adolescents spend the majority
of their waking hours at school. The average
American spends 15% of their lifetime in primary
and secondary school. School shapes how we think
of the world, ourselves, and others. In her book
Welcome to Your World, Sarah Williams Goldhagen
reports that characteristics of the built environment
account for 25% of a student’s learning progress.
She describes touring a private high school with
her teenage son and coming across the only space
meant for the important purpose of socializing—
a corridor stuffed with old couches and
deafening noise.

“Students participate less and learn less in

classrooms outfitted with direct overhead lighting,
linoleum floors, and plastic or metal chairs than
they do in ‘soft’ classrooms outfitted with curtains,
task lighting, and cushioned furniture, all of which
convey a quasi-domestic sensibility of relaxed safety
and acceptance,” Goldhagen writes. “Windowless
rooms of the kind in the high school we visited
exacerbate children’s behavioral problems and
aggressive tendencies, whereas daylit, naturally
ventilated classrooms contribute to social harmony
and facilitate good learning practices. And the sort
of noise we heard that day detrimentally impacts Our melting pot has become
learning, just as it does children’s sense of well-
a pressure cooker. And our
being at home, communicating to inhabitants their
lack of control over their surroundings.” teenagers are drowning in it.
13

LATANÉ

ABOVE Eagle Rock High School, 2017

GU : ISSUE 07
 PERCEPTIONS OF SAFETY AT LOS ANGELES UNIFIED HIGH SCHOOLS
Source: Los Angeles Unified School District, 2016 School Experience Survey
STAFF: I feel safe in the neighbor- 100%
hood around my school.
(% Agree, Strongly agree) 90%
STAFF: I feel safe on school grounds
during the day. 80%
(% Safe, Very Safe))

70%
PARENTS: My child is safe in the
neighborhood around the school
(% Safe, Very safe) 60%

PARENTS: My child is safe on school 50%

grounds
(% Safe, Very safe)
40%
STUDENTS: How safe do you feel
in the neighborhood around the
school? 30%
(% Safe, Very safe)
20%
STUDENTS: How safe do you feel
when you are at school?
(% Safe, Very safe) 10%

VIOLENT CRIME (LA Times, Map-

ping LA) May-Nov 2017 0
Crenshaw High School

Dorsey High School

Eagle Rock Jr/Sr High School

Franklin High School

Fremont High School

Hollywood High School

Jefferson High School

Jordan High School

Lincoln High School

Los Angeles High School

Marshall High School

North Hollywood High School

Roosevelt High School

Van Nuys High School

WEST DISTRICT

WEST DISTRICT

CENTRAL DISTRICT

CENTRAL DISTRICT

SOUTH DISTRICT

WEST DISTRICT

CENTRAL DISTRICT

SOUTH DISTRICT

EAST DISTRICT

WEST DISTRICT

CENTRAL DISTRICT

NORTHEAST DISTRICT

EAST DISTRICT

NORTHEAST DISTRICT
(0 highest, 100 lowest)

PROPERTY CRIME (LA Times, Map-

ping LA) May-Nov 2017
(0 highest, 100 lowest)

ABOVE Perceptions of Safety at Los Angeles

TOP,Unified HighAND
MIDDLE, Schools.
BOTTOM CORE RATED HIGH SCHOOLS THROUGHOUT LAUSD
Source: Los Angeles Unified School District 2016 school experience survey.

Now apply this same principle to a high school’s of a loved one, with the latter being more common.
outdoor environments, where students are There were 1,152 shootings in Los Angeles in 2016.
14
expected to develop social skills in spaces that are And 294 homicides. About the same in 2017. But
too often devoid of defined areas, trees, gardens, those numbers don’t express the experiences our
or seating options. In Los Angeles, students eat young people and their families go through.
outside, walk outside between classes, and often
take physical education outside. Just as Levi began emerging from school-induced
depression last fall, his best friend was shot and
Dr. Jensen writes, “Adolescents are at especially killed in Watts. Isaiah had gone to a birthday party
high risk for experiencing emotional trauma with two friends, and gotten into a drunken fight
compared with the rest of the population, and the with a couple of gang members. Thrown out of the
consequences for their brain development can be party without a ride, the men came out and beat
devastating.” By the age of sixteen, a quarter of him until he lay unconscious in the alley. When one
them have experienced a “high-magnitude” or of the men pulled a gun, his friends ran for their
“extreme stressor.” lives. Shots exploded through the night, and they
ran back. He died in their arms as they tried to stop
In 2016, mental health director Pia Escudora the bleeding.
reported that 50% of LAUSD students suffer
moderate to severe post-traumatic stress disorder Isaiah was like a big brother to Levi. He was a sweet
(PTSD). These students might experience soul. He spent days at a time with us between
homelessness, an incarcerated parent, abuse, washing dishes at the Mexicatessen just around the
violence in their neighborhood, or a number of block. The morning we got the news that Isaiah was
these. The American Psychiatric Association reports dead, Levi crumpled into my arms. His heartbreak
the strongest predictors of PTSD for adolescents shook his body and mine. My head filled with heat
are exposure to violence and the sudden death and my eyes ached with tears.
Isaiah’s family, friends, and community are
devastated by his loss. Yet, I cannot muster up
hatred of his killers—how dark their lives must
be to do such a thing. We created this situation.
Fear-based and racist planning, law enforcement,
and banking systems; inequitable resource
distribution; and lax gun laws sentence our youth
to violence. Adolescents—those often neglected,
misunderstood, and feared young people—have
the most to gain from us rethinking the design of
their everyday environments.
The LAUSD is piloting efforts to disrupt the school-
to-prison pipeline, provide health and wellness
services, and strengthen science, technology,
engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) curriculum.
But the connection between mental health and
campus design is still missing.
PERCEPTIONS OF SAFETY
LAUSD Superintendent Michelle King, and John
Deasy before her, promise the safety of students
and staff as the district’s top priority after incidents
or threats to schools. Last May, the School Board
unanimously passed a Safe Schools Resolution
for Immigrant Students and Families to quell the
emotional trauma caused when Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) picked up a father
dropping off his daughter at school. LAUSD joined
the ACLU of Southern California, the California
Schools Are Sanctuaries nonprofit, and the
California Charter Schools Association in pledging
to maintain schools as safe places for all students
and families.
In LAUSD’s annual School Experience Survey,
questions about safety on campus and in the
surrounding neighborhood are the only questions
addressing the campus environment. The answers,
when broken down by students, parents, and
staff, reveal an important difference between
how students perceive the safety of their schools
compared to adults.
Parents and staff view schools as safe places, even
in violent neighborhoods, but students seem
to carry their concerns about the neighborhood
with them into school. High schools are not the
bubble of safety that we as parents and teachers so
want them to be. Teenagers are desperate for safe,
calm, restorative environments. Keeping students
in school is a prime objective for districts across
the nation. California funds public schools based
on attendance. More than 80,000 LAUSD students
missed three weeks last year, costing the district
$20 million in lost funds. Imagine using that money
to create warmer, more welcoming high schools.
DESIGNING WITH LOVE INSTEAD OF FEAR
Designing safe spaces means designing with love
instead of fear. Designing with love means working
with the community to first understand the issues
you are trying to solve.
Social justice planner Monique Lopez helped
me break my assumptions of what might make a
restorative school landscape. She reminded me of
the importance of participatory design.
15
“If we have people who are intimately familiar
with the space, how can we honor their expertise
to shape the built environment to work best for
them?” she asked, and then gave me the answer.
“Have a shared understanding of the historical and
social context. Is it a red-lined neighborhood? Has
it had a lot of police violence? Because one thing
we don’t want to do is replicate any traumas that
have happened in that space.”
Beginning twenty years ago, Anne Whiston Spirn
and her graduate students from the University of
Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology worked in one of Philadelphia’s poorest
communities to nurture understanding of the
natural and cultural forces, including racist zoning
and lending practices, that shaped their floodplain
town of Mill Creek. Spirn’s West Philadelphia
Landscape Project began by building landscape
literacy with Sulzberger Middle School students and
their teachers.
LATANÉ
GU : ISSUE 07
 They are prisoners in training.
“Twenty years ago, I thought that the worst effect of
landscape illiteracy was to produce environmental
injustice in the form of physical hazards to health
and safety,” Spirn wrote. “The Sulzberger students
showed me that there is an even greater injustice
than inequitable exposure to harsh conditions: the
internalization of shame for one’s neighborhood.
This is a particularly destructive form of injustice.”
Spirn saw the power of allowing understanding to
replace shame, and hope to replace resignation.
“Without an understanding of how the
neighborhood came to be, many believed that the
poor conditions were the fault of those who lived
there, a product of either incompetence or lack of
care,” she writes. “Learning that there were other
reasons sparked a sense of relief. Once they had
the knowledge and skill to read the landscape’s
history, they came to consider the possibility of
16 alternative futures and brimmed with ideas.”
This should be our goal for high school
environments: to give teenagers a sense of
possibility and purpose, a place where they can
imagine positive futures and act to create them.
What would a high school campus look like if every
design and programming decision was made out of
love for each student and a concern for their mental
health and well-being?
Months of exploring this topic has led me to a few
considerations:
Conduct a participatory process
Engage the students, school, and the
broader community in planning, designing,
and maintaining school gardens and
grounds improvements to develop a sense
of ownership and community pride.
Plan with the greater community in mind
Nearby senior citizens aging in place could
be adopted grandparents to the school
in return for student mentorship, garden
expertise, or simply eyes on the schoolyard
to improve safety.
Build landscape literacy
Students who understand the social,
political, environmental, and
economic forces that shaped their
communities gain insight and hope to
change their outcomes.
Challenge preconceptions
Educate school administrators and
educators who may not know the research
on attention restoration theory, and may
not see the opportunities to design with
nature (and love) on school grounds.
Prioritize mental health
Design to alleviate stress, restore
attention, and build community to help
heal the trauma and mental health
disorders that impact physical health and
disrupt learning.
Harvest the low-hanging fruit
Ask administrators and teachers about
removing posters, paint, grates, and security
bars from school windows and planting
trees and gardens where students can see
them from classrooms; take advantage of
mandates to manage stormwater on school
sites to increase students’ access to nature.
DO NO HARM

The common experiences of our young people

could and should be filled with life, comfort, and
wonder to provide the scaffolding their evolving
minds and bodies will need to become healthy and
productive humans. Instead, too many of our youth,
especially those with the least economic and social
resources, determine their self-worth in barren
landscapes of learning, fenced in and exposed.
They are prisoners in training.

We know the consequences of everyday

environments on mental health and well-being.
High school campus landscapes are consequential
to students’ ideas of themselves, their peers,
and their community. The way we plan, design,
and maintain high school landscapes shapes our
teenagers’ self-esteem, self-control, ability to pay
attention, and their prospects for the future. What
are the bounds of our professional mandate to
do no harm? Surely it also extends to undoing
existing harm. Once we are aware of a harmful
environment, don’t we as landscape architects have
17
the responsibility to rectify it?

If we are to help heal the generational traumas of

redlining, environmental injustice, and systemic
racism as well as improve the mental health and
well-being of our young people, we must leverage
our professional knowledge and ‘do no harm’
mandate to advocate for, design for, and nurture
the mental, physical, and spiritual health and well-
being of our constituents. We have the knowledge.
Do we have the heart?

LATANÉ

GU : ISSUE 07
 03 THE WILD
GREG KOCHANOWSKI

“If Los Angeles hangs on long enough, it will cart entirely the mountains away ...”
- John McPhee, The Control of Nature

“Wildness is not preservation of the world, it is the world.”

- Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild

18

ABOVE Station Fire in Los Angeles, CA,
August 2009. The largest fire in Los Angeles
County history, which consumed 160,557 acres.
Photo by Dan Finnerty.
RIGHT Projected development of public green
belts along the historic lines of water and
debris flows
Los Angeles is a beautifully bizarre and seductive place. Its many
personalities sit in stark juxtaposition to each other, illuminating the
rich ecological and cultural diversity that make up this vast territory.
The most enduring of these, and the one that is personally most
appealing, is the city's relationship to the natural environment.
It is a city continually shaped and reshaped, not only by its many
inhabitants, but also by the many natural ecologies that surround
and impact it. The wild spaces of the Santa Monica and San Gabriel
Mountains, the vast vistas and extreme temperatures of Death
Valley and the Mojave Desert, and the unfathomable depths and
swells of the Pacific Ocean, coupled with Los Angeles’ urban,
political, and economic framework, all frame the feeling of the city’s
impermanence and ad-hoc nature.
One of the unusual things about Los Angeles is
its proximity to wilderness—not wilderness in its
metaphorical sense, but actually wild-ness: places
primarily untouched, or rather uninhabited, by
human culture. Sometimes mythologized and
exaggerated through media for dramatic effect,
through the vignettes of earthquakes, fires, floods,
mudslides, drought, sharks, mountain lions, and
the like. This dramatization is itself rooted into
the larger narrative and identity of the city. The
proximity of the urban fabric to these untamed
environments is real. It has significant impact on
our city and the manner in which we understand its
overall ecological makeup, and the nature of Los
Angeles' public space in particular.
Typically seen as ‘empty,’ the territories surrounding
Los Angeles are in fact dynamic ecosystems
operating at the same scale and complexity
as the vast metropolis next to which they reside.
Mountains, thick with vegetal, biological, and
geologic diversity, transform through cycles of
extreme drought and flood into fluvial territories
that wash through developments, expand the
hillside, and reclaim areas of the city fabric. The
boundaries of oceans and deserts, too, with their
combination of rich ecological makeup and shifting
atmospheric conditions, transform on a continuing
basis and challenge their occupation by human
settlement. Through a deeper understanding of
the relationship between these two realms, we can
develop other urban tactics and strategies that,
although specific to Los Angeles, can be applied to
similar conditions across the globe.
In the 1870s, during the early years of the city,
the landscape surrounding Los Angeles was filled
orange with groves, vineyards, farmland,
LAST NAME(S)
GU : ISSUE 07
 and mountain ranges. Even within the boundaries
of the city, an extensive network of privatized
gardens provided relief from the harshness of
20
urban life. As such, there was no perceived need for
public parks or open spaces. As the city developed,
becoming more and more dense, city officials
realized that publicly owned open space was
required. By then, however, all that remained were
leftover residual spaces, marginal land occupied by
unstable hillsides, defunct infrastructure, and soft
marshes. We can see this today in the character
of Los Angeles’ public spaces. Our city is not one
of singular civic spaces. Rather, the public realm
exists in those places where wilderness and people
meet: the beach, Santa Monica Mountains, desert,
and the Los Angeles River. As a consequence,
our understanding of public space and its future
incarnations is radically different from that of other
major urban centers.
As we look toward the future of public open space
in Los Angeles, there is a substantial movement to
adopt models from other cities and cultures. But
with increased property values being driven by a
development renaissance, the opportunities for
large public spaces are becoming limited, if not
eliminated, from our dense urban centers. In order
to provide adequate facilities in support of this
increased density, we need to look for other options
to fulfill this need. Such efforts can enhance, and
build upon, Los Angeles’ history of open space.
In recent years Los Angeles has exhibited an
extended cycle of drought, fire, and flood. These
three components of Los Angeles’ extreme
weather cycle create a deadly combination. Fire
clears vegetation from Southern California’s steep
canyons, leaving them vulnerable to flash floods
and perilous mudslides. For most of the 20th
century, city, state, and federal agencies have
attempted to control these natural processes as
communities sprawled deeper and deeper into
once-uninhabitable canyons. The infrastructure
developed for this purpose has entered its 50-year
lifespan, leaving a void in the city’s management
of these systems. By hacking into this network of
debris basins and spreading fields, we can begin
not only to provide an updated and ecologically
resilient line of defense against these events, but
offer much needed publicly accessible open space
in the process.
ABOVE Quantities, areas, volume, and ultimate maintenance
cost of debris system in Los Angeles.
ABOVE Micro-Basin System. Pre-fabricated, transportable steel BELOW Mountain Making. Over time, the basins accumulate
structures are deployed across the slopes of burn sites and debris, making way for vegetation, habitat, campsites, and
organized into two configurations: those that slow debris flow, overall increased resiliency to the hillside.
and those that capture and retain.

21

KOCHANOWSKI

GU : ISSUE 07
 The 2009 Station Fire, which ravaged a 252-square-
mile area of Southern California's La Crescenta
foothills and sparked multiple catastrophic mud
slides, was the result of severe climatic conditions,
cyclical weather cycles, and an outdated, aging
infrastructure. In our SLIDE project (illustrated
here), we reimagine the existing debris basin
infrastructure being transformed into a more
sustainable model that protects residents living
at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, while
simultaneously allowing greater access by the
public. This project attempts to deconstruct both
the meteorological disaster and the infrastructure
that failed to contain it in hope of identifying a
more landscape-driven approach. In particular, the
project proposes the use of waste management
systems, landscape interventions, and the
differences between local and regional approaches
to devise a more resilient infrastructure for
communities vulnerable to these natural disasters.
Currently, following a mudslide, trucks clean out
debris basins and then haul away the debris to
22
landfills at a rate of half a million cubic yards per
year. This expensive solution carries a huge carbon
footprint, and is also spatially unsustainable: the
1,365-acre La Puente Landfill, where so much of
this debris has been trucked over the years, is now
full. As such, this project utilizes the debris as a
reusable material, capable of being reorganized
and redistributed to help stabilize the hillsides,
mitigating future disasters. In other words, this
project proposes 'hacking' into the natural
processes of mudslides and wildfires to generate
a new 'landform infrastructure' that reuses the
material these events produce. As debris is
redistributed along historic lines of mudflow,
larger urban connections can be created in the form
of greenbelts, establishing open space networks for
adjacent residential neighborhoods, and serving
as a catalyst for increased public space and
property values.
The project proposes the installation of a network
of oversize gabion cage structures throughout the
hillsides. The cage walls, made of varying aperture
sizes, slows the slide of debris and traps the rock
and soil at different rates throughout the year, while
allowing water to filter through. After 15-20 years of
extreme weather, this intervention would result in a
network of micro-basins along the foothills, linking
the canyons together in a single, dynamic system of
extreme weather mitigation.
“Landslides and other ‘ground failures’ cost more
lives and money each year than all other disasters
combined, and their incidence appears to be
rising. Nevertheless, the government devotes
few resources to their study—and the foolhardy
continue to build and live in places likely to be
consumed one day by avalanches of mud.”
- Brenda Bell, The Atlantic Monthly
System is appropriated during
‘off season’ by hikers, campers,
education groups, wildlife, etc.
This process creates a closed loop system capable
of supporting and generating multiple forms
of occupation within close proximity to disaster
zones in the wilderness. During periods of clement
weather, this new infrastructure of mud, rock, and
steel would become the armature for recreation
and habitat, turning weather cycles into an asset for
the local foothill communities. This new geology
of mountain-making acts as a hybrid infrastructure
of both natural and synthetic interactions aimed
at re-thinking extreme weather and the space it
creates, allowing us to fundamentally re-think the
relationship between the city and the edge of
nature from one of danger and contention to one
of symbiosis and opportunity. By challenging the
nature of mudslide infrastructure, this project also
challenges the roles of landscape architects and
designers to move beyond the purely aesthetic
and engage with the systems and processes that
support urban and natural life.
Simulation of system during a
natural disaster event.
The idea of wilderness speaks toward an unknown
potential—a mystery that is both comprehensible
and unfathomable, dangerous and comforting,
remote yet present, in our everyday experiences
and imaginations. The wilderness that is Los
Angeles expresses all of these through an urban
condition borne of a synthetic relationship among
people, economies, vegetation, geology, biology,
infrastructure, and the environment. As we develop
new models for publicly accessible open space in
the city, we need to embrace the latent potential
that exists within these relationships; developing
spaces and scenarios that do not accept old
models, but rather build upon and reinforce the
unique urban condition of Los Angeles.
BELOW Basins are designed to filter and catch specific materials
which can then be utilized and reused across the region
23
LAST NAME(S)
GU : ISSUE 07
 04
ABOVE A desert severely denuded of
24 vegetation by cattle grazing (left) in 1957. At
right, it has returned to a scrubland skinned
in blue gramma grass after only a decade of
managed use. Image at left courtesy of U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation.
BELOW A map of the Rio Puerco (left fork) and
Rio Grande (right fork)
DITCHED
CONTEMPL ATING THE CUSP OF RUIN
IN THE CADILL AC DESERT
NATE KAUFFMAN
The ditch must rank quite near the top of inglorious
landscape features. Patently unsophisticated, aesthetically
uninspired, and even phonetically grating, ‘ditches’ are not,
at first blush, fertile ground for deep examination. Yet fertile
ground is exactly what the proverbial ditch is all about. In the
pantheon of low-tech innovations of Homo sapiens, perhaps
none were more fundamentally consequential. Ancient
infrastructural systems that redefined entire geographic
regions employed the ditch as their common unit, beginning
the process of turning deadly-dry dirt into productive land.
Indeed, human beings arguably wrenched themselves from
their nomadic origin, and established their roots as settlers,
by no single act more transformative than the digging of a
shallow rill to swamp a field they’d sown.
The oldest known human writing is Sumerian cuneiform
regarding the rights to, and allocations of, water bled off the
mighty Nile by (of course) ditches. And though we marvel at
Roman aqueducts, Haussmann’s revolutionary Parisian water
network, and stupendously-scaled dams the world over, the
ditch was the seed of them all—a revelatory cornerstone
upon which civilization itself was founded, and is still today
in many places grounded.
In the rift valley of the Rio Grande south of
Albuquerque, laced through the region’s modern
city, its rural villages, and iconic pueblos, this
modest method is an almost invisibly banal thread
woven through the fabric of the place, omnipresent
yet understated. The ditch is, in fact, the critical
stitch holding the whole garment together.
This dimension of the region is not a singular
entity, but an extensive network: a system unto
itself that has major implications for the very way
of life here. Not only is flood irrigation via the
ditch system the dominant mode of sustaining the
alfalfa, hay crops, and permanent pasture of this
reach of the Rio Grande, but its wide wanderings
through the landscape have served to preserve
some semblance of the area’s natural topography,
demarcate property boundaries, and define the
modern manifestations of its various urban, cultural,
ecological, and infrastructural layers.
Pueblo means people, really. Its literal definition
is closer to settlement or civilization, but to
contemplate a pueblo is simply more intimate.
Indigenous Tribes (The Isleta, Cochiti, Santa
Domingo, San Philipe, Sandia, and Santa Ana, the
six distinct Southern Pueblos) were farming using
gravity-fed ditch systems here in the 10th century.
Their communal network was composed of shared
irrigation ditches, called acequias, which were
maintained by the entire community, employing
numerous smaller ditches bled off the main vein.
Indeed, acequia, like Pueblo, is a word for the
community that uses it as much as the physical
feature itself. An intricate system is braided into
the landscape of the broader river valley to weave
water into plots and parcels close and low enough
to swamp. A diversion dam (presa) shunts water
from the river at the toma into the acequia madre,
which feeds secundarias: smaller ditches. Head
gates (regaderas) and laterals (linderos) further
broaden irrigational reach, and drains (desagues)
prevent flooding, as water ‘steps down’ into smaller
and smaller structures or micro-topographies
(brazos, bancales, melgas, ancones, eras, ramos,
hijuelas, and carreritas) to flood the desired fields.
In keeping with the vascular analogy of human-
made waterways, the heart powering it all was
(and remains) the massive, silty, and occasionally
impetuous Rio Grande.
A familiar story unfolded as the Spanish (arriving
around 1600) seized upon the ingenuity and
technical advantages the acequia system provided,
and promptly put the indigenous population to
work in expanding and enhancing it to satisfy their
exploits of imperial conquest and regional resource
extraction. Extensive, unbridled cattle grazing of
wide swaths of desert destabilized soils throughout
the region, and, by exacerbating erosion,
dramatically disrupted the rhythms and natural
processes of Western waterways.
Just as the earliest Mesopotamians conceived of
written law to manage land, so too did eminent
thinkers in the age of the vagabond American
west. John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil
Government, published in 1689, put forth a simple
25
theorem pertaining to land ‘ownership’ (a concept
fundamentally alien to most indigenous North
Americans). His exposition asserted that a person
essentially made the land their own by “mixing
their labor with it”—the so-called Homestead
Principle. Of course, Locke was mainly aligning his
rhetoric with the inexorable tide of Europeans and
newly-minted white ‘Americans’ sweeping across
the continent. This particular flood of humanity
was intent on extirpating, interning, and even
exterminating indigenous peoples in the process,
and ‘civilizing’ the land in their ebb. Even today,
on top of all of the other complications layered
upon this place and its namesake lifeblood river,
the treaties and water allotments—dictating which
indigenous people are due X volume of water—
is a matter so fraught and contentious that most
agree its adjudication, if ever resolved, will
last generations.
A particular and somewhat peculiar fever brought
KAUFFMAN
settlers to the deserts of the American Southwest in
the 19th century, and somehow kept them here.
GU : ISSUE 07
 Mining, trade routes, and almighty war generated
livelihoods in the least likely of places. Commerce
connecting the Gulf of Mexico, the Sea of Cortez,
and the mighty Pacific meandered across the
landscape. In the 20th century, the Southwest
played host to some of man’s most marvelous
and Machiavellian machinations, as stupefying
civil engineering projects like the Hoover Dam
threatened to blot out the sun and a thermonuclear
arsenal was tested in the background.
26 The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District
(MRGCD), which today manages irrigation and
flood control systems in the area, and the Bureau
of Reclamation (formed, literally, to reclaim land for
the 17 western States) have spent decades testing
interventions aimed at taming and directing the
hydrology of an extremely arid place, in a process
that is, depending on your perspective, awesomely
audacious or pathologically misguided. Perhaps it
is a bit of both.
The desert is a strange place, which anyone who
has spent time in it can attest to. The scale of the
visible landscape and the seeming emptiness
therein somehow refocuses one’s attention to
vacillate between the massive and the micro. And,
because of its extreme nature, the desert displays
a dramatic, sometimes dangerous dynamism:
the monsoon and its flash-flooding; the haboob;
electrical storms that rake the plains and scorch the
earth. Routine inconveniences become existential
in such an unforgiving place: flat tires, dehydration,
or simple bad timing can prove lethal turns of fate.
Yet the desert is also a terribly alive place, for all
its arid, bleak vastness and potential fatalities. The
intersection of the drama that is the desert’s severe
weather and the sere palette that it plays upon
becomes apparent when an arroyo is activated
by storms so intense that the land melts in the
embrace of its torrent. The parched earth simply
cannot soak up the rain fast enough, and nearly
every drop of the ensuing flood races down the
valley as quickly as gravity and friction can conspire
to shuttle it. Major river and arroyo systems of
deserts are such tempestuous agents of the
landscape because they focus so much energy
so rapidly.
If the Rio Grande is the mother of the Chihuahuan
Desert, the petulant Rio Puerco is her proverbial
problem child. Diving diagonally southeast across
New Mexico’s northern scrubland to join the Rio
Grande, the Puerco has permanently shuttered at
least one town. Its flooding can only be described
as biblical. To study fluvial processes is to discover
that water is only half of the story; rivers are
landform-making machines, and their sediment
transport is one of the most active processes
continuously shaping the earth. The chasms, voids,
canyons, and valleys we so often associate with
riverine systems are emblematic of water’s removal,
movement, and commensurate deposition of mind-
boggling volumes of ‘land.’
To look upon it, the Rio Puerco does not appear
to be a large river. Much of the year, it doesn’t
appear to be a river at all. Its power and occasional
fury, however, draws from a sizeable, 7,500-square-
mile watershed draining the Nacimiento Range
northwest of Albuquerque. In the astonishingly
fast melt of New Mexico’s spring thaw, the winter’s
cache of snow goes ripping down the valley with
a vengeance. True to its name, the Puerco is a
tremendously silty waterway. Though puerco
translates to ‘pig,’ it is the porcine proclivity towards
27
muddiness that informs the colloquial connotation.
The Puerco is legendary for the amount of silt and
IMAGES Land use changes in far-off places contributed to the
flooding and geomorphology evident in these 1950s photos
(courtesy of U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, at left), juxtaposed with
photos of current conditions (by author, at right), to illustrate
timelapse. A decade later, though native vegetation has crept
back into the landscape, the dreaded and famously thirsty
Tamarisk (or salt cedar) has established itself along all waterway
banks in dense colonies, adding another chapter to the complex
saga of western water woes.
KAUFFMAN
GU : ISSUE 07
 mud that it activates, transports, and relocates
during flood events. In 1957, the Puerco carried
2.25 million tons of earth downstream in a
single day.
The command-and-control ethos that drove the
reclamation of the West sought to harness, utilize,
or altogether ignore the reality of the region that
waterways like the Puerco embody. The Rio Grande
and its tributaries act as barometers, registering
the impacts of distant upstream logging, grazing,
wildfires, and development. Salinization, seepage,
28 silting, aggrading, erosion, and sedimentation
of waterways is problematic for the rhythms of
civilization, so an extensive infrastructure was
designed and deployed. This complex network
includes our ancestral acequia system, as well as
canals, diversion dams, pumps, and reservoirs,
all of which are collectively managed by regimes
charged with ensuring the infrastructure maintains a
predictable function—in times of extended drought
and flash flooding alike.
It is notable that the acequia, as a hydrologic unit,
could not deviate more from the geomorphology
of the area’s natural waterways; acequias are always
wet, devoid of turbulent flow, and thus typically
transport minimal sediment.
TOP ‘Mudballs’ wadded up by raging waters tumble down
arroyos underwater; deep scouring and incising on the Puerco
after a flash flood; Rio Chico washed well over the truck, and
swamped it in four feet of silt.
RIGHT Bureau of Reclamation Engineer, sitting on Rio Puerco
head cut, 1962. Images courtesy of U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
But the acequia system employed on a modest
scale was an ingenious, flexible, and sustainable
system. The scheme deployed and maintained
today by the MRGCD is undeniably inflexible and,
given shifting weather patterns and predicted
precipitation reduction in the Southwestern deserts,
nearing the verge of irrelevance. It may be that
today’s residents of the Rio Grande Valley are living
through the twilight of the region as we know it.
Until quite recently, the management practices
employed by agencies such as the Bureau of
Reclamation would likely frighten and astonish
any current civil engineering student. Before
adopting a view of the sinuosity of a river like the
Rio Grande as an important and dynamic aspect of
its health, and thus an indicator for its monitoring
and management, Bureau engineers would literally
drive a fleet of D9 Caterpillars up the river channel
to straighten it out and maintain bank profiles,
grades, and channel shapes that conformed
with grandfathered-in engineering specs. After
leaving their bulldozers in the river channel over
the weekend, a particularly unlucky crew returned
during an unexpected storm to find one of the
machines lost to the torrent. Upon dragging it
out of its watery grave-to-be, the local Caterpillar
distributor disassembled, cleaned, and rebuilt the
entire machine, at an undisclosed cost to taxpayers.
Following the endangered species protections
that were enacted for the Rio Grande silvery
minnow (Hybognathus amarus) in 1994, sweeping
changes for the region’s land use and water
management began to take effect. In a pattern
becoming all-too familiar, a minuscule, practically
microscopic indicator became understood to
be of macro-spatial consequence. Many experts
fear the endangerment of the minnow may be
foreshadowing a slow march to ruination for the
region’s life and landscape. A gauge for ecosystem
health, the minnow is not only under severe strain
to survive, but is also now grappling to adapt to
the environmental pressures and extreme events
stemming from our shifting climate.
I’ve come to the Rio Grande Valley to interview a
retired Bureau of Reclamation engineer. Sitting
on his porch, a four-foot ristra of red Hatch chiles
hangs on the wall as we chat over margaritas.
Looking across the Rio Grande rift valley at the
Manzano mountains straddling the horizon, the
oddness of the desert is on full display. Virga
blurs the southern sky—rain evaporating prior to
making landfall. It’s hotter than hell. Someone in
the neighborhood is burning tires, and an acrid
blue haze slinks through the palo verde and
creosote peppering the hillside. The indelible polka
backbone beat of some distant, vague Norteño
music washes in and out of audible range. A steady
stream of sandhill cranes soars ceaselessly up the
valley. A maze of cottonwoods frames the river,
itself invisible from this distance and very low and
slow besides. The ‘bosque,’ a thick, verdant gallery
forest snaking north toward Albuquerque and
south toward Truth or Consequences, is the only
indication of surface water visible for many miles
in any direction. But the water is here, for those
who know how to look. It’s seeping into acequias
and flooding alfalfa fields. It’s hiding in the drains
and ditches that lace through the town of Belen,
where we now sit. It might even be sheltering a
silvery minnow in some silty pool upriver. I ask
the engineer what he thinks of the consequence
of all of the Bureau’s meddling with the river, and
the region inextricably wed to it, before they got
religion and started reading Leopold. He scoffs
a bit and shakes his head. “Whatever was there
when the engineers took over, they broke it beyond
fixing,” he says. “Maybe for good.” I don’t ask if,
by ‘good,’ he means ‘permanently’ or ‘for some
benevolent purpose.’ We both take a drink and
watch the cranes fly through the virga.
29
KAUFFMAN
 05
The Public Sediment Team is:
SCAPE: Pippa Brashear, Gena Morgis,
Kate Orff, Sophie Riedel, Nick Shannon,
Gena Wirth, Nans Voron
DREDGE RESEARCH COLLABORATIVE:
Brian Davis, Yuanyuan Gao, Rob Holmes,
Justine Holzman, Yuzhou Jin, Jingting Li,
Brett Milligan
UC DAVIS: Victoria Eilish Chau, Beth
Ferguson, N. Claire Napawan, Brett
Snyder, Sahoko Yui
ARCADIS: Christopher Devick
ARCHITECTURAL ECOLOGIES LAB:
Evan Jones, Margaret Ikeda, Adam Marcus
TS STUDIO: Abby Granbery, J. Lee
Stickles, Wright Yang
VIDEO: Nabi Agzamov, Huai-Kuan Chung,
30
Guan Min
ARTIST: Cy Keener
PHOTOGRAPHS
LEFT Manzana Creek photographed by
Eric Vizents
CENTER Hydraulic Mining in Nevada
County, California, 1866. Courtesy of the
Library of Congress.
RIGHT O’Shaughnessy Dam
photographed by Johnnie Chamberlin
HIS TORIC SEDIMEN T FLOWS
THROUGH TRIBU TARIE S
PUBLIC · SEDIMENT
PUBLIC SEDIMENT TEAM
The consequences of human action are felt across geography
and time. The Bay Area is beginning to viscerally experience the
effects of elevated global greenhouse gas emissions, facing new
environmental realities of rising sea levels, unpredictable weather
patterns, and increased flood, fire, and erosion events. While
global change impacts the region, its response is shaped by the
legacies of past decisions—resource management policy, physical
infrastructure, and social patterns—that can exacerbate the impacts
of climate change at the local level. While the consequences
of some choices, like building in the floodplain, are clear and
perceptible to the general public, other actions reveal their
impacts slowly over time and are invisible to the human eye. Public
Sediment proposes to investigate the invisible yet considerable
effects of a material largely out-of-sight and out-of-mind: MUD.
Mud is infrastructure, an infrastructure that is slowly eroding,
drowning, and subsiding in the Bay Area. The region’s shorelines,
beaches, marshes, and mudflats all rely upon a supply of sediment
that is transported downstream from regional waterbodies and
local tributaries to replenish these ecosystems over time. This slow
wash of mud (or more technically, sediment supply) is critical to
the sustained ecological and community health of the region. It is
literally the substrate for the bay’s shallow water ecosystems, which
stabilize and protect urban neighborhoods with stronger living
edges, buffer the impacts of sea level rise and extreme flooding,
H Y DR AULIC MINING TO DAY DA MS TR AP
IN CRE A SED FLOWS SEDIMEN T UP S TRE A M
SOUTH BAY:
HARD EDGES AMPLIFY TIDAL FORCES
and improve social and environmental health
through the production of cleaner water, cleaner air,
and access to living systems. Yet the region faces
a looming scarcity; scientific predictions indicate
that soon there will not be enough sediment to go
around. The trickle of mud that currently moves
downstream is insufficient to sustain marshes and
mudflats with aggressive rates of sea level rise.1
Current sediment management practices are not
adapting at a pace that meets new climate realities.
Today’s practices were shaped by the 20th century
perception of sediment as a nuisance, waste
product, and contaminant. Sediment is treated as
an obstruction; huge volumes are annually dredged
from the bay to clear passage for ships. When
timing and budgets allow, some of this material
is beneficially reused for wetland creation, while
in other scenarios dredged sediment is shipped
off the coast and dumped in offshore disposal
sites, outside of the bay system.2 Upstream, in
impounded streams and behind dams, sediment
flows are decoupled from water flows. Sediment
builds up in reservoirs where it limits flood control
SOUTH BAY:
TIDAL BAYLANDS DISSIPATE TIDAL FORCES
capacity and water storage. In the bay’s greater
31
watershed, land is managed to slow erosion and
reduce sediment flows downstream, for the benefit
of water supply and habitat management. Yet,
muddy water, at the right times and volumes,
is essential to a range of Bay Area ecosystems.
Large-grain sediments, like sand and cobbles,
provide critical spawning habitat for fish in creeks
and channels. Fine-grain sediments nourish bay
ecosystems, helping them accrete over time and
keep pace with sea level rise. Without sediment,
the Bay Area’s marshes will drown.
Public Sediment proposes to invest in sediment
infrastructure—the building block of resilience in
the bay. The team aims to design with mud, to
connect the region’s uplands with its lowlands,
and rethink sediment management as part of an
engaged and dynamic public realm.
PUBLIC SEDIMENT TEAM
GU : ISSUE 07
 HOW DO SEDIMENT FLOWS IMPACT THE BAY? SEDIMENT TRENDS
The bay is entering an era of sediment scarcity.3
Historically, the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers
provided the majority of its sediment, building
historic marshlands and mudflats. During the Gold
Rush, hydraulic mining power-washed hillsides and
flushed huge volumes of sediment into these rivers.
This surplus helped build some of the marshes
and mudflats known today. Contemporary dams
trap sediment far upstream of the bay, leading to
sediment scarcity at a time when it is needed most.
Without sediment inputs, shallow habitats will
drown, and the bay will flood more intensely.4

BAYLAND CHANGE WITH LOW SEDIMENT SUB TI DAL T I DA L BAY L A N DS

Sediment scarcity and wetland drowning are

difficult to perceive. There is no clear disaster
moment—this catastrophe is slow, rendered in
millimeters over years.
32
BAYLAND ECOSYSTEMS TODAY MHW
M LW
Constructed ponds and diked agricultural areas were built in
former marshlands, and have subsided deeply over time as
their soils were exposed to air. To slow subsidence and restore
habitat, a massive effort is underway to return diked ponds to
SUB TI DAL E XPANSI O N MAR SH DROWN I NG
tidal baylands, often requiring large volumes of sediment to raise
MUDFL AT M I G R ATI O N
them to marsh plain elevation.

MARSH DECLINE
Given sufficient sediment supply, marshes can accrete up to 3F T SLR M HW
6mm a year, potentially keeping pace with rising seas. However, MLW

faster sea level rise and low sediment supply create conditions
where marshes and mudflats cannot keep up. Bay scientists
project that many marshes will transition to mudflats in coming
SUB TI DAL E XPANSI O N
decades, reducing the protective benefits of the bayland buffer.

BAYLAND DROWNING
As marshes and mudflats convert to subtidal baylands, habitat
7F T SLR M HW
will shift, floods will intensify, and tides will be amplified. While MLW
today this change is slow and imperceptible, it presents serious
risks to humans and ecosystems over time.
 2100,
2100,
3.5
2100,
ft
3.53.5
SLR
2100,3.5
ftftftSLR
SLR
SLR
ESTIMATE
ESTIMATE
OF OFOF
ESTIMATE
ESTIMATE OF ESTIMATE ESTIMATE
ESTIMATE
ESTIMATE OF
OF OF OF
SUPPLY AND DEMAND: 2100, 3.5 ft SLR POSSIBLE
POSSIBLE
FUTURE
POSSIBLE
POSSIBLE FUTURE POSSIBLE
FUTURE
FUTURE POSSIBLE
POSSIBLE
POSSIBLE FUTURE
FUTURE
FUTUREFUTURE
The bar chart to the right is based on preliminary analysis by
BAYLAND BAYLAND
BAYLAND
BAYLAND BAYLAND
BAYLAND
BAYLAND BAYLAND
SEDIMENT
SEDIMENT
SEDIMENT
SEDIMENT
SUPPLY1 SUPPLY1
SUPPLY1
SUPPLY1 SEDIMENT
SEDIMENT
SEDIMENT DEMAND2
SEDIMENT DEMAND2
DEMAND2 DEMAND2
SFEI. A more detailed analysis is being conducted as part of (assuming
(assuming
current
current (assuming
(assuming
current
current
(assuming
(assuming
current
average
average current
annual
annual
load)
load) (assuming(assuming
baylands current
baylands extent) current
extent)
the Healthy Watersheds Resilient Baylands project averageaverage
annual load)
annual load) baylands baylands
extent) extent)
400
400
(hwrb.sfei.org). 400 400

Sediment mass (million Mt)

Sediment mass (million Mt)
1 Sediment supply was estimated by multiplying the current Based
Based
on

Sediment mass (million Mt)

Sediment mass (million Mt)

analysis
analysb
average annual sediment load values from McKee et al. (in TIDAL
TIDAL
MARSH
MARSH
detailed
detaile
Basa
conducted
condu
ana
prep) by the number of years between 2017 and 2100. thethe
Health
He
detB
Resilient
Resilie
TIDAL MARSH
TIDAL MARSH con
project
projec
(h
2 Sediment demand was estimated using a mudflat soil bulk the
SFSF
BAYBAY Res
density of 1.5 g sediment/cm soil (Brew and Williams 2010), TRIBUTARIES
TRIBUTARIES MUDFLAT
MUDFLAT pro
a tidal marsh soil bulk density of 0.4 g sediment/cm soil
SF BAY SFDELTA
SAC-SJ BAY
SAC-SJ DELTA
(Callaway et al. 2010), and baywide mudflat and marsh area 0 0 TRIBUTARIES
TRIBUTARIES MUDFLAT
MUDFLAT
circa 2009 (BAARI v1). 1Sediment
1Sediment
supply
supply
waswas
estimated
estimated 2Sediment
2Sedimentdemand
demand waswasestimated
estimated
by multiplying
by multiplying
the the
current
current
average
average usingusing
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soil soil
bulkbulk
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SAC-SJ DELTA
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values
fromfrom 1.5 1.5
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et(in
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Williams
2010),
2010),
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a tidal
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of years
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2100.
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of 0.4
g sediment/cm3
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soil soil
(Callaway
(Callaway
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et2010),
al. 2010),
andand
1Sediment supply
1Sediment
was supply
estimatedwas estimated 2Sediment
baywide
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2Sediment
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mudflat
and was
anddemand
marshestimated
marsh was estimated
areaarea
by multiplying
by multiplying
the current the
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current average circaa
using circa
2009 2009
(BAARI
mudflat
using(BAARI
av1).
soil v1). density
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sediment
values load
fromvalues from 1.5 g sediment/cm3
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2010),
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soil marsh soil
of years between
of years2017
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and 2100.
2017 and 2100. bulk densitybulkof 0.4density
g sediment/cm3
of 0.4 g sediment/cm3
soil (Callaway
soilet(Callaway
al. 2010),etand
al. 2010), and
D IK ED PON DS FOR THERE IS NOT ENOUGH MUD baywide mudflat
baywide andmudflat
marsh area
and marsh area
R ES TOR ATI ON circa 2009 (BAARI
circa 2009v1). (BAARI v1).

If this era of sediment scarcity continues, the

amount arriving into the system may be well
below the amount needed to sustain today’s tidal
baylands.5 Moreover, newly restored wetlands—
wetlands whose restoration is already planned 33

BAYLANDS TODAY 2018

and underway—will require additional sediment,
exacerbating the deficit. While many unknowns
make these projections inexact, like the amount
of sediment that might enter the system with
LEVEE B R E ACH FO R TI DAL
increased fires or mudslides and future precipitation
R ES TOR ATI ON
rates, it is clearly urgent to manage sediment
differently in the Bay Area—as a valued resource,
not waste.

HOW WILL THE BAYLANDS CHANGE?

Local tributaries, dams, dredging, construction fill,

MARSH DECLINE
WITH 3’ SLR BY 2050 and biosolids are all possible sources of sediment
to feed the baylands. New techniques must be
MAR SH AN D MUDFL AT devised to place these materials in ecologically
D ROWN I N G
intelligent and efficient ways. But even with all
these sources mobilized, the scale of the potential
problem outpaces the supply. There is still not
enough mud.
PUBLIC SEDIMENT TEAM

The drawn scenarios on the following pages depict

BAYLAND DROWING
this slow but dramatic drowning of the baylands as
WITH 7’ SLR BY 2100 sediment needs outpace sediment supply.

GU : ISSUE 07
34
 35

PUBLIC SEDIMENT

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 DESIGN WITH MUD
Where does that leave the bay? If even mobilizing
all of these sources will be inadequate at some
point in the future, what can we do today? Should
we give up? Abandon wetland restoration? No. The
Public Sediment team proposes to treat sediment
as a public resource, and to DESIGN WITH MUD.
The next few decades are a critical period, when
designers must test methods that can be scaled
up in the future to strategically sustain baylands
for a range of ecosystem services, particularly
flood risk reduction, habitat provision, and carbon
sequestration. Projections of large-scale change
make bayland restoration and creative sediment
management more urgent than ever. The team aims
to invest differently with sediment, developing new
management regimes for portions of the bay with
the greatest capacity for long-term survival.
DESIGN WITH MUD / MAKE SEDIMENT PUBLIC
36
To meet rising challenges of sediment scarcity,
Public Sediment looks to connect the uplands and
the lowlands with a series of sediment actions:
harvest, retrofit, and remove dams; unlock tributary
channels; and test new methods of mud placement
that use currents to move mud in the bay.
Experimentation is vital to ecological resilience.
Current practices, like beneficial dredge placement
in contained, non-tidal sites, are positive but are not
being explored at a scale or pace that meets the
urgency of the problem. Collaboration—between
regulators, engineers, watershed managers, policy
makers, and designers—is critical to developing
new methods and new implementation pathways
for sediment management and sea level rise. The
team is building these relationships as part of
the design process, working to pilot new ways of
managing mud collectively in the bay.
 37

MAKE SEDIMENT PUBLIC

Simply moving mud is not enough. Public dialogue must change around sediment to understand the material as
a resource, not a contaminant. Likewise, scientific and regulatory dialogue must shift to encourage experimental
pilots developed to mitigate climate impacts. The goal is to MAKE SEDIMENT PUBLIC and engage broader
PUBLIC SEDIMENT TEAM

communities in monitoring and interpreting their sediment systems. At the neighborhood scale, the team
envisions a series of elements that link vulnerable neighborhoods with the bay and engage youth and volunteers
to monitor climate change in their backyards. Upland and lowland communities will be connected by pathways
and flows of sediment along water bodies. Community sensing stations and mud rooms will reveal the region’s
slow and invisible threats, spurring the long-term stewardship of our public sediment resources.
GU : ISSUE 07
 UNLOCK SEDIMENT FLOWS DESIGN FOR FISH
HARVEST THE UPLANDS
RELEASE IN THE BAY
CONNECT THE CHANNEL
FEED IN THE
BAY
UNLOCK ALAMEDA CREEK
Public Sediment is designing for sediment systems
at the scale of a tributary, targeting the sediment
flows of the largest local sediment-shed in the Bay
Area: Alameda Creek. This waterbody contributes
more sediment to the South Bay than any other
tributary. Even so, its potential is far from realized;
the flood channel was only designed for the flow of
water. Sediment is trapped upstream behind dams
and in the channel itself, where it reduces flood
storage capacity and requires expensive dredging.
Public use of the creek is limited, and fish passage
38 is impaired. The team aims to redesign Alameda
Creek to bring sediment to the baylands, reconnect
steelhead with their historic spawning grounds, and
organize a tributary-based network of community
MAKE SEDIMENT PUBLIC
TRANSITION IN MUDROOMS AND
THE MARSH SENSING STATIONS
CONNECT TO THE BAY
CONNECT TO SCHOOLS
SPAWN IN + LIBRARIES
THE UPLAND
stewards that physically connect to the bay.
Design efforts focus on unlocking Alameda
Creek to move sediment downstream and into
the bay, where it is needed most. Selectively
breaching levees will feed neighboring marshes
with sediment, re-connecting the channel and the
bay. Inland, the team will test the use of upland
sediment sources, dredged materials, treated
wastewater, and biosolids to support fresh- to
saltwater transition zones and plan for future marsh
migration areas. Along the channel, strategically
altering the flow of sediment will feed distributaries,
build erodible tributary sediment pools, and move
mud downstream. In the creek’s upper reaches,
sediment must be harvested from behind dams.
ALAMEDA CREEK CRAWL Over 100 people joined the team on February 24, 2018 for a tour of the creek. The tour began at the Niles
Canyon Staging Area, where the creek enters the flood control channel at the mouth of Niles Canyon. Photographs by Ramon Estrada.
These actions approach sediment management as
a system, developing an interconnected suite of
projects that generate watershed-wide benefits.
PUBLIC SEDIMENT IN ALAMEDA CREEK
But this isn’t just about mud. Alameda Creek
should be designed for social equity and public
benefit as much as sediment. Greater empathy and
awareness of the connective landscape systems
that define this watershed are crucial for long-term
ecological and human health. This #trib connects
communities that are diverse in race, ethnicity, age,
and income level, linking them with each other
and the bay. Community events oriented around
natural systems, like the Alameda Creek Crawl,
create moments to reveal our inter-connected
environment, get our hands and feet muddy, and
discuss collective public sediment infrastructure for
the future. The larger proposal constructs a network
of paths, mud rooms, and community sensing
stations along the creek to enable inter-species
interactions and empathy, building capacity over
time for a new sediment public.
ENDNOTES
1 The changing sediment dynamics of the Bay Area are highlighted by
The Costal Conservancy’s Baylands and Climate Change: What We Can Do
2015 report and The San Francisco Estuary Institute’s Changing Channels
2017 report.
The Baylands and Climate Change: What We Can Do. Baylands Ecosystem
Habitat Goals Science Update 2015. California State Coastal Conservancy:
Oakland, CA, 2015.
Dusterhoff, S., Pearce, S., McKee, L. J., Doehring, C., Beagle, J., McKnight, K.,
Grossinger, R., and Askevold, R.A. Changing Channels: Regional Information
for Developing Multi-benefit Flood Control Channels at the Bay Interface.
Flood Control 2.0. SFEI Contribution No. 801. San Francisco Estuary Institute:
Richmond, CA, 2017.
2 For more information on sediment management, The San Francisco Bay
Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) has worked with state,
federal, and local partners to develop the Long Term Management Strategy
(LTMS) for Placement of Dredged Material in the Bay Region based on
USACE research and incorporation of flood protection, habitat restoration,
sand mining, and shoreline erosion.
39
San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. LTMS
Management Plan 2001. San Francisco, CA, 2001.
3 In addition to the San Francisco Estuary Institute’s work in this area, the
Dredge Research Collaborative dedicated DredgeFest California 2016 to
understanding this era of sediment scarcity.
Milligan, B., Holmes, R., Wirth, G., Maly, T., Burkholder, S., and Holzman,
J. “DredgeFest California: Key Findings and Recommendations.” Dredge
Research Collaborative. 2016. http://dredgeresearchcollaborative.org/works/
dredgefest-california-white-paper/
4 See Diana Stralberg’s 2011 “Evaluating Tidal Marsh Sustainability in the
Face of Sea-Level Rise” and Mark Stacey’s 2014 “Coupling of Sea Level
Rise, Tidal Amplification and Inundation” for more information about
compounding impacts.
Stralberg, D., Brennan, M., Callaway, J., Wood, J., Schile, L., Jongsomjit, D.,
Kelly, M., Parker, V., and Crooks, S. “Evaluating Tidal Marsh Sustainability in
the Face of Sea-Level Rise: A Hybrid Modeling Approach Applied to San
Francisco Bay.” PLoS One 6, no. 11 (2011).
Holleman, R.C. and M.T. Stacey. “Coupling of Sea Level Rise, Tidal
Amplification, and Inundation.” Journal of Physical Oceanography 44 (2014):
1439–1455.
5 SFEI’s projections were shared at San Francisco Estuary Partnership’s 2017
State of the Estuary Conference as part of their presentation “Sediment
Supply to San Francisco Bay: Today and Into the Future.”
Resilient By Design Bay Area Challenge is a year-long collaborative design
challenge bringing together local residents, public officials, and local,
national, and international experts to develop 10 innovative designs around
the Bay Area that will strengthen the region’s resilience to sea level rise,
severe storms, flooding, and earthquakes. Please join the Public Sediment
PUBLIC SEDIMENT TEAM
Team in developing the proposal for Alameda Creek by visiting
www.resilientbayarea.org/alameda-creek/
Find out more at SCAPE’s website: www.scapestudio.com
Unless otherwise credited, all images provided by Public Sediment
Team / SCAPE
GU : ISSUE 07
 06 TIL DEATH DO US PART
MICHAEL JENKS

40

“
A PHOTO ESSAY DOCUMENTING

THE SYMBIOTIC REL ATIONSHIP

BET WEEN THE SALTON SE A

AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

“
 41

I OBSERVED A MARRIAGE
INSEPAR ABLE IN THEIR OLD AGE
IN LOVE THROUGH PROSPERIT Y
LOYAL THROUGH HARDSHIP
JENKS

GU : ISSUE 07
 THE Y WERE BE AUTIFUL, FULL OF LIFE
NOW LEF T IN THE WAKE OF UNCERTAINT Y
THEIR OUTCOMES SHARED

42
 43

HAPPINESS DILUTED ONLY BY THE WRINKLES OF TIME

HOLDING TIGHT, NE VER TO LET GO
LIFE REMAINS IN A FORGOT TEN WORLD
MARRED BY NEGLEC T, THEIR BE AUT Y DISGUISED IN A WASTEL AND
JENKS

GU : ISSUE 07
44

THE Y HAVE ACCEPTED THEIR FATE

CONTENT TO LIVE OUT THEIR DAYS
WITH A SOLEMN DEME ANOR, ALONG THE SLOW ROAD OF DE ATH
 45

“
TO HAVE & TO HOLD; FROM THIS
DAY FORWARD; FOR BET TER, FOR
WORSE; FOR RICHER, FOR POORER;
IN SICKNESS & IN HE ALTH, TO LOVE
AND TO CHERISH ...

TIL DE ATH DO US PART.

“
JENKS

GU : ISSUE 07
46

“The wall is a spatial device that has been inserted

into the landscape, but with complete disregard for
the richness, diversity, and complexities of the areas in
which it was built and proposed.“
-Ron Rael, Borderwall as Architecture

“The Wall was not really a single object but a system

that consisted partly of things that were destroyed on
site by the Wall, sections of buildings that were still
standing and absorbed or incorporated into the Wall,
and additional walls—some really massive and modern,
others more ephemeral—all together contributing to
an enormous zone.”

- Rem Koolhaas on the Berlin Wall

13 MUROS ABSURDOS
BORDERWALL URBANISM STUDIO

RON RAEL & STEPHANIE SYJUCO

WITH CHEYENNE CONCEPCION AND ARTURO ORTIZ

47

Ron Rael & Stephanie Syjuco at the Tijuana borderwall

There are 14 major sister cities along the United States-Mexico border
whose urban, cultural, and ecological networks have been bifurcated by
a borderwall. With 650 miles already constructed, and the population in
these urban areas expected to grow to over 20 million inhabitants over
the next decade, the long-term effects of the wall’s construction must
now be carefully considered. This speculation serves to anticipate the
consequences of its incision into a context of rapid growth and massive
migratory flows, especially as the current political climate calls for further
wall construction.

Siting our investigation at the U.S.-Mexico borderwall, the Borderwall

Urbanism graduate studio at UC Berkeley traverses the fields of art,
architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning to explore the
BORDERWALL URBANISM STUDIO

American borderwalled city as an evolving political, societal, historical,

and cultural phenomenon. Using experimental methods of analysis,
fabrication, and collaboration, students have been challenged with
examining the complex conditions of borderwall urbanism, ultimately
creating objects and artistic responses to site and space.

GU : ISSUE 07
 BORDERWALL AS BACKGROUND
There are more invisible walls than visible ones—
especially in the case of the U.S.-Mexico barrier—
48
dividing rivers, farms, Native American lands, public
lands, cultural sites, and wildlife preserves. At this
scale, the invisible walls that exist in parallel to
the U.S.-Mexico borderwall are unsurmountable.
The grander the walls, the greater the inability to
discuss, negotiate, and resolve common challenges
or problems. Understanding how the Borderwall
manifests a cultural condition that is imposed onto
the landscape, onto the city, framed the discussion
of the course.
Several field trips brought students directly to
border sites, where they learned from examples
of local artists, writers, and designers whose work
reacts to the wall. This article recounts student
experiences and reflections as investigators and
designers in the borderwalled city, Tijuana. The
final project, to be completed after the date
of publication, will consist of individual and
collaborative works that will be deployed at a site
along the border.1
BORDERWALL AS SITE
In Tijuana, the studio attempted to ground
theoretical frameworks of the borderwalled city
in on-the-ground site research. This transition
from an academic space to an active-participatory
one unearthed a variety of conflicting responses
and questions from students about how this site
should be constituted, as we challenged our roles
and expertise in a highly politicized space. This
article plays back reflections on our experiences in
the U.S.-Mexico Borderwall city. Questions about
agency and intention in an unfamiliar, multinational
space weighed on us. Questions about identity and
interference were vocalized. Questions about our
relationship with the Borderlands emerged. Here
we highlight and confront these questions—from
theories on activism and architecture, to personal
recollections of the ever-evolving borderland.
TOP Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman of Estudio Teddy Cruz, UCSD
MIDDLE Marcel Sanchez-Prieto of CRO Studio, Woodbury Univ.
BOTTOM Marco “Erre” Ramirez, Mexican artist, Tijuana native
RIGHT Student photos taken during the borderwall site visit
WALL AS MONUMENT
LAURA BELIK, PhD of Architecture

Posting a photo of the wall on social networks felt weird.

Visiting spaces of dispute and making them icons, to be
shared as such, reinforced the power of that object, on
one hand; and on the other, by sharing it as an absurdity,
reinforced the movement in the opposite direction. It
reminds me of the relationships we have with holocaust or
war memorials, for example—except here the monument is
actively serving a need. I might see it as a monument from
one perspective, but I cannot deny its purpose as a tool. The
‘monumentalizing’ of it might be one of the aspects this tool
brings with it, and the simple act of barricading, another.

DESIGNERS IN THE BORDERLAND

ARTURO ORTIZ, Master of Landscape Architecture

How do designers play a role in borderland landscapes,

and how can design be used as a form of activism? As a
designer, I’m diving into this ‘other’ world—the world that
has the ability, the privilege, and the resources to physically
and dramatically change our environment. Norma Prieto’s
words, “you can design even if you don’t have a transborder
experience,” resonated with me; if you have the ability to
help, then help.

VISITING THE PROTOTYPE

SOPHIA SOBOKO, PhD of Education

It was intense, emotional, and contentious to visit the border

49
wall prototypes and, later, an informal settlement. I had many
informal conversations with classmates during these visits
as we grappled with the same questions: what are we doing
here? Why is this visit important? What are we learning? Who
are we not talking to? Who is this knowledge for? What will
we do with it? I don’t have simple answers to propose; rather,
I think grappling with the questions is an ongoing part of
this work. I was struck when a man drove by us and yelled
“fuck the U.S., go back to your country.” I respect his act of
resistance, and I think he has an important point: we should
look back at ourselves, our country, and share our knowledge
with the people in our country who are creating this problem.

CROSSING THE BORDER: A NEW(ISH) EXPERIENCE

GABRIELA NAVARRO, Master of Urban Planning

Never in my 33 years of crossing this border on foot had I

been stopped to fill out paperwork. This act in itself was not
much, but the message behind it left me uneasy: we will no
longer let you walk freely into our country. That sense of relief
that usually accompanies the crossing into Mexico was no
BORDERWALL URBANISM STUDIO

longer there! Instead I was met with skeptical attitudes and

an unwelcoming feeling.

ENDNOTES

1 Selected works are featured at groundupjournal.org/murosabsurdos

GU : ISSUE 07
 08
50
XE/XEM/XER are gender-neutral pronouns.
Read more about gender-neutral pronouns on
the website of the Gender Equity Resource
Center at the University of California, Berkeley.
MY QUEERNESS, MY COMMUNIT Y:
STORIES FROM THE L ANDSCAPE OF
PERSONAL IDENTIT Y & ITS CONSEQUENCES
FOR FUTURE- BUILDING
JUDEE BURR
“A lot of current queer language is new and is strange, right?
Because it’s literally creating language where there was no
language before,” says Justice Gaines (xe/xem/xyr), a 23 year-old
poet and community organizer. Xe works for Rhode Island Jobs with
Justice on an initiative to establish community protections against
police violence in Providence. Xe laughs as xe describes liking “to
force people to think a little more” with xyr pronouns.
“I identify as a black trans woman, and I also identify as
genderfluid,” Justice says. “The first thing I came out as when I
came out as queer was demisexual and asexual … For me, it was
a process of learning these labels and being like: one—that’s wild.
Then two—wait, that sounds kind of familiar. Huh … That language
is actually speaking to an experience that I had literally no way of
naming before.”
Queerness is a landscape unto itself
Queerness is a landscape unto itself—an inclusive identity beyond
the gender or sexual binary, a political statement, and a word laden
with pejorative meaning for many members of the gay community.
Queer individuals are navigating their personal identities amidst
a LGBTQIA+ movement that is growing—whether judging from
numerous surveys of the more-likely-to-be-non-conforming
Generation Z, the increasing number of gender and sexuality
options listed on sites like OkCupid and Facebook, or the record
number of queer characters that are appearing on the television
programs shaping our inner narratives, shows like One Mississippi,
Transparent, and Orange is the New Black. More people are diving
into the open waters of gender and sexual identity and resurfacing
under the queer umbrella, with consequences for the futures we
plan and the communities we foster within them.
This piece weaves together stories from queer artists, educators,
farmers, community organizers, coders, and others to examine their
personal landscapes of queer identity. These inner mappings are
not uniform. Rather, they embody the grappling, disagreement, and
rebellion inherent to queerness, a practiced comfort with standing
ABOVE Vigil in Providence after the Pulse nightclub shooting. Photo by Ash Trull.

up and standing out. In bucking social pressure to PERSPECTIVES FROM THE LANDSCAPE OF
conform, queer individuals have been forced to QUEERNESS: FINDING THE WORDS 51
act as architects of the self, re-casting their own
“I felt like I had to make a decision as to what I
molds, spitting out assumptions, and delivering
identified as, I felt really strongly that I had to find
the consequences of this personal work to the
the word. And I felt really strongly that I couldn’t,”
communities they live in.
says MJ Robinson (they/them/theirs). MJ is a 25
year-old artist, community organizer, and a museum
From the Stonewall riots led by trans women
educator with the Rhode Island School of Design.
of color and gender-non-conforming activists,
They now use the word queer to describe their
to intersectional queer feminist activism of
sexuality and genderqueer or trans to describe their
the 1980s and 90s, to the Black Lives Matter
gender. Growing up north of Philadelphia at a time
movement, queerness has had the reputation
when they knew only a couple other gay people in
and consequence of social transformation. The
their high school, they remember feeling a lot of
deep and personal journey embedded in queer
anxiety when coming out. “The most intense wave
experience, of norm-toppling and identity-finding,
of panic consumed my body,” they say, describing
impacts our communities beyond gay-coded
one night a crush cuddled close to them.“ That was
spaces. An important look ahead emerges from the
sort of my trigger that I need to figure shit out.”
perspectives to follow—futures through a queer
lens confront business-as-usual practices with a
Words map the expanding landscape of queerness.
honed skepticism of ‘the ways things are,’ with
Discovering explanations and labels that subvert
the boldness to envision more powerfully the way
dominant narratives about gender and sexual
things could be.
identity and using them to name one’s reality is a
formative experience for many queer people. These
words can capture an experience outside the box of
BURR

GU : ISSUE 07
52

ABOVE Illustration by M.J. Robinson, mj-robinson.com

heteronormative romance and the confines of the
‘man-or-woman’ gender binary that structures most
lives from childhood. Some interviewees recognize
queerness in their earliest memories. Others
recount specific experiences and people that
helped crystallize their personal identities later in
life. Many describe adopting and then changing the
words they use to explain their gender and sexual
identities. Few personal landscapes remain static.
Steph France (she/her/hers) first heard the word in
second grade at her all-girls Catholic school, where
she remembers lesbians often getting teased.
“Mom, I think I’m a lesbi-OWN … I like girls,” Steph
recalls saying when she cornered her mom doing
her hair in the bathroom. “And she’s like: ‘Oh, I
know that … Of course I know.’”
Steph France and Rowena Jones (she/her/hers)
are both 29 years old and live together in southern
Rhode Island. They have been dating for five
years. Steph works independently as an actor and
together with Rowena to manage a business selling
books and other retail through Amazon.
Steph remembers feeling ‘like a dude’ when she
was growing up in southern Rhode Island. She
became comfortable identifying as a woman in
her late teens. “Not all women have to be super
feminine, not all women have to fit into the
stereotypes,” Steph says. “I’m not going to call
myself a guy because I’m masculine. I want to put it
out there that women can be whatever they want.”
Rowena also identifies as a lesbian and remembers
some of the judgment she faced when exploring
her own identity. “She didn’t think at all that I
could possibly not be into guys,” Rowena says of
her mom, remembering getting ‘the talk’ from her
about sex and relationships. “That affected me. I
tried to be with guys until I was in my twenties,”
Rowena says. “It really messes you up and confuses
you when people tell you what you are.”
There is a loud, societal story about relationships
and gender identity that a person must confront
with distrust in order to name their queerness—a
story that offers two gender options and tells us
how men and women are supposed to dress and
behave, what genitals they’re supposed to have,
and who they’re supposed to love. Being queer is
an act of questioning one or more of these stories.
Queer people must fight to create spaces in a
society that continues to privilege straight and cis-
identities and experiences.
Toby (he/him/his or they/them/theirs) works
in the field of sexual health and sexual violence
prevention on a mid-sized university campus. (Toby
is not his real name). Toby identifies as transgender
and queer. “I think a lot of queer and trans folks
find themselves drawn to information, because so
many of us are not afforded information about our
identities,” Toby says. “I remember the first time
I heard the word transgender and transsexual,
and I was definitely overwhelmed with my own
transphobia. I really tried to play the game,” Toby
says. Then I finally realized the game is rigged ...
The truth is that vanilla, straight, cis-gendered-ness
53
is such a tiny slice. And any time that any one of
us, it could be argued, steps a foot outside one of
those boxes, we’re experiencing queerness.”
I finally realized the game is rigged
… The truth is that vanilla, straight,
cis-gendered-ness is such a tiny
slice. And any time that any one of
us, it could be argued, steps a foot
outside one of those boxes, we’re
experiencing queerness.
BURR
GU : ISSUE 07

ABOVE Photo by Ash Trull
There are generational differences in the ways
queer people choose to identify. In a study
comparing Generation Z (age 13-20) to Millennials
(age 21-34), significantly more of the younger
generation reported knowing someone who uses
gender-neutral pronouns (56% of Gen Z versus 43%
of Millennials). College campuses are increasingly
54
providing resources for transgender and gender
non-binary students, and introductions that include
each person’s preferred pronouns are becoming
a new norm on many campuses and in other
community spaces. Yet, historically, and presently
in many places around the country and around the
world, queer-identifying persons have been forced
to remain ‘closeted’ and hide their gender and
sexual identities for fear of violence, discrimination,
or non-acceptance from their families and friends.
“At this moment, I consider myself to be a woman
and my pronouns are her, she, but I feel like if I
was born in the 2000s and I was an adolescent at
this time, I would probably be more comfortable
calling myself gender-neutral or something like
that,” says Luisa Piña (she/her/hers), a 32 year-old
Venezuelan filmmaker who lives with her wife in
southern Massachusetts. “I’m very comfortable with
my body, I like my boobs and my vagina. I’m just
upset that just because I like my body that puts me
into something.”
“I never hid it,” Luisa says of her lesbian identity,
thinking back on coming out to her Catholic and
conservative family in Venezuela. “I was brave
enough to come out, still at 15, and the first person
I told was my mom,” Luisa says. “I was strong in
my belief that I needed to be out there, even if
they treated me like shit. Because, especially in
Venezuela, you don’t see it out there. It’s not like we
don’t exist, we are there. We’re just hidden. And it’s
not fair.”
In her first two relationships, Luisa dated women
who were not open about their queer identities.
She describes this as a challenge. “I was out and
I felt comfortable and I wanted to hold their hand
but they didn’t feel comfortable,” she says. Luisa
says that dating someone who was also out was an
important milestone; bringing a partner home who
was open about their relationship helped her mom
accept her as a lesbian. “This partner was not afraid
to hold my hand at my house and be there like ‘I’m
Luisa’s partner.’”
Lindsey Medeiros (she/her/hers), a 33 year-
old farmer, grew up in a religious, working class
household in Massachusetts, with a Catholic father
from Portugal and a Jewish mother. She became
comfortable living as queer when she moved to
New York for college. “I’ve always considered
myself to be a tomboy, even when I was four,” she
laughs. “I consider myself to be genderqueer, but
I feel not right using the they/them because I feel
it takes away from people who are transitioning
and that’s not the space I want to occupy.” Now
she uses the words lesbian, dyke, queer, and
genderqueer when describing her gender and
sexual identity.
Even in queer spaces, people grapple with the
validity of their personal experiences and the
feeling that there is a standard of queerness to
live up to. Many queer people feel confined by
norms perpetuated by both the straight and
queer communities.

ABOVE From “Reborn,” a film by Luisa Piña inspired by her coming out. Photo by Daniel Oliver.
Ash Trull (they/them/theirs), is a 30 year-old
community organizer, facilitator, coder, and farmer
in Providence, Rhode Island, who identifies as non-
binary, queer, and genderqueer, occasionally using
the term AFAB, or ‘assigned-female-at-birth,’ to
describe their identity. “I’ve chosen a lot of different
words for my gender over the years, and a lot of
times it’s just like meeting someone whose gender
I resonate with and then hearing what they say
and being like ‘oh yeah! Non-binary! That’s me,’”
Ash says.
Ash explains that, as a non-binary person, they
have had to use the term AFAB—assigned-female-
at-birth—to gain access to spaces more explicitly
marketed to women. “A thing that happens in
identifying as non-binary or genderqueer is feeling
55
like I lose that solidarity with femmes or with
women,” Ash says. “AFAB is something that’s really
helpful for me in talking about my socialization,
my upbringing, what gender I was assigned, and
then pushed into for a huge chunk of my formative
years.” As a queer coder, Ash has gravitated to
communities like ‘She Hacks’ and ‘Lesbians Who
Tech,’ but notices the ways in which non-binary
identities are invisible in the title font of
these gatherings.
“I feel like we’re missing something if we can’t
get all people together who suffer from gender
oppression,” Ash says. “There’s complexity to the
way that you experience privilege and oppression,
but we have to be able to hold that so we can
support each other.”
BURR
GU : ISSUE 07
 PRIVILEGES AND THREATS
Coming out as queer and openly adopting
queer-identifying labels is challenging and often
dangerous—many individuals in the United States
and around the world face enormous pressure to
live up to straight and cis-gender cultural norms. In
many places, this pressure takes the form of open,
violent discrimination. In the United States, as of
2017, people can still be fired by their employers
for being gay or transgender in 28 states; the
45th president has attempted to ban transgender
individuals from serving in the military; and
transgender individuals—especially trans women of
color—are murdered at a disproportionately high
rate. The second deadliest shooting in modern U.S.
history happened at a gay bar, the Pulse nightclub
in Orlando.
Around the world, there are more than 70 countries
with laws that criminalize being queer. In Russia,
anti-gay propaganda laws purporting to protect
the morality of children have resulted in hate
crimes against gay individuals and allow officials
56
to imprison people for being part of the queer
BELOW Photo by Ash Trull
community. In Chechnya in 2017, the round up
and torture of gay men—their crime: being gay—
sparked an international outcry.
Lana (she/her/hers)—not her real name—grew up
in Siberia and won asylum in the United States to
escape Russia’s persecution of the gay community.
“I came out at a relatively young age … I wasn’t
really thinking about the consequences of being
open. It is dangerous because you actually have
to be on high alert all the time, because you don’t
really know what’s going to happen to you. You
can be attacked by your classmates or you can
be attacked by your neighbors or people on the
street if they know that you’re gay,” Lana says. “And
moreover, nothing is going to happen to them.”
In the United States, the transgender community
has also been more visible in recent years and
there has been a reciprocal backlash. “Queerness
is much more widely accepted, trans-ness
is so misunderstood,” Justice Gaines says.
“We’re at a flashpoint for trans identity where
you’re either going to accept it and try to learn, or
you’re going to push back hard.”
Justice also emphasizes that racial identity and class
privileges significantly impact a person’s experience
of being queer. The way trans people are portrayed
in the media has a sizeable impact on public
perception, and one of the most visible transgender
women, Kardashian-connected Caitlyn Jenner,
embodies a wealthy and white experience of trans-
ness. Transgender people in the United States,
especially transgender individuals of color, are at
a high risk for extreme poverty. Poverty endangers
lives and impacts an individual’s ability to be
openly queer—financial resources often dictate
whether a trans person can afford identity-affirming
healthcare. When queer identity is only celebrated
in the context of whiteness, as happens when white
people uphold the privileges and power afforded
by white identity ahead of grappling with queer
oppression, queer people of color are harmed and
abandoned by the queer movement.
“There’s no way to escape this idea that queerness
and whiteness are tied together as long as we
have a capitalist system. Because capitalism only
benefits when something can be made white. And
as long as queerness can be made white and not
something more expansive than that, there is no
real liberatory aspect to it,” Justice says. “Now that
[queerness is] part of the mainstream culture, it also
then has to be adapted to whiteness, and that’s why
you have ‘Gays for Trump’ and you have all of these
movements that can be anything that they want and
be queer. With queer people of color, you can’t be
a queer person of color and be anything you want.”
“The existence of queer people of color is at the
crux of so many different levels of oppression, that
we recognize that you cannot separate those levels
of oppression if you want to solve a problem,”
xe says.
Lessons from these landscapes of queerness, from
those rebelling against the oppressive structures of
a tired status quo, can be drawn into envisioning a
fairer future: one that celebrates free expression,
encourages the creative questioning of what
has come before, and drives the construction of
communities that uphold the rights and life-giving
ideas of their constituents.
CONSEQUENCES FOR FUTURE-BUILDING
Queer people are actively shaping communities,
taking on diverse forms of engagement in political,
artistic, and other social and work spaces to
create the futures they seek. Queer individuals
have long pushed the boundaries of dominant
structures of society and self. But, in the age of
the Anthropocene, an era of human-accelerated
change for our physical landscape, there is a new
urgency to re-envision the practices that have
trapped us in a cycle of resource exploitation and
environmental degradation. How does the multi-
faceted landscape of queer identity translate to
new visions for our local and global communities?
“You have to be able to imagine that it’s possible
that it won’t always be this way,” Ash Trull says. “It
57
takes a lot of creation and imagination and vision.
And I think that is really deeply connected to
gender liberation for me and sexuality and all forms
of identity, that people can imagine themselves in a
liberated form.”
Steph France describes her work to write
screenplays that bring strong, genuine female
characters to the screen. She imagines action films
in which gayness is present but incidental. “A lot of
LGBT movies are about being gay—I want to see a
movie where there’s a gay couple and it’s fine,” she
says. She is working on scripts with roles for women
that break out of Hollywood tropes. “I’ve gotten
told twice during auditions, ‘um, can you just be
less—powerful?’” Steph says. “In reality, all women
are not wimpy and vulnerable and super sensitive.”
Rowena Jones adds, “If you just take the main guy
character and replace Steph with him, that’s her.”
Luisa Piña waves away the idea that being a lesbian
BURR
has dictated her career choices, but some of her
GU : ISSUE 07
 The community organizing work that Justice
Gaines does directly addresses harm experienced
by the transgender community. In 2017, RI
Jobs with Justice supported a community-wide
campaign to pass the Police-Community Relations
Act in Providence, an act that includes protections
for transgender individuals during police stops
among other rights for community members.
Now, the campaign is working to ensure the act is
implemented to full effect. Justice says xyr trans
identity is connected to xyr organizing work.

“I think the ultimate benefit I’ve seen from this work

and from these ways of pushing is a more holistic
understanding of oppression in general,” says
Justice Gaines. “So, me as a black trans woman,
I can’t separate those two things, which means I
also can’t separate sexism from transphobia from
ABOVE Photo by Ash Trull
racism, which means you can’t either.”

“This newfound ability to be like ‘we’re actually

art connects to her identity. “I’ve always known that
going to tow the line, we’re actually going to risk
I like girls, even before I came out when I was 15,
things, we’re actually going to pull down a statue,
58 it’s so normal to me and so a part of who I am, it’s
we’re actually going to climb a flagpole to take
like me having brown hair. Does me having brown
down a flag—those are things that I feel like have
hair influence where I go to school? Not really,”
been activated because of queer people of color,”
she says. “Me being a lesbian does influence
Justice says. “And, particularly, queer women of
my art, but it doesn’t dictate what I do.” In the
color, even, specifically, the Black Lives Matter
last year of her masters program, Luisa made an
movement founders.”
experimental film called Reborn about her coming-
out experience. One of her current projects weaves
Justice also hopes that the ways gender is assigned
in themes of being gay and working in the
and policed will change in the future: “If I ever have
healthcare industry.
grandchildren, I don’t want there to ever be a point
where the doctor decides what gender they are.
“It hits home for me in so many big ways,” Toby
And, even me, if I never do any medical transitions,
says of the connection between being queer and
I’m still a woman. I don’t want gender to have to be
trans and doing sexual violence prevention work.
tied to the body you were born in unless you want it
“A lot of the people who are doing this specifically
to be. For me, even transgender ultimately is a term
anti-violence work are usually white, cis-gender,
that should be phased out.”
straight women. So I feel super underrepresented.
I am very well represented in the client base, in the
The experience of being out and queer, especially
people who have experienced harm, but I am not
as a member of a queer community that is at
well-represented in the service providers,” Toby
risk of persecution, is to learn to rise up against
says. “I wanted to be able to have a say in my own
such oppression.
destiny … I wanted to be a decision-maker about
my own life.”

“I think being gay—especially if you’re persecuted
or you’re bullied and you decide to come forward
and use your own experiences and trauma to
change the world for other people—that has
everything to do with the way that you are and the
fact that you’re gay,” Lana says.
“Sooner or later Russia’s going to get there,” Lana
says, describing a world in which gayness is so
normal and accepted that people have no fear
of losing their rights, a world in which a stranger
wouldn’t automatically assume that every woman
must be with a man. “The question is when and
how many people will die in between … we’re not
there yet.”
The impacts of queer identity are playing out in
physical spaces—from human rights’ rallies to new
stories for film scripts to the radical act of small-
scale, local, holistic farming.
“It’s the only reasonable, sustainable future—if
we all grow food everywhere,” Lindsey Medeiros
says. “The more that we learn about where our
food actually comes from, the more we learn about
how unjust it all is, the whole system—from the
way that the practices of industrial agriculture is
stripping the soil and essentially uses slave labor
ABOVE Art by Lindsey Medeiros
and is poisoning watersheds, land, and air. Growing
it where we live and eating that food is just an
immediate connection to the earth—
you’re grounded.”
Lindsey has noticed more queer people joining 59
the farming community. It might not be a
coincidence. “If you’re used to rebelling against
gender stereotypes or gender norms or who you’re
supposed to love or what you’re supposed to do
with your body, you’re also open to the idea of
rebelling against just the basic thing, food in your
mouth, four times a day, and where that’s coming
from and who makes it,” she says. “It is kind of
a rebellion.”
Of what consequence is the queer rebellion, of
purple lipstick against a bearded face, of two
women locked in an embrace, of naming ourselves
and asking that others call us by our names—of
being open to the idea that there is a brighter
future ahead for the building? What we have is not
enough. Every furrowed brow, every questioning
look, every life-threatening act of being—that is
in itself an act of facing down the old guard, of
fearlessly bucking broken trends and creating the
vessels in which our communities can live
out loud.
BURR
GU : ISSUE 07
 09 LOOKING AT L ANDSCAPE
REBECCA PARTRIDGE

What does it mean to look at a landscape? Furthermore, in the

multidisciplinary field of contemporary artistic practice, can looking
at and painting a landscape be a consequent act?

60 There are two elements to this discussion: landscape—which is

external, and looking—which is both the lens through which we
perceive the landscape and the act through which we engage
with it. In my practice as a painter I first go out into the landscape,
often walking great distances with my camera. Here I am looking,
returning with images which assist me to occupy these landscapes
in the space of my own studio.

RIGHT Panel Paintings

Forest Blizzard Night
Oil on birch ply panel
Each 70 x 56cm, 2015
(Right panel, part of a diptych)
 61

PARTRIDGE

GU : ISSUE 07
 The landscapes I depict are remote; they are border
zones where human narrative is absent, as well as
places in which we become more aware of our own
perceptions. I see these ambivalent, empty spaces
as a place from within from which to explore very
basic ontological ideas. Through the observation
of landscapes that appear out of reach, there is
an attempt to pull apart the difference between
‘landscape’ and ‘nature,’ that which we perceive
and that which exists beyond us.

The landscapes I depict are remote;

they are border zones where human
narrative is absent ...
DAY PART 1, I

62

DAY PART 2, I DAY PART 2, II

NIGHT PART 1, I NIGHT PART 1, II NIGHT PART 1, III

 THIS SPREAD
Notes on the Sea
Day and Night
Oil on birch ply
Each 70 x 56cm, 2014

DAY PART 1, II DAY PART 1, III

The dialogue that happens through the process

of looking and painting is a dialogue about
the objective world outside and my subjective
responses to it. Both looking at and recording the
landscape are consequent acts. I aim to express
certain values through actions in the studio. At
the root of everything, in making an art work, it
63
is the intention that comes through. Presence
and attention, curiosity and engagement, are all
attitudes I aim to embody through physical making.
What I hope, then, is that my experience of looking
at landscape is carried into the experience of
looking at the paintings.

DAY PART 2, III

PARTRIDGE

NIGHT PART 2, I NIGHT PART 2, II NIGHT PART 2, III

GU : ISSUE 07
 10
64
ABOVE Large-scale
infrastructure projects are
planned throughout Colombia
to reinforce projects of
modernity and production
L AND AND THE SEAMS
OF COLONIALISM
ZANNAH MATSON
CHALLENGING THE COLONIAL UNDERL AY
OF L ANDSCAPE DESIGN PROCESS
All land is land of consequence. While sites that bear the
deleterious impacts of industrial effluents, resource depletion,
and widespread conflict directly express past use and misuse,
the systems developed to control and partition land underlay
all territories as latent networks of consequence. As designers,
it is essential that we commit to unearthing and making visible
these systems of control in the work that we do, questioning the
boundaries of land and characteristics of landscape that have
long been constructed to appear as innate. This process begins
with a recognition that almost all of the land on which we operate
has been the site of colonization, and most land continues to be
organized through colonial patterns of occupation.

The traces of these colonial legacies have often
become the seams of visible contestation,
evidenced by the continued protests over
infrastructure development across Indigenous
sacred sites in the United States. At Standing
Rock, Water Protectors have been resisting the
construction of a pipeline through land with deep
significance to ecological and human health,
spiritual practice, and prolonged histories of
occupation. Indigenous Hawaiians have shut down
1
the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope
on Mauna Kea, contesting the establishment of
space infrastructure on a culturally and ecologically
significant site. Their acts undermine the hegemony
of the settler colonial occupation that persists on
their land. As just two examples of the tension
2
LEFT Highly unequal
land distribution in the
country, coupled with
65
displacement during
conflict, has led to the
concentration of land to
be used for agroindustry
plantations, such as
oil palm
that defines land in the settler colonial state, these
powerful acts of Indigenous refusal are essential
to making visible the continued logics of colonial
land control.3 Despite the significant ruptures in
the status quo that these examples provide, there
also are many contexts in which the legacies of
colonization and continued dispossession are
less visible. Instead, the insidious foundations
of how land and landscape are categorized and
commodified often persist largely unchallenged.
In order to spatialize this discourse within a specific
site, I turn to the context of Colombia’s eastern
piedmont region to consider the ways in which
MATSON
landscape typologies have been constructed
through colonial mapping and natural history
GU : ISSUE 07
 expeditions. The prolonged effects of colonization
endure in Colombia, both through the construction
of the country into regions, and through deeply
unequal systems of land tenure and property
ownership. By emphasizing this location specifically,
I do not intend to suggest that this case is
representative of all contexts, nor do I consider this
site exceptional in its relation to larger patterns of
hegemonic control. Rather, I turn to an examination
of this region to indicate both the potential and
possible approaches for critical site research within
the design disciplines.
The early scientific and state-building expeditions
to claim the territory of present day Colombia
employed landscape painting traditions that fixed
landscape typologies into place, subsequently
categorizing Indigenous populations according
to imagined geographies. While Alexander von
Humboldt’s travels—in the land that is now known
as Colombia—are well documented, the most
significant of these projects was the Comisión
Corográfica de Nueva Granada. Led by Augustin
66
Codazzi, the Commission produced maps, written
accounts, and a series of watercolor paintings that
classified landscapes and divided the country into
distinctive regions. Images from this expedition
4
to the Amazon, painted in what is present day
Caquetá, depict lush vegetation in riverside scenes.
Indigenous people are treated as a part of the
landscape, coding both bodies and landscapes
as ‘other.’ Analyzing this archive, historian Nancy
Appelbaum has suggested that the Commission’s
work in the Eastern Plains and the Amazon
represented an ‘ethnographic cartography’ that,
while indebted to the local knowledge of people
that lived in these regions, sought to justify their
subjugation and the control of territory by the newly
formed state. 5
While these expeditions produced perspectival
images of the landscape, they also influenced the
establishment of colonial structures of land tenure.
Lands in Eastern Colombia were idealized through
representations as territories suited to cattle
production or verdant landscapes of bounty for
crop production.
These representational
narratives can still be
read in arrangements
of land ownership into
haciendas and more
contemporary
accumulations for
agroforestry and oil
palm plantations.
These demarcations
of land and its
parceling into
unequal systems of
ownership for the
production of capital are now
fundamental to our understanding of site. As
designers, the lot lines derived from surveys and
ownership deeds are the starting point for our
drawings. If left unchallenged, the ordering power
of the colonial gaze and unequal traditions of land
accumulation will and do persist in the very base
map that underlays our designs.
Moving from this specific case to its broader
significance for lands of consequence, there is
an imperative for design to research, represent,
and challenge the multiple and conflicting
histories of site. It is important that we consider
these contested places as more than composed
of historic overlays through time, and instead
understand that amplifying underprivileged
narratives is necessary to effectively counter the
dominant histories of site. While the task is certainly
a difficult one that stretches into some of the very
foundations of our design process, the orientation
and lineage of design disciplines make them adept
at interrogating the status quo and critiquing that
which has been constructed as natural. To move
beyond the colonial perspectives of the sites we
operate on, it is necessary that we challenge the
visual archives from which we derive our materials,
considering alternative locations to find base
information and critically speculating about the
voices that are missing from the site research we
have been doing. Considering the limitations of

ABOVE Highway development through the landscapes of Eastern Colombia seek to materially connect this region to national and
international markets, while they also serve as important symbolic constructions that constitute this region as part of the national imaginary.
our research ultimately requires a humility and
recognition of our positionality as designers.
This positionality must be layered, intersectional,
and complex. It will be established not solely by
indicating our identities, but also through honesty
about the institutions, firms, governments, and
interests that we have come to accept, and in turn
how this acceptance has shaped the histories and
priorities of site design.
67
ENDNOTES
1 Brave Noisecat, J, and A. Spice. “A History and Future of Resistance.”
Jacobin Magazine, 2016. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/09/standing-
rock-dakota-access-pipeline-protest/
2 Long, K. K. Hawai’i: Mauna Kea, “Hawaiian Independence and the Politics
of Jurisdiction.” The Funambulist Magazine, January/February 2017: 14–19.
3 Nunn, N, and Z. Matson. “Space Infrastructure, Empire, and the Final
Frontier: What the Mauna Kea Land Defenders teach use about colonial
totality.” Society and Space Online, Investigating Infrastructure Forum, 2017.
http://societyandspace.org/2017/10/03/investigating-infrastructures-a-forum/
4 Codazzi, A, and C.A. Domínguez. Obras completas de la Comisión
Corográfica: geografía física y política de la Confederación Granadina.
COAMA-Unión Europea, 2002.
5 Appelbaum, N. P. Mapping the Country of Regions: The Chorographic
MATSON
Commission of Nineteenth-Century Colombia. UNC Press Books, 2016.
GU : ISSUE 07
 11 A POST-NATIVE WORLD
MARK WESSELS

Step out of a taxi in Hong Kong. Surface from the London

Underground onto High Street. Look down the wide avenues
of Buenos Aires, Sydney, or Johannesburg, and you’ll see it: the
London plane tree (Platanus x hispanica), with its mottled gray-
white bark and arching branches, thrives in large cities around the
world, in highly polluted air and compacted soils. It’s prized in Paris
for its ability to survive cold winters and in Australia for outlasting
hot summers. It’s almost as if it were designed to thrive in the city.
So, where does this miracle tree come from?

Nowhere. The London plane tree is not native to London, nor

anywhere else for that matter. It’s a hybrid—the offspring of an
Oriental plane tree (Platanus orientalis) and an American sycamore
(Platanus occidentalis). It ‘evolved’ in 16th or 17th century Europe
in the hands of an enterprising plant breeder. The new species
quickly gained popularity as a tough street tree in Europe, and in
68
European colonies around the world. Native to nowhere, the tree
thrived everywhere.

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In preparation for his 2017 book, The World’s Urban
Forests, Professor Joe McBride traveled to 33 cities
selected to represent the world’s 11 biomes. He
found the London plane tree in major cities across
six of these eleven biomes. Far exceeding the
1 the environmental conditions for which native
range of either of its parents, the London plane
grows vigorously in urban environments that kill
most trees. And, despite the declining populations
of its parents, the London plane will continue to
grow as climate change and urbanization advance.
The idea of the London plane tree (a tree native
to nowhere) thriving in global cities (a novel
ecosystem) invites us to reconsider how we
select plant species for urban sites. This article
argues that ideas of nativeness are rapidly losing
relevance to our profession as we enter a world
irreversibly altered by human activity. Further, the
consequences of clinging to nativeness in a post-
native world are far worse than the consequences
of embracing global biodiversity in the
designed landscape.
LEFT The hybrid London plane tree (Platanus x hispanica)
thrives in many biomes. Its potential range includes most of the
world’s major cities.
ABOVE A London plane tree in an urban environment
CITIES AS HARBINGERS OF A
POST-NATIVE WORLD
Native plant enthusiasts argue that native plants
have evolved for thousands of years to be
optimized for their environments. This is based on
the assumption that environmental factors like soil
type, climate, and ecological communities change
very slowly, at the rate of geologic time. The fitness
advantage of native plants depends on a relatively
static, unchanging environment.
Yet cities are anything but static. Urban soils
are altered by construction, compaction, and
contamination. Impermeable surfaces and water
infrastructure change urban hydrology. Urban heat
island effect and microclimates affect soil and air
temperatures. Cities are defined more by how
urban they are than by where on the planet they
are located. A tree adapted to urban environments,
for example, is much more likely to flourish in San
Francisco than one adapted to coastal dunes. In
short, cities are post-native; they no longer reflect 69
plants evolved. They are something new.
Cities are not the only places irreversibly altered
by human activity. Human influence ripples out
through resource extraction, food and energy
production, and global climate change. Cities are
already several degrees warmer than their historical
temperatures, and many native plants cannot
survive in this altered environment. Climate models
predict several degrees of warming globally in
the next 50 years. Native plants face challenges in
urban settings today, and 50 years from now they
will face challenges everywhere. As the effects of
climate change spread beyond cities, landscape
architects will need to move beyond geographic
provenance to find plants adapted to a post-
native world.
WESSELS
GU : ISSUE 07
 TEMPERATURE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN URBAN & VEGETATED
LAND DUE TO IMPERVIOUS
SURFACE AREA

CHANGE IN AVERAGE
SURFACE TEMPERATURE
(1986-2005 TO 2081-2100)

70

ABOVE Cities are already irreversibly altered from their natural state. By the time the trees we plant today mature, the world will have
warmed by several degrees. Cities are a harbinger of things to come. Top image source: “Impact of Urbanization on US Surface Climate.”2
Bottom image source: IPCC, 2013: Summary for Policymakers.3

A CASE STUDY IN NATIVE FRAGILITY: parasitica, which was introduced from the
AMERICAN CHESTNUT, ELM, AND ASH planting of non-native Japanese chestnuts
(Castanea crenata).
Prized for its timber and as a source of food
for people and animals, the American chestnut
In the early 20th century, the chestnut blight was
(Castanea dentata) once made up 20% of the
described using the narrative of a foreign invader
trees in the Appalachian forest. Due to the value
decimating American trees. In a 1915 article in
of its wood, nuts, and shade, it was the most
American Forestry, Samuel Detwiler wrote, “Less
economically and ecologically important tree in
than fifteen years ago the chestnut blight was
much of the eastern United States.4 In 1904, a
unknown to the scientist or the woodsman. Seven
forester in the Bronx, New York, noticed a large
years after the discovery, in 1904, near New York
number of chestnuts under his care were dying
City, of this undesirable alien from Northern China
from an unknown blight. By 1912, all of the chestnut
it was conservatively estimated to have done
trees in New York City were dead, and over the
$25,000,000 worth of damage ... It is thought that it
following three decades, the blight spread to wipe
will all but exterminate the chestnut in the Northern
out nearly every American chestnut, leading to an
States ... and may invade the South with like
effective extinction of the species.5 The chestnut
disastrous results.”6
blight was caused by the fungus, Cryphonectria
‘Undesirable alien,’ ‘exterminate,’ and ‘invade’ expect to see trees succumbing to foreign invaders,
framed the blight as a human-generated attack human action, and differences in precipitation at
against nature and an unnatural abomination an unprecedented rate. No amount of caution and
that had to be prevented at all costs. The U.S. prudence will protect us from this type of disaster.
government responded by felling thousands of
acres of chestnut trees, in the hopes of stopping Should we keep trying to turn back the clock,
the spread of the disease, and by passing the Plant prevent change, and restore ecological systems
Quarantine Act in 1912 to prevent a repeat of this that are no longer suited to an altered
disaster. Additional resources were poured into
7
environment? Or will we finally embrace and take
plant pathology, development of fungicides, and responsibility for our role as a disruptive species
monitoring of forest health. The United States and ecosystem engineers?
did everything in its power to protect the natives
against foreign invaders. DIVERSITY OF APPROACHES VS.
SINGLE STRATEGY
But then it happened again. In 1928, Dutch
Globalization has irreversibly altered the planet,
Elm Disease swept through the United States,
but it may also hold the key to surviving climate
eventually resulting in the loss of 75% of American
change. Designers today have unprecedented
elms.8 The country was heavily invested in the elm;
access to plants from around the world. For
many American cities had planted long, important
millennia, plants have been continuously evolving
streets exclusively with elm trees. When Dutch Elm
new, more efficient ways to survive in an astounding
Disease hit these streets it rapidly decimated the
array of environmental conditions. In a post-native
population, leaving main streets entirely devoid of
world, we will have to reconsider the idea that each
trees and denuding neighborhoods over the course
plant is custom-evolved for a particular place on the 71
of a few years. Again, the cause of the outbreak
earth, and instead think of global biodiversity as a
was determined to be a fungal pathogen from Asia.
library of adaptation. This library holds the key to
Again, the disease was framed as a battle against a
successful planting in urban areas today, and hope
foreign invader, and again America lost.
for an uncertain future.

In recent years, emerald ash borer, pine pitch

What I’m suggesting is that we embrace global
beetle, sudden oak death, and many other blights
biodiversity while we still have it; that our cities
have threatened similar calamities. It has become
become hotbeds of plant species richness,
clear that this is not a one-time threat, but an
hybridization, and cross-pollination; that we start
occurrence that is increasing in frequency. As
a thousand divergent experiments, in small and
tree species become more stressed by climate
controlled ways; and that we embrace this moment
change and urbanization, we can expect additional
of globalization to produce an unprecedented
epidemics. The strategy of trying to prevent and
explosion of diversity with which we can begin
reverse these epidemics has not worked in the past,
to replant and repopulate this irreversibly
and is even less likely to work in a volatile future.
altered planet.

Yes, these changes are human-caused. But they are

The resilience of natural systems lies in diversity,
not caused by the planting of non-native species;
redundancy, and flexibility. Individual plants, and
they are the result of much larger, irreversible
even individual species, die off frequently, but there
changes in the movement of goods and levels of
is always another individual or another species to
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We cannot
fill the void. Relying on a small set of native trees
address this change by being more cautious.
WESSELS

without embracing the redundancy and diversity of

With the rate that our climate is changing, we can
natural systems is a recipe for disaster.

GU : ISSUE 07
 THE CONSEQUENCES OF
NATIVE PLANT DOGMA
To fully grasp the consequences of relying on
native plantings, imagine for a moment that you
are a landscape architect in Northern California.
You’re not a native plant purist, but you use native
plants in most of your projects because they do
well, you know them, and they’re a built-in selling
point for your clients. Imagine a recent project
where native trees are important to the scheme,
and now imagine sudden oak death wipes out
every coast live oak on the project. Imagine that
all your drought-stressed redwoods die from
botryosphaeria. Now, extend this nightmare to
the rest of your built projects. Put yourself into this
world I’m describing—one where the two native
trees that we depend on so heavily are gone. It’s a
bleak and apocalyptic place. Add to that the loss of
native forests in surrounding areas, and it’s looking
like we’ve massively failed at our mission.
The biggest danger in using only native plants
72 in the designed landscape is that we are putting
all of our eggs in one basket. In Northern
California, there are a handful of native trees that
are commercially available and viable in urban
environments. The result of this is that many
landscapes are limited to the same group of three
to five trees.
The consequences of holding fast to native plant
dogma in a rapidly changing world are grave. As
the climate changes and we hold plants static, we
are pushing the ecosystems on which we depend
to mass extinction. Our desire to undo the damage
that our species has caused to this planet is causing
us to hide our heads in the sand and hope the
problem goes away. It’s time we take responsibility
for our role and accept the consequences of our
actions. There is no going back. However, if we
embrace the forces of nature (diversity, evolution,
creativity) rather than clinging to the image of
nature, we can move into an unpredictable future
with hope. If we learn to recruit the tenacity of
nature as an ally, rather than framing it as an enemy,
we can use its incredible diversity to build robust
urban ecologies that will carry us through the
changes ahead.
PLANTING A POST-NATIVE WORLD
Abandon the image of nature.
We fetishize native plants, restoration of native
ecologies, and the wild. But trying to restore
a snapshot of a plant community in a rapidly
changing world is futile. It requires massive human
intervention and resources. In order to recreate an
image of untouched nature, we fight against the
forces of nature. Instead, we should harness
these forces.
Embrace the forces of nature.
Nature fights adversity with diversity and evolution.
It tries a million strategies at once, and those
that succeed are replicated and iterated, while
those that fail are rapidly scrapped. Nature is
not conservative; it is brutally honest and highly
experimental.
Become a force of nature.
As landscape architects, we live in fear. We fear
the consequences of our choices, and that others
will see us as incompetent, immoral, or imprudent.
But the consequences of our collective timidity far
outweigh the potential consequences of
radical action.
ENDNOTES
1 McBride, Joe. The World’s Urban Forests: History, Composition, Design,
Function and Management. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2017.
2 L. Bounoua, et al. “Impact of Urbanization on US Surface Climate.”
Environmental Research Letters 10, no. 8 (2015): 084010.
3 T.F. Stocker, et.al. “Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basics.”
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press,
2013.
4 Davis, D.E. “Historical significance of American chestnut to Appalachian
culture and ecology.” Proceedings of the conference on restoration of
American chestnut to forest lands, Steiner, K.C. and J.E. Carlson (eds.), 2005.
5 Freinkel, Susan. American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a
Perfect Tree. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
6 Detwiler, Samuel. “The American Chestnut Tree: Identification and
Characteristics.” American Forestry 21, no. 362 (1915): 957-959.
7 Waterworth, H. E. and G. A. White. “Plant Introductions and Quarantine:
the need for both.” Plant Diseases 66 (1982): 87-90.
8 “New Varieties of Elm Raise Hope of Rebirth For Devastated Tree.” New
York Times, Dec. 1989.
12 URBAN SENSORIUM:
PROJECTING A NEAR FUTURE FOR
5 CITIES IN 5 SENSES ON 5 MAPS

EMILY SCHLICKMAN & ANYA DOMLESKY

In 2016, we began a study to more systematically explore the future

of the built environment in cities. From our perspective as designers
heading the innovation lab, XL, at SWA Group, we wanted to gain
insight into what the near future might look like for the cities that
we design for. Not only were we thinking about the implications for
our design of long-life, public realm, urban sites, but also our large-
scale urban design and planning projects, where changes in land use,
infrastructure, and mobility play important roles.

We started with cities that, as a firm, we know most intimately, cities

that our designers live and work in every day. We narrowed the list to
five cities, all with strong economic growth and international influence.1
The group includes two global giants, New York and Los Angeles; two
knowledge capitals, San Francisco and Houston; and an Asian anchor,
Shanghai. Once we identified these five case studies, we collected the 73
knowledge of our locally-based colleagues, mapped indicators, and
conducted fieldwork. We isolated major drivers of change in each city—
sometimes a policy decision, a shift in material or technology, or most
often, a change in environment. The goal was to bring into focus larger
drivers of change at the municipal level, to make them recognizable. We
tied each driver to a small and very specific point—the body, the five
senses, and from there to a physical object that produces an experience
of sight, smell, touch, sound, or taste. Sections of these stories and
scenarios follow here, in order by longitude, east to west from the
prime meridian.2

As designers, this foresight study helped us to think toward possible

constructions of the built environment and changed economies—not
only the ones we know today, but those that are forming, and those we
do not yet know. Infrastructure, transit, food systems, ecology, energy,
economy, and climate—the things that affect the built environment—
are large-scale, require abstract thinking, and planning for the long
term in order not to be purely reactive to systemic shocks. Grounding
SCHLICKMAN & DOMLESKY

these issues in the bodily senses, in human experience, and in particular

objects, makes the abstract tangible. By grounding speculation in the
familiar, we can follow our accustomed things into multiple futures,
multiple scenarios—ones we still have agency in shaping. In this way, we
can be ‘in touch’ with the near future.

GU : ISSUE 07
 THE FUTURE
OF NEW YORK
COULD BE
BRIGHT
74
The New York City
Department of Transportation
operates the most extensive lighting system in the
United States, with over 250,000 street lights in its
five boroughs.3 Near the end of Mayor Michael
Bloomberg’s administration in 2013, city officials
approved a $76 million project to retrofit these
luminaires with energy-efficient light-emitting
diodes (LEDs), in hopes of saving the city millions
of dollars in energy and maintenance costs every
year. The introduction of LEDs represents a major
shift in illumination technology; the chips last up
to four times longer than traditional light sources,
produce two to three times more light per watt,
spread illumination more evenly, and emit a
brighter and whiter light with higher temperature
ratings, measured in degrees Kelvin. NYC’s streets
are staying brighter for longer; residents who have
compared the lighting to “a strip mall in outer
space” and “a prison yard” already feel the
4
effects of this illuminated future—cold,
unflattering, too bright.
ABOVE Dark spots indicate areas in New York we project
could be bright in the future due to changes in energy use. Base
data acquired from NASA’s International Space Station aerial
photography archives.
In 2016, a team of researchers from the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the
Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute
predicted an increase in worldwide light pollution
if LEDs continue to be adopted globally, given
that blue wavelengths are more easily scattered by
the earth’s atmosphere and more easily perceived
by the human eye.5 While this brighter future
could result in improved pedestrian security and
reduced criminal offenses, it could also result in
negative health outcomes. The American Medical
Association recently revealed a link between LED
light and a decrease in melatonin production.6
Or, the future of New York could be dark. A rise
in dark-sky proponents pushing to reduce light
pollution or advancements resulting in lower Kelvin
LEDs could darken New York’s nights.
Houston, a city defined by sprawl, is experiencing
increased temperatures and precipitation.
According to Climate Central, the average summer
temperature is 13°F higher in the city than in nearby
rural areas, and the metropolitan area is seeing
a 167% increase in heavy downpours.7 Recently,
ecologists have discovered that non-native, or
so-called invasive plants—often from subtropical
or tropical regions—are better able to respond to
these climatic changes than those endemic to the
region. Many of these spontaneous urban plants
8 9
are shifting their flowering schedule, allowing them
to shade out their competition and giving them
access to more water, nutrients, and pollinators.
Recently, a citizen science program, called The
Invaders of Texas, has emerged, training volunteers
to identify species in their neighborhoods and
add them to an online database. A number of
the newly recorded plant species are highly
BELOW Dark spots indicate areas in Houston we project could
be fragrant in the future due to changes in ecology. Base data
acquired from Harris County’s vacant parcel information.
THE FUTURE
OF HOUSTON
COULD BE
FRAGRANT
fragrant, many with a sweet, pleasant odor profile.
Examples include Japanese honeysuckle with an
overpowering sugary and lemony perfume, and the
Kudzu with notes of artificial grape flavoring.
Since Houston has no formal land use codes,
the city is a mosaic of residences, warehouses,
and industrial areas, with vacant lots dispersed
throughout. In the future, many of these
abandoned parcels could become overgrown with
spontaneous, opportunistic vegetation, suffusing
the city with a sweet-smelling perfume.
Or, the future of Houston could be less fragrant.
A pilot program aimed at tackling the issue of
overgrown lots, managed by the Department of
Neighborhoods’ Inspections and Public Service
Division, could keep the invasive species, and their
fragrances, at bay.
75
SCHLICKMAN & DOMLESKY
GU : ISSUE 07
 In recent years, Los Angeles has been among the top cities with the highest THE FUTURE
car sales, the highest number of hours spent in traffic, the largest municipal
OF LOS ANGELES
street system in the U.S., and the highest number of lanes in an urban
highway. And all those cars on the highway make noise. An apartment next COULD BE
to a freeway registers at about 90 decibels, or ‘very loud’—the same range as
a gas lawn mower at three feet. In an effort to reduce decibel
levels and save scarce highway improvement dollars,
the California Department of Transportation
(Caltrans) has taken an interest in “quiet
pavements” in lieu of noise walls. From
2002-2006, Caltrans built and tested
five sections of quiet pavement north
of L.A., with the hope of getting the
data incorporated into a highway
traffic noise prediction model that
maps decibel levels at an urban
scale.10 Compared to Caltrans’ normal
dense graded hot mix asphalt (HMA), open-
graded friction courses (OGFC) and rubberized
asphalt concrete were better at reducing noise
in the tests, according to the Volpe National
Transportation Systems Center.11 Out of 100
different pavement samples from Caltrans’
76
pavement noise database, testing in 2005 showed that
the loudest pavements and the quietest differed by as much as
16 decibels—the difference in noise level between the inside of
a subway car and a live rock concert.

In March 2017, the Los Angeles Times reported that between 2005 and
2015, the number of building permits L.A. granted increased sharply
within 1,000 feet of freeways. In 2015 alone, the city issued building permits
for 4,300 homes near freeways—more than in any year over the last decade.12
Miles of freeway and expressway are already becoming more desirable
areas for living and easier to permit. More residential density next to major
thoroughfares could create a new urban form—thin linear villages situated in
the former buffer areas or odd lots between inaccessible, elevated highways
and existing neighborhood grids. With the addition of quiet pavements,
existing property values could increase, and reduced noise could mean
better health outcomes for those already living nearby.13

Or, the future of L.A. could be loud, regardless of the

introduction of quiet pavements. Predictions of
population growth for the city are high,14 which could
mean more car ownership, higher commute times, ABOVE Dark spots indicate areas in Los Angeles we project

and additional highway building. could be quiet in the future due to changes in transit. Base
data acquired from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics’
National Transportation Noise Map.
 THE FUTURE
OF SAN
FR ANCISCO
COULD BE
DRY
In San Francisco, a typical summer day starts with
a heavy blanket of fog streaming into the bay. It
dissipates for a few hours, then in late afternoon,
it rolls in again. The iconic fog can be attributed
to a dramatic temperature differential between
the Pacific Ocean and the inland Central Valley.
According to UC Berkeley professor Todd Dawson,
this pattern is beginning to shift, with a reduction
in summer fog due to climate change.15 Warmer
temperatures along the coast are heating up the
surface of the ocean, weakening the upwelling
effect, and in turn, decreasing the amount of fog
produced. This shift could have a profound impact
on Bay Area ecologies. Since the region only
receives an average of about 20 inches of rain a
year, many plants rely on the absorption of airborne
moisture for survival.
77
A drier, sunnier San Francisco might have broader
effects beyond shifting regional ecologies. The fog
is often seen as an unexpected nuisance by summer
visitors; miserably cold tourists on open air double
decker buses are a common sight. A reduction in
summer fog could translate to increased tourism for
the region.
Or, the future of San Francisco could be wet. Even
if Bay Area summers shift towards drier, sunnier
weather due to climate change, more extreme
winter storms could be ahead for the state.16
SCHLICKMAN & DOMLESKY
ABOVE Dark spots indicate zones in the San Francisco Bay Area
we project could be dry in the future due to changes in climate.
Base data acquired from a U.S. Geological Survey study of fog
belts along the California coast.
GU : ISSUE 07
 Small-scale agriculture has traditionally dominated
the landscape of outer Shanghai. However, local
vegetable production has decreased 45% since
the 1980s. The municipal government of Shanghai
has made a renewed effort to safeguard food
self-reliance since 2000 by regulating land use
to preserve farmland and launching a number
of programs to support farming in the city.17
Sometimes referred to as planning for a ‘green
ring,’ authorities see agriculture as a way of also
preserving green space.18 At the same time, over
the past five years, eight of the twelve highest
temperatures recorded over the past century in
the city have been set, according to the Shanghai
Meteorological Bureau. While Shanghai is
19
classified as having a humid subtropical climate
with four distinct seasons, light rains in the normal
wet season have decreased over the past years.20
Urban farmers may soon have to shift from crops
such as green leafy vegetables to heat-adapted
crops like hot chili peppers.
78
A shift in foodways and eating habits might come
with health benefits for the Shanghainese. A 2015
study in the BMJ suggests spicy food may have
health benefits ranging from boosting metabolism
to reducing the risk of heart disease.21 If a spicier
diet contributes to longevity, Shanghai could
experience more development pressure as people
live longer, adding to population increases from
rural migrants and rising birth rates.
Or, the future of Shanghai could be mild. If air
quality declines further, there could be a different
crop shift; shade-loving plants such as chard and
cabbage might be better adapted to grow in a
smog-laden environment.
BELOW Dark spots indicate areas in Shanghai we project could
be spicy in the future due to changes in food. Base data acquired
from the 2020 Plan of Shanghai Central City.
THE FUTURE
OF SHANGHAI
COULD BE
SPICY
EXHIBITION OPENING Urban Sensorium at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR)
ENDNOTES
1 Trujillo, Jesus Leal, and Joseph Parilla. “Redefining Global Cities: The
Seven Types of Metro Economies.” The Brookings Institution, 2016.
2 For the full scenarios and alternate scenarios, see
www.urbansensoriumexhibition.com.
3 “Green Light: Sustainable Street Lighting.” New York City Department of
Transportation, September 2009.
4 Chaban, Matt. “LED Streetlights in Brooklyn Are Saving Energy but
Exhausting Residents.” New York Times, March 23, 2015.
5 Panko, Ben. “Nighttime light pollution covers nearly 80% of the globe.”
Science Magazine, June 10, 2016.
6 “AMA Adopts Guidance to Reduce Harm from High Intensity Street
Lights.” American Medical Association, June 14, 2016.
7 “Across U.S., Heaviest Downpours on the Rise.” Climate Central, May 27,
2015.
8 Wolkovich, Elizabeth, et al. “Temperature-dependent shifts in phenology
contribute to the success of exotic species with climate change.” American
Journal of Botany 100, no. 7 (2013): 1-15.
9 Peter Del Tredici has worked to re-term invasives as “spontaneous
vegetation.” See https://placesjournal.org/article/the-flora-of-the-future/.
10 Rymer, Bruce, and Paul Donavan. “California Tests Show Pavement
Selection Influences Noise Levels.” Hot Mix Asphalt Technology (Nov./Dec.
2005): 25-33.
11 Rochat, Judith L. “Volpe Center Updates on Tire/Pavement Noise
Studies.” Transportation Research Board ADC40 Summer Meeting,
July 2007.
12 Barboza, Tony, and Jon Schleuss. “L.A. Keeps Building Near Freeways,
Even Though Living There Makes People Sick.” LA Times, March 2, 2017.
79
13 Kihlman, Tor, Kropp, Wolfgang, and William Lang. “Quieter Cities of
the Future: Lessening the Severe Health Effects of Traffic Noise in Cities by
Emissions Reductions.” International Council of Academies of Engineering
and Technological Sciences, May 2014.
14 Lu, Wei. “Densest Cities in 2025.” Bloomberg, September 12, 2014.
15 Johnstone, James, and Todd Dawson. “Climatic context and ecological
implications of summer fog decline in the coast redwood region.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 2010.
16 Xiang, Gao, et al. “21st Century Changes in U.S. Regional Heavy
Precipitation Frequency Based on Resolved Atmospheric Patterns.” Journal
of Climate 30 (2017): 2501-2521.
17 Jacobson, Martin. “Shanghai Urban Farming.” World Wildlife
Foundation, March 1, 2012.
18 Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center. Visited December 17, 2016.
http://www.supec.org/
19 “Hottest Day Ever in Shanghai as Heat Wave Bakes China.” Agence
France-Presse, July 21, 2017.
20 Tian, Zhan, Chen, Baode, and Jianguo Tan. “Climate Change in Mega-
City Shanghai and its Impacts.” Impacts of Climate Change on Future
Societies Workshop. Australia-China Science and Technology Week,
August 2010.
SCHLICKMAN & DOMLESKY
21 Lv, Jun, et al. “Consumption of Spicy Foods and Total and Cause
Specific Mortality: Population Based Cohort Study.” BMJ, August 4, 2015;
351:h3942.
Map data sources: NASA, U.S. Bureau of Transportation, U.S. Geological
Survey, Federal Highway Authority, Harris County, Shanghai municipal
government.
GU : ISSUE 07
 13 UN-NATUR AL GENER ATION
ETHAN MCKNIGHT

Industrial sites are indicative of the compression of time

Daily consumption of Coal
3,500 tons
Annual Consumption of Coal
980,000 tons
Total Historic Consumption
106,820,000 tons
and material scales that define our age. They collect vast
amounts of materials from distant and boundless landscapes
and process them briefly before dispersing them again to
far-flung locations. The materials they transform often have
origins millions of years in the past, and their by-products
and effects project millions of years into the future; they are
consequences of millennia past and profoundly consequential
to future millennia. They present perhaps the most powerful
and tangible opportunity to explore and communicate the
consequences of the Anthropocene, a world driven by human
geologic agency.

However, our growing fascination with post-industrial spaces

in the design community has been more preoccupied with
the aesthetic character and cultural histories of these sites,
80
rather than the consequences they embody. Driven by historic
Fisk Station Area preservation guidelines that prioritize form and architecture,
Boundaries
35 Acres rather than the ramifications of industrial processes and
landscape—not to mention the social and cultural realities
of industrial sites—these adaptive reuse projects too
often feature mere facades of former conditions stuffed
with incongruous programming. Yoga studios,
coffee shops, and condos are dropped into the
empty shells of former industry. These adaptive
reuse projects represent a missed opportunity to
communicate the repercussions of these sites on
social, ecological, and cultural communities, and
especially the consequences they drive hundreds of
years into the future.

The iconic landscapes of post-industrial design fail

to fully acknowledge the hidden impacts of their
industrial operations. They succeed admirably
in providing unique and intense experiences by
glorifying the scope of production and capitalizing
on the subliminal awe of infrastructure, complexity,
and scale. What is missing, crucially, is the impact of
these industrial activities.

For instance, consider the Kokerie Zollverein, a

UNESCO World Heritage Site in Essen, Germany,
deemed such because of both its unique aesthetic
qualities and its importance to the cultural history
of the Ruhr Valley. The site design provides a
thoughtful combination of preservation and
adaptation by highlighting its historical significance
through new programming, both temporary and
permanent. The museum in particular does a
magnificent job of contextualizing the industrial
dominion of the Ruhr region within its political,
cultural, and natural histories and their
intersecting timelines.
While Zollverein’s historical significance is
unmistakable, the project lacks critical recognition
of the future of a place, which exists today solely
because billions of tons of organic material were
removed from the ground for industrial purposes.
Land is sinking and water is rising. There is no
indication that dewatering pumps in this mineshaft
have operated continuously since the coal mine
closed in 1986. If the pumps in Zollverein and the
other shuttered mines of the Ruhrgebiet cease to
function, over five million people would be subject
to flooding, subsidence, and contaminated drinking
ABOVE Zollverein Coal Mine. No outward signs signal the
ongoing necessity of dewatering stations to prevent catastrophic
results for nearby communities.
TOP LEFT Scale comparison of coal volume consumption
BOTTOM LEFT A view of the Fisk Station with Downtown 81
Chicago beyond. Photo by Christopher Tallman.
The iconic landscapes of
post-industrial design fail to fully
acknowledge the hidden impacts
of their industrial operations.
The difficulty is engaging visitors with the hidden
consequences of industrial activity. If done
effectively, these sites could become the genesis
of the long-term thinking required to collectively
address our responsibility to future generations.
How then, can post-industrial site designs reveal
the impacts of their operation? Can they engage
the vast networks of time and space within
which they operate? A speculative proposal for
a decommissioned coal plant in Chicago was
conceived with this explicit question in mind.
The proposed design engages multiple time
MCKNIGHT

water on a catastrophic scale. “Everything ends,” scales of industrial impact, and leverages
they say, “except the pumping.”

GU : ISSUE 07
 Record breaking First manmade
First manmade object to object
Power Record breaking power to break
break the soundsound
barrier barrier
Queen Mary
Queen Mary visits
Visits Father of Centralized Decomissioned
Energy
Father of centralized electricty inDecommissioned
2012
in 2012

Q
U
First all steam
First all steam
I
T
power powerplant
plant C
O
A
L

Twenty years
Twenty years ofprotest
of sustained
sustained
and action
protest
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison

the subliminal scale of the site into a Station’s historical, cultural, and environmental
projective carbon monument that engages history, as well as its location in the midst of a
visitors in constructing a future. dense urban core, make it particularly potent.
The station opened in 1903 at the dawn of the
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE
modern age, smashing records for generating
FISK GENERATING STATION
capacity and efficiency, and demonstrating
The Fisk Generating Station, a the promises held by centralized power run
decommissioned coal plant in the Pilsen on fossil fuels. It was described in a 1908
neighborhood of Chicago, is an auspicious issue of Electrical World as a “great cathedral
site in which to explore these ideas. Of devoted to the religion of power,” whose
course, every post-industrial site presents an gigantic supersonic turbines inspired a feeling
opportunity to engage the public in future of worship and attracted luminaries such as
82
ramifications of industrialization, but the Fisk Thomas Edison and Queen Mary to marvel at
its scale and efficiency. It is no exaggeration to
say that our national landscape might not be so
TOP Timeline of the station’s history
defined by the proliferation of power lines and
TOP RIGHT Mapping the annual emmissions of pollutants from
smokestacks if the Fisk Station had failed to set
the Fisk Station, and the health impacts of the Fisk and
such a high standard.
Crawford Stations

BOTTOM Tracking the transportation of coal to the Fisk Station.
The Fisk Station’s record-breaking power,
Yellow numbers indicate annual trips of each transportation
mode for the station.
of course, depended on the accumulation

North Antelope Rochelle Mine

Black Thunder Mine

115 Tons/Car
115 Cars - 1.4 Mile Length
13,225 tons/Train
74 Trains/Year to Fisk Station
 Environmental Justice Offenders (2010) Fisk: 374 Megawatts
1. Crawford Generating Station, Illinois
Environmental Justice Offenders (2010) People living within 3 miles: 314,632
2. Hudson Generating Station, New Jersey
1. Crawford Generating Station, Illinois
Average Income within 3 miles: $15,076
Fisk: 374 Megawatts

3. Fisk Generating Station, Illinois

People Living within 3 Miles: 314,632

People of Color within 3 miles: 83.1%

2. Hudson Generating Station, New Jersey
Average Income within 3 miles: $15,076

Annual Pollutant Annual health effects of Fisk and

3. Fisk Generating Station, Illinois
People of color within 3 miles: 83.1%

Output (Tons)
Annual Pollutant Output (Tons)
x 4924 Crawford
Annual Health Effects of Fisk and Crawford

x 550
x 1178
x 41
1.5 Miles

x 1784715
x 230
1937 - Fatal Burn
1974 - Fatal Accident
1938 - Ladder Fall
1976 - Firefighter crushed
1945 - Fatal Burn

Station Fatalities
x 2800
1954 - Two Fatal Burns
Station Fatalities
Crawford: 597 Megawatts
Crawford: 597 Megawatts
People Living within 3 Miles: 373,690
Average Income within 3 miles: S11,097

People living within 3 miles: 373,690

People of color within 3 miles: 83.9%

Average Income within 3 miles: $11,097

People of Color within 3 miles: 83.9%

and compression of organic materials from far
afield over millions of years. Benefitting first from
an abundance of coal in Pennsylvania and West
Virginia, and later the even greater abundance
of the giant coal pits in the Powder River Basin
of Wyoming, the station irrevocably changed
landscapes thousands of miles from its property
line. The volume of coal it consumed, at a rate of
one million tons of coal every year, dwarfed this tiny
35-acre site. Communicating these monumental
scales of time and material is a primary driver of the
new programming in the site’s design.
The station holds the dubious distinction of
being named as the third worst environmental
justice offender by the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in
2010. A 2002 study conducted by Harvard’s School
of Public Health concluded that the Fisk Station,
in conjunction with its contemporary in the west
side of Chicago, the Crawford Generating Station,
North Antelope Rochelle Mine
Des Plaines
River
was responsible for 550 ambulance deaths, 2,800
asthma attacks, and 41 premature deaths annually.
People died as a consequence of this station’s
power. Sure the C-train runs smoothly, but we don’t
really ever get to see the other side of the ledger
as clearly, do we? Both local activist groups such
as the Pilsen Environmental Right and Reform
Organization (PERRO) and national groups such
as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace targeted the
station for protests year after year until finally, in
2012, the station was shuttered.
83
Physically and metaphorically, the Fisk Station
dominated the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago for
over a century. Its contaminants and chemicals will
linger in the site’s soils for hundreds of years, and
its emissions will contribute to rising temperatures,
ocean acidification, and all manner of global
chemical imbalances for thousands of years.
This speculative design for the Fisk Station
Annual emissions (2003-2006)
230 lbs of mercury
17,765 tons of sulfur
260,000 lbs of soot
1,784,715 tons of Carbon Dioxide
4,924 tons of Sulfur Dioxide
1,178 tons of Nitrous Oxide
374 Megawatt
Generator (1959)
Chicago
16 Miles from Fisk

980,000 tons of coal consumed annually

3,000 - 4,000 tons consumed daily
41
Premature
deaths
annually
from
pollution
NRG Will County associated
Power Station
MCKNIGHT

with Fisk
Coal Storage & Station
Transfer Station
Rail to Barge
1500 Tons/Barge Trip
2-3 Trips/Day

GU : ISSUE 07
 Mining SiteSurfaces
Mining Site Surfaces Exploting
Exploiting Toxic
Toxic Soils Soils Creating a Carbon Monument
Creating a Carbon Monument

Exploiting Toxic Soils Creating a Carbon Monument

Extract hardscape slabs Concrete + Asphalt Concrete Surfaces + Reorganizing Surfaces

from available location on site Surfaces Grid Structure

Removed Slabs (540)

Placed Slabs (165)

Creating a Carbon Monument

84

4
14
13 13

11
2 5 1 9
13 10

6 3
12

1. Generator Arcade 8. Clarifier Gardens

2. Museum of Un-Natural History 9. Bunker Gardens
3. Emergent Forest 10. Gas Plant Wetlands
4. Remediation / Carbon Gardens 11. Sunken Garden
5. Museum Plaza 12. Elevated River Walk
6. Energy Overlook 13. Canal Steps
7. Water Taxi Stop 14. Carbon Monument

TOP Diagrams of the primary programmatic and spatial drivers for the new site design

MIDDLE Diagram of the processes and the locations of removal and deposition

ABOVE Axon of proposed site design from the south

proposes a public amenity that both serves its
community and engages the public in the grand
scales of material and time enlisted by such
sites. In it, invisible volumes of industrial actions
are revealed and made explicit, as a method of
educating the public in the consequences of our
industrial practices. By undertaking to sequester
carbon, however futile it might seem, we can
generate in visitors a desire to understand and
affect the future in a positive manner.
ENGAGING THE CONSEQUENCES OF COAL
To address the lasting repercussions of the Fisk
Generating Station, and the multiple time scales in
which they manifest, the site design simultaneously
pays homage to its importance as a cultural relic
and engages its responsibility as an ecological
villain. But, of course, green space and economic
benefits are minor relative to the scale of the
industrial consequences discussed earlier. Pilsen is
one of the most underserved neighborhoods in the
city of Chicago in terms of open green space. On
the most basic level, there is an opportunity for any
design to begin to repay the nearby residents for
its many injustices with river access and open space
that they sorely lack.
The economic driver of the site’s development is a
new museum: the museum of Un-Natural History.
An update on Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural
History, the museum seeks to engage visitors in
both the historical importance of the Fisk Station
itself, as well as the broader implications of our
industrial practices. Other portions of the site are
dedicated to interpretation activities, designed
and emergent gardens, a water taxi stop, wetlands,
and public access to the river. These spaces are the
result of three primary programming drivers.
These drivers engage the impacts of coal
generation at multiple temporal scales. Site
programming and spatial organization are driven
by three primary actions of material displacement,
aimed at explicitly presenting to visitors the
significance of industrial operations. The first,
mining site surfaces, addresses the relatively
ephemeral consequences of site operation found
in the proliferation of impervious surface, and
reorganizes the ground plane into a legible and
meaningful framework within the industrial chaos.
The second engages the toxic soils of the site as
programmatic and spatial drivers that reveal the
scale of damage and impact that will last decades.
These toxic soils also function as the growing
medium for the third programmatic driver: carbon
storage. By converting the central structures of the
station into an ongoing carbon sink, visitors will
be confronted with the disparity between scales
of consumption and regeneration. Over 600 years,
the massive structures of the station will be filled
with the carbon equivalent of only 42 days of power
plant operation.
MINING SITE SURFACES
The Fisk Station site is dominated by impervious
surface. These site surfaces (and building debris)
are reorganized to explicitly convey the material
volumes required to sustain this industrial
operation, and to provide a framework that gives
85
clarity while simultaneously registering both historic
and emergent site conditions.
The surfaces are used to create a new ‘front lawn’
for the site that creates legibility. The horizontal
plane of the monumental slab surface accentuates
the looming and ominous 450-foot-tall smokestack
and boiler housing around which the site rotates. It
is intentionally reminiscent of memorial landscapes
and graveyards on a monumental scale. The spaces
resulting from the material displacement make
room for emergent gardens, gathering nodes,
and water conveyance.
Over 600 years, the massive structures
of the station will be filled with the
carbon equivalent of only 42 days of
power plant operation.
MCKNIGHT
GU : ISSUE 07
 Poplar/Black Locust
Grove
Poplar/Black Locust Grove

Thermally Deposit treated

Deposit treated soil
soil
Thermally treattreated
soil soils
Remove soil in bunkers
Remove soil fromfrom
site of site
former in bunkers
of gas
former
plant gas plant

PAHs
Coal Tar
VOCs
BTEX
Heavy Metals
Phytoaccumulation
Volatization
Rhizodegradation

Bulkheads planters
Bulkhead planter
New water barriers and Remove existing bulkheads,
Remove existing bulkheads,
Existing Bulkhead
Existing bulkhead Property Line
Property Line bulkheads
New water barriers and bulkheads tiebacks, and polluted soils
tiebacks, and polluted soil

River Channel
River Channel
Puncture new bulkheads
Puncture new bulkhead Siltation in shallow
Siltation in shallow channel channel

EXPLOITING TOXIC SOILS THE CARBON MONUMENT

The most toxic soil on site is located in the Typical carbon sequestration strategies fail to
southwest corner, where a former manufactured gas contextualize a coal power station’s carbon
plant operated for over a century. Here industrial expenditure within a human experience.
processes have contaminated almost 50,000 cubic Wood harvest sequestration is a developing,
86
yards of soil with petroleum byproducts. As with inexpensive strategy of storing harvested wood
all of the primary site moves, the goal with the underground or within structures, preserving
polluted soil is not to cap and hide it but rather to carbon for thousands of years. This technique
reveal its scale, to give it purpose as a reference will be used to fill the station’s massive boiler
of the past and a resource for the future. To this and generator structures with carbon. The
end, the soil is placed in phytoremediation bunkers projective monument looms over the site and
(petroleum byproducts are some of the most the city itself, measuring both past and future
suitable for phyto technologies) that frame the site material accumulation and confronting visitors
along the lines of vanished, historic canals. The slow with the almost unintelligible temporal and
incline of the bunkers rising above the heads of material scales of the plant’s impact.
visitors as they enter the site presents a progressive
understanding of the polluted soil volumes
As designers, we should no
resulting from a century of the station’s operation. longer be content to stand idle
in the willful obfuscation of
The bunkers will only become accessible as cycles
industrial landscapes.
of phyto-treatment render the soil safe for human
contact over years and decades. The soil bunkers Remediation groves and polluted soil bunkers
also frame the site, buffer from ongoing adjacent are used to supply carbon sequestration
industrial activity, and eventually provide unique volumes. The ongoing management of the
elevated views of the neighborhood and the river. groves contributes to the sense of time
Their most crucial role, however, is to yield the required to engage the volumes of coal
growing medium for the lengthiest program of the consumed by the station, and provides an
site design: carbon generation and storage. evolving set of experiences for residents and
 Carbon + Remediation Carbon +
Carbon + Remediation Lumber +
Carbon +
Experience
Lumber +
Experience

Carbon + Lumber
Carbon + Lumber

Hybrid PoplarHybrid
Saplings
Poplar Saplings Poplars Poplars
phytoaccumulate
phytoaccumulate and Harvest Poplar
Harvest poplar forests
Poplar and Locust
Poplar and Locust Mix Plantings
Harvest
hardwood species
poplar
Harvest poplar and replace with
Managed mixed
Managed mixed hardwood forest

and degrade pollutants forests mixed plantings and replace with hardwood forest
degrade pollutants

hardwood
hardwood species species
Hybrid Poplar Saplings Poplars phytoaccumulate and Harvest poplar forests Poplar and Locust Mix Plantings Harvest poplar and replace with Managed mixed hardwood forest
degrade pollutants

Take station artifacts for

museum display and sell

Take station artifacts for for

interior scrap
Take station artifacts
museum display museum
andscrap
interior sell
display and sell

interior scrap
0 years 10 years 20 years
0 years 10 years 20 years

visitors over the next six centuries. Throughout

this time period, remediation groves will be
continuously harvested and piled into the building.
Once filled, the central building core will hold
about 75,000 cords of wood storage, or 300 million
87
pounds of carbon, equivalent to only 42 days of
station operation.

Building incisions around the site provide visitors

with a sense of scale involved in the carbon
sequestration efforts. They place the human body
directly in relation to the overwhelming historic
carbon volumes to reveal the dramatic contrast
between the speed of carbon consumption and for generations, centuries in the future.
carbon generation. As designers, we should no longer be content
to stand idle in the willful obfuscation of
As we grapple with the ramifications of the industrial landscapes.
Anthropocene it is imperative for us to engage with
the vast material and time scales we manipulate
TOP LEFT Process through which the soils are treated and the
with our actions. Not every space should become a
soil volumes revealed to site visitors
monument to carbon, of course, nor to the millions
TOP RIGHT A diagram of the ongoing processes used to
affected by contaminated air or poisoned water,
generate the carbon sequestered in the station’s superstructures
but every post-industrial landscape should engage
ABOVE Carbon Encounters form the central experience of
with its cultural and ecological consequences
visiting the site. The site progression is structured around
reaching far afield, and deep into the future. Only perceiving and traversing massive volumes, which, when fully
by confronting and addressing the disparity of filled with carbon, will equal only an insignificant fraction of the
LAST NAME(S)

station’s carbon consumption. This is an example of the incisions

MCKNIGHT

industrial cause and effect can we undertake the

drastic actions necessary to provide a better world within the structure that will contextualize these carbon volumes
in human scale.

GU : ISSUE 07
88
 89

LAST NAME(S)

GU : ISSUE 07
14 THE BL ACK GOLD TAPESTRY
SANDRA SAWATZKY

Nine years in the making, Sandra Sawatzky’s 220-foot hand-

embroidered piece, The Black Gold Tapestry, tells the story of
how oil has impacted human civilizations around the world, from
bitumen bubbling up in the waterways and marshes of Iraq 5,000
years ago, to the global oil economy of today. Examining how oil
and natural gas have fueled human ingenuity, progress, warfare,
disaster, prosperity, and commerce across the globe, The Black
Gold Tapestry highlights fascinating vignettes from the past and
the present that will surprise and even delight viewers of this truly
epic piece of art.
 91

LAST NAME(S)
GU : ISSUE 07
 15 BET WEEN MEMORY AND OBLIVION
ROUTES OF MOURNING

MARIA KARATSIOMPANI,
NINA TSONIDI,
& KONSTANTINA LOLA

92

On October 28, 2015, a tragic shipwreck claimed the lives of nearly 100 refugees en route
to the island of Lesvos. The bodies were buried in an olive grove near the village of Kato
Tritos in a harried and haphazard manner.

We have proposed redesigning the burial ground to honor those lost and create dignified
places of rest for the newly deceased.

On one hand, the original site is preserved to respect collective memory and to function as
an operative monument. On the other, the new burial grounds constitute the shards of the
collective memory—that is, private memory. The threshold to the cemetery traverses the
middle ground between the old and new burial sites, like a fracture in the landscape. This
space is charged with routes, routes of bereavement between memory and oblivion.
 LESVOS: LAND OF DISPLACED POPULATIONS

The sea has always been the realm of the displaced,

and Lesvos a staging ground to the European
Peninsula. The distance from the eastern edge of
Lesvos to the coast of Asia Minor is less than five
miles, which explains the historical presence of a
Muslim population on the island, as well as Lesvos’
involvement in numerous population exchanges
throughout history. In 1923, for example, 1,500,000
Christian refugees fled from Asia Minor and 500,000
Muslims left Greece.

There are three sea routes to the

island, each with a different price tag,
depending on their riskiness ... Class
often defines the odds of survival.

Throughout the current refugee crisis, the island

of Lesvos has been one of the main points of entry
for refugees and immigrants. The construction of 93
the Evros wall in 2011 (on the northeastern border
between Greece and Turkey) increased the refugee
flow by sea, a considerably more dangerous route
compared to the land passage. At the same time,
the establishment of the European Frontex program
made it increasingly difficult for immigrants to
evacuate the Greek islands and reach the
peninsula, transforming islands into prisons of
enclaved immigrants.

There are three sea routes to the island of Lesvos,

each with a different price tag depending on their
riskiness, whether the trip takes place by day or
night, or under good or poor weather conditions;
class often defines the odds of survival. Upon arrival,
refugees must cross the entire island to reach the
KARATSIOMPANI, TSONIDI, & LOLA

Moria, where they can file asylum requests. They are

then transferred to one of three operational refugee
camps on the island, as shown on the map at right.

RIGHT Map of Lesvos showing common sea routes and refugee camp locations. Source: UNHCR.

GU : ISSUE 07
94

TOP Graphic analysis of the current conditions

ABOVE Photographs of the immigrant graves in the cemetery of Mytilene, Lesvos
THE OCTOBER SHIPWRECK
The accumulation of nearly 15,000 immigrants in
Lesvos created various management problems,
most notably what to do with the bodies of the
deceased. A large number of immigrants were
buried in the cemetery of Mytilene, the capital of
Lesvos, in a disordered manner that ignored the
orientation of bodies, as specified by the Islamic
religion. To make matters worse, the volume of the
burials in the cemetery brought it close to capacity.
CURRENT SITUATION
We visited the island in March 2016. With the
kind contributions of the Deputy Mayor and the
volunteer who carried out the burials, we surveyed
the informal burial site in the olive grove and
photographed individual graves. The olive trees
were uprooted in order to make room for the
graves, in the middle of a field very close to the sea.
A large number of the victims, infants, children, and
entire families buried here are of unknown identity.

So, when in October 2015 a major shipwreck

took place in which nearly 100 people drowned,
including a great number of children, the bodies
had to be kept in a refrigerated container for
about half a month. The situation was resolved by
a volunteer who started searching for a suitable
place. The burials were made informally in an
olive field belonging to the municipality, about 20
minutes away from the city of Lesvos.

“That is the actual reason that forced me to create this

95

cemetery. As soon as I entered, I saw an eight meter by

three meter container, and within this container were
46 bodies. For 20 days in this space ... It was a situation
that really nobody could have imagined. I do not know
the proper expression, neither in Greek nor in Arabic, to
describe what I saw.”

Excerpt from an interview with the volunteer that carried out the burials

“I wasn’t aware of the size of the problem. When I found

out about it, it became my problem. Finding a place was a
decision that I had to make. I was involved now.”
KARATSIOMPANI, TSONIDI, & LOLA

Excerpt from an interview with the Deputy Mayor of Mytilene, Lesvos

GU : ISSUE 07
 65 atypical burials

96

ABOVE The list of 65 atypical burials and photographs of the site

RIGHT A comparison of prescribed burial pratices in Christianity and Islam

RESEARCH
It was imperative to research the burial practices
specific to the religions of the refugee populations.
This work brought us face-to-face with the notion
of death, a topic of opposites—familiar yet
unknowable, contemplative yet fearful. The notion
of death can be considered the causa causans of
every religion.
In an effort to better understand this complex
reality, we asked ourselves: What happens in
between life and death? How are they separated
and how do they communicate? What is the
transition from one to the other?
In ancient Greek mythology, the river Acheron
served as the physical boundary between the two
worlds of life and death. Once in Hades, the dead
would drink of the water of oblivion in order to
forget their loved ones and their previous lives.
Their relatives were left behind to come to terms
with their loss.
Loss can be interpreted in many different ways:
physical loss, existential loss, or even the loss of a
country. The irreversible nature of such a loss can
desolate a person in bereavement. Memory is the
key driver of grief and the core of loss. But for our
memories of the diseased, there would be neither
bereavement nor loss.
Our design for the burial site emphasizes
natural elements interlaced with the burial
procedure: ground, water, and light. Through their 97
manipulation, we attempt to create appropriate
spaces to contain bereavement, where one may
pivot between memory, the present, and what
lies beyond.
FROM CONCEPTUAL TO SPATIAL:
THE PROPOSAL
Our design attempts to spatially materialize the
notions of memory, loss, and bereavement. We
differentiate between the individual and the
collective memory, as the former constitutes a very
personal matter. Collective memory,1 on the other
hand, is the sum of all individual memories and
contains those concerning historical events rather
than personal ones.
KARATSIOMPANI, TSONIDI, & LOLA
As for the site of the informal burials that took place
in November 2015, we conclude that no further
burials should take place, and that the existing site
be preserved with minimal intervention. Thus, it
will serve as a memorial ground to symbolize the
collective memory.
GU : ISSUE 07
 Where time is frozen, the dead must be
commemorated, and the root cause of their deaths
98
emphasized, in order for the site to retain its power
and meaning. We strongly believe that visitors
in this place should not be ‘shocked’ by artificial,
man-made constructions, but rather, be allowed
to interpret the events through their own personal
experience of the site. The informal burial site
remains at the highest elevation to illustrate that it
gave occasion to the whole project.
Conversely, the new burial sites represent the
shards of the collective memory—the individual
memory itself. They are situated on the south
section of the property and sunken into the ground.
Here, the lower grounds are better suited to
host and contain bereavement. This depression
intensifies the sense of enclosure, creating an
indirect interplay with the scenery.
We propose three distinct burial grounds: one
Muslim, one Christian, and one interfaith. To reach
this decision, we were compelled both by the actual
ratios of the religions of the dead and by our wish
to respect the beliefs, if any, of the deceased. It
is important to note that this cemetery attempts
to provide for the needs not only of the refugee
population, but also of any foreigners living on
the island.
In between the memorial and the new burial
grounds there exists what we call a transitional
space resembling a fissure. Anyone there is in
limbo, preparing for what follows. There are two
possible routes; guided by the water or the
earth, one can either descend to the burial
grounds or follow a straight line leading to the
memorial ground.
We hope that this project draws attention to the
issues surrounding the respectful burial of refugees,
a problem created by the modern migration crisis
and very rarely discussed in the public realm.
By fusing monument and cemetery, we honor
those lost at sea, and create dignified spaces for
mourning, reflection, and final rest.
ENDNOTES
1 Halbwachs, Maurice.”Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire” (translated: “On
Collective Memory”). Les Travaux de L’Année Sociologique. Paris: 1925.
GU : ISSUE 07
99

KARATSIOMPANI, TSONIDI, & LOLA

 16 A Walk Down Brigantine Reach
W.W. SMITH

I walk b eneath your boughs

In your shadow, in the lee
Of the shar p Pacific wind
I find shelter u nder thee.
100

Hespero! O Hespero!
Dear Cupressus, sta nd ing strong
In a line, your li m bs defia nt
As stalwart sent’nels, a cent’ry long.

On this triu m pha nt coastal terrace

Pou nd ing surf does ever car ve
The hu ngry waves! A sheltered cave
Beco m e thy bra nches, the love you gave.

A n ocea n raging, crashing, star ved

For the earth b eneath us!
Hallowed grou nd
Thy roots defia nt! to the thu nd’rous pou nd.

A nd here I sta nd, on fallen foliage

As the ocea n r u m bles on
In a m agic wooded haven
Welco m e respite of the d aw n.

I step lightly, breathing in

The faint aro m a of thy kin
Your twisting bra nches tell a story
Fro m the past! Now, let’s b egin …
 A hu nd red years, a nd m ore, ago
A wind swept m eadow, grazéd low
By cattle, a m bling to a nd fro
The ragged bluff—frigid sea b elow.

The hills b eyond were clear-cut!

By loggers, gau nt a nd gri m
They tore the earth asu nder!
Yield ing ti m b er, li m b for li m b.

The forests gone, the field s depleted

By cows that m ooed, a nd sheep that bleated
A la nd far fro m this sacred place
O hallowed grou nd! Old Hespero’s e m brace.

So —How b eco m eth?

Our m ost noble, kind red friend s
These hedgerows so define this place
W here each m eadow starts a nd end s.

I’ll tell you how —‘Twas Walter Frick!

W ho bought the acreage to turn a trick—
To sell for profit, to a foreig n lot!
They defaulted on pay m ents soon after they bought.

101

A nd so, Frick b ega n,

Cash in pocket, deed in ha nd
To ‘i m prove upon’ his la nd scape
A nd reclai m this ravaged la nd.

Hesperocy paris m acrocar pa

Ca m e to define Frick’s ‘ra nchettes’
Used to m a nage his sheep herd s
As living barriers, a growing fence.

Two dozen ‘roo m s’

Were the Del M ar Ra nch
A nd the stern Pacific wind
Cast a b end to every bra nch.

Of Frick’s you ng Cupressus

Monterey cy press, every tree
A nd his sheep, they baa h’d a nd bleated
In the shelter of the lee.

A line, of cy press after cy press

Now agéd a nd full grow n
Gia nts rising up a bove m e
Their vital shelter have I k now n.
SMITH

GU : ISSUE 07
 Before The Sea Ra nch
Was ever a thought
Frick redefined the la nd scape
This m ajesty, he wrought!

A nd so, a century has passed —

The la nd’s b eco m eth so m ething new
For ‘living lightly on the la nd’
A vision Larry Halprin d rew.

W hen he first saw this coastal wonder

In Frick’s footsteps d id he tread
For the la nd scape’s process wa ndered on
Ever after Frick was dead.

The la nd is process!
Our i m print too
We live in the lee
Of what our forefathers do.

Just as you ng Cupressus

Tender saplings b egin
To replace their dying brethren
Frick’s gift their fallen kin.

102 Old Hespero, just like us

Lucky to see a hu nd red years
A nd in senescence, as like we age
Hespero falters, withers, wears.
 We must replace the m!
We steward s of our age
In Halprin’s lee, to pla nt a tree
A nd pen history’s next page.

A final call, a challenge —listen!

As I walk dow n Briga ntine Reach
Co m e with m e — q uiet— ca n you hear it?
The wind, it whispers, lessons to teach.

As the bra nches of old Hespero

Play their song of the northwesterly
Telling the tale, of the wind s that prevail
As we walk, safe here in the lee.

Re m e m b er, my friend!
M r. Frick a nd his sheep
For the legacy of Sea Ra nch
Of his m e m ory, must we keep.

103

SMITH

GU : ISSUE 07
 17
104
... a space “in which Deaf
culture, in all its diverse
dimensions, can thrive
through full access
to communication and the
unique cognitive, cultural
and creative dimensions
of the Deaf experience
are encouraged.”
DEAFSCAPE
APPLYING DE AFSPACE TO L ANDSCAPE
ALEXA VAUGHN
DeafSpace sprang from the heart of the Deaf community at
Gallaudet University1 in Washington, D.C., in 2005. With the
guidance of architect Hansel Bauman—who is hearing, but uses
American Sign Language (ASL)—the Deaf community at Gallaudet
came together through courses and workshops to create radical,
bilingual, and highly collaborative discourse on designing more
effective campus buildings and public spaces for people who
are Deaf and Hard of Hearing (HoH).2 The resulting product is
Gallaudet University's DeafSpace Design Guidelines (DSDG), an
ever-evolving publication designed for use by architects, planners,
and administration.
Defined by the DSDG, DeafSpace is a space “in which Deaf
culture, in all its diverse dimensions, can thrive through full access
to communication and the unique cognitive, cultural and creative
dimensions of the Deaf experience are encouraged.”3 Within a
predominantly hearing world, the built environment poses many
real, physical barriers to people who are Deaf, as well as people
with disabilities. These barriers range widely from the absence
of visual signage on public transportation to the lack of space to
communicate with sign language while walking on public sidewalks.
Deaf people have spent their lives adapting to the built
environment. Those who deviate from the 'norm' are expected
to make adjustments to fit themselves seamlessly into society—
regardless of ability—particularly in public space. As a result, the
built environment is viewed as static rather than flexible. While
people with disabilities have been guaranteed rights to public
space through the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) since
1990, these regulations are not exhaustive, and historically have
given less attention to those who are Deaf and HoH.4 With recent
challenges to the ADA as we know it under H.R. 620,5 designers
must use their power to design beautiful and accessible public
spaces for all. DeafSpace, and other principles of Universal Design,
have the power to take the ADA a step further—celebrating
the beauty of form as well as function, bringing to
light the unique identities of those who are Deaf or
disabled. DeafSpace asserts that the environment
can be changed to create better public space for
individuals that deviate from the hearing 'norm.'
However, in applying DeafSpace to landscape, not
only the Deaf community—but all people—serve to
reap the benefits of more accessible public space.
Spatially, people in the Deaf community require
enough space between individuals to sign and 360°
sensory reach, dependent upon visual and tactile
senses. The DSDG attempts to create a better built
environment for the Deaf community through five
units: "Space and Proximity," "Sensory Reach,"
"Mobility and Proximity," "Light and Color," and
"Acoustics and Electromagnetic Interference." It
must be noted that these guidelines focus upon
applications for the American Deaf community.
Although many guidelines were found to be
cross-cultural, Deaf cultures are extremely diverse.
Currently, there are over 200 sign languages in use
around the world.
As a Deaf graduate student in landscape
architecture, new to the Deaf community and
ASL, I wondered how I could apply DeafSpace
to the larger scales of landscape and urban
design. Although most of the guidelines are
specifically for architectural interiors, much can
be applied to the broader, exterior scales of the
urban landscape. Here, I attempt to dissect the
DSDG (excluding "Acoustics and Electromagnetic
Interference," best suited for interior design), by
selecting the guidelines that my Deaf colleagues
and I have found critical for urban space. To the
Deaf community, the landscape is a rich sensory
experience; in the absence of sound, the visual,
tactile, and even the olfactory senses are amplified.
DEGREES OF ENCLOSURE: PUBLIC SPACE
A comfortable degree of enclosure would provide
a safe, semi-private space for people to see and be
seen. One is able to feel secure from behind, with
a view opening outward toward public activity. This
can be achieved through the design of alcoves,
tree planting, and design of other outdoor rooms
and shelters (e.g., parklets). Derrick Behm, a Deaf
graduate student in urban planning at Georgetown
University, explains that he generally prefers action
to happen in front of him, "with a wall or tree
behind to feel subconsciously safe" and to be able
to better control what goes on behind him.
COLLECTIVE AND CONNECTIVE SPACE
Social interaction is fundamental to Deaf culture.
Placing collective spaces next to high-activity areas
promotes activation of these spaces by forming
both physical and visual connection. Nodes
are central connecting points and intersections
along main areas of circulation, which promote
spontaneous social interaction as people move
from place to place. Eddies are located along the
edges of major pathways and can provide space for
conversation and people-watching; an eddy can be
scaled for different uses and serves as a degree of
enclosure in public space. Both nodes and eddies
can be applied to busy city sidewalks to provide
space off of the main path for conversation, limiting
105
obstructive incidents and allowing for space to sign.
MOBILITY AND PROXIMITY
Critical to DeafSpace is the provision of freedom
of movement for communication, with minimal
hazards. Wider pathways can accommodate for
signers to converse while walking. Dependent on
place, pathways should allow for enough room
for two or more people to sign; typically, smaller
corridors should be a minimum of seven to eight
feet wide to accommodate two signers, while
public sidewalks should be a minimum of ten feet
wide to accommodate for several groups of signers
(and others) to pass through easily. 'Shoulder
Zones' act as dedicated buffer zones parallel to
busy urban sidewalks and streets; they should
include areas for eddies as well as street signage,
lighting, and plantings. The pedestrian pathway
should be kept clear of barriers and should always
be designed with visual dominance and safety
lighting, particularly at busy vehicular intersections.
Matthew Sampson, also a Deaf graduate student in
VAUGHN
urban planning at Georgetown University, describes
GU : ISSUE 07
 TEXTURED TRANSITION to provide cues
between sidewalk, planting areas, and the street

'SHOULDER ZONE' to create a buffer zone

between the sidewalk and the street

DEGREE OF ENCLOSURE to create a secure,

semi-private space to see and be seen

NIGHT LIGHTING to create safer, more

visible streets after dark

FLEXIBLE SEATING to accommodate small

to large groups joining in conversation

WIDER PATHWAY a minimum of 10 feet to

provide space for conversation and circulation
RHYTHM to create visual patterns along sidewalk
edges, aiding in spatial understanding

VISUAL CUE to increase awareness and safety,

especially at busy intersections

106

Image by author and Courtney Ferris
AN URBAN DEAFSCAPE is a
critique of the planning profession itself.
Many of these guidelines appear to be
standard practice in streetscape design,
as per the ADA. However, they are often
overlooked or treated as an afterthought.
Applying these simple guidelines to streets
has the potential to go beyond the ADA
in creating space for the Deaf community,
increasing safety, improving circulation, and
making better urban landscapes for all.
curb bump-outs—or areas where sidewalks bulb
out at busy intersections—as "a way of reclaiming
pedestrian land, putting pedestrians in the driver's
field of view," which can create the visual security
required by those who are Deaf as well as security
for other pedestrians. Ramps are preferred by many
in the Deaf community; they can prevent barriers to
conversation and minimize tripping hazards posed
by stairs. They should be kept wide as pathways to
accommodate for visual conversation.
VISUAL AND TACTILE CUES
Shared sensory reach is deeply rooted practice
in Deaf culture. Visual cues can aid people who
are Deaf to safely use and travel through public
space. View corridors can visually connect different
parts of a larger public realm, creating a visible
hierarchy that can be achieved topographically
and through the planting of trees. Landmarks
and placement of design elements can also aid in
orientation within a larger space. Danielle Koplitz,
a Deaf graduate student in architecture at the
University of Texas, notes the use of topography
"to show transition from one space to another"
and "indicate important buildings or a change in
the purpose of space" on her campus in Austin.
Textured transitions provide subtle cues to
differentiate between edges of the ground plane
and thresholds, as well as safety cues along the
edge of curbs, which are crucial for the DeafBlind
community. Easing and eliminating curbs in public
spaces can also limit tripping hazards and provide
more access to people who use wheelchairs or
baby strollers. Rhythm can be employed in the
landscape to provide continuous, recognizable
visual references and alignment for signers. Tree
placement (and canopy) is especially important in
creating a visible pattern in the urban landscape
along sidewalks. According to Sean Maiwald, a
Deaf graduate student in public policy at The
George Washington University, "immediate visual
indicators of space" are crucial and should allow for
wayfinding and understanding of use, "especially
at a quick glance." Color (e.g., planting, façades,
signage) can provide contrast for signing as well as
visual orientation for wayfinding in busy urban hubs.
TRANSPARENCY AND REFLECTIVITY
Transparency is primarily applied to building
interiors and windows, but creating flow between
interior and exterior—extending the line of sight
outdoors—allows for greater use, understanding,
and connection to the surrounding landscape.
Reflection can be applied to many landscape and
urban materials (e.g., stone, metal, wood) to create
subtle clues about surrounding activity. Materials
should not be overly reflective to avoid undesirable
glare. Natural lighting and night lighting should
be maximized to prevent eye strain, but shaded
exterior paths are also crucial for glare-free
comfort on sidewalks, which can be achieved with
tree canopies and overhangs.
FIXED AND FLEXIBLE FURNITURE
Furniture, too, plays an important role in the Deaf
community’s use of the public realm. Flexible
seating that is light, durable, and movable allows
for accommodation of small to large groups of
people joining in signed conversation. Circular or
U-shaped tables and chairs allow for a sustained
107
line of sight. Fixed seating and pedestals (e.g.,
low-rise walls and planter edges) at different
heights allow for places to set down belongings,
which can be obstructive to signing. Both types of
seating encourage mixed social use and can be
applied in various forms to parks and plazas within
the urban landscape.
ENDNOTES
1 Gallaudet University is the only university in the world designed for Deaf
and Hard of Hearing students and provides bilingual education in English
and American Sign Language. Three of my colleagues quoted here (Behm,
Maiwald, and Koplitz) are alumni of Gallaudet and contributed to DeafSpace
in various forms and stages over the years, from conception to application.
2 Deafness is a spectrum: Deaf with a capital 'D' describes individuals
that identify with a central deaf, cultural identity and who primarily use
sign language. Hard of Hearing (HoH) describes individuals with some
degree of hearing. Hearing impaired is an unacceptable medical term to
the Deaf community; it carries a negative connotation, views Deafness as
an impediment to well-being, and invalidates Deaf language and culture.
Furthermore, DeafBlind describes individuals who are both deaf and blind,
with a unique cultural identity of their own.
3 Bauman, Hansel. DeafSpace Design Guidelines, Volume 1. (Working Draft)
2010.
4 The ADA has focused on visual emergency systems (e.g., strobe alarms) in
places like hotels and real-time captioning in stadiums for the Deaf and HoH.
5 H.R. 620 (The ADA Education and Reform Act of 2017), if passed, will
provide amnesty for access violators, allowing businesses to ignore ADA
VAUGHN
requirements until notified by a person with a disability, indefinitely. The
burden is thus shifted to the person experiencing access discrimination,
causing loss of civil rights to public space granted by the ADA of 1990.
GU : ISSUE 07
108
109
110
19 MAPPING MARS
A DYING PL ANET
& A DE AD ONE MOLLY BUTCHER

In 1877, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli drew the first map of

Mars. The map was crossed with lines which he identified as ‘canali,’
or channels. When American Astronomer Percival Lowell decided to
draw a new version of this map in the 1890s, he mistranslated ‘canali’ to
‘canals.’ This suggested a human-modified landscape; conceptions of
Martians and a habitable Mars were born.1

The canals, Lowell reasoned, had been engineered to manage Mars’

limited water resources. The theory was popularly accepted, likely
because of concurrent widespread droughts in India, Africa, China,
and Brazil. Concerns about Earth were projected onto the distant (yet
relatively similar) planet. Though astronomers quickly refuted a Martian
civilization, it was “nearly impossible” to erase the canals from popular
imagination once a credible astronomer had mapped them.2
111

The droughts on Earth and the imagined effects of droughts on a Mars

civilization began a narrative—which still stands—that Earth is ‘dying’
due to environmental stressors, and that Mars offers salvation. Since
parallels between Mars and Earth—such as a similar day length—were
identified as early as the 1830s, Mars has been mapped as though it
were a version of Earth.3 While Lowell’s interpretation of drought on
Mars widely disproved society’s vision of the planet as one that could
support life, it is society’s vision that persists, even in spite of desolate
images taken of Mars’ surface. The focus on the potential that life
existed on Mars has also persisted. This possibility has been central in
maintaining support for continued exploration of the planet. Thus,
the metaphor of ‘dying,’ and its liminal state, suggests that Mars
awaits salvation.4

SPACE TODAY
The space industry as we know it is transforming. Once, there was
only NASA. Today, private-public partnerships are taking the place of
government space entities. Dubbed ‘New Space,’ these companies are
working to make cheap satellites, mine asteroids, and develop reusable
rockets—in effect, bringing space landscapes into the everyday.
BUTCHER

LEFT Surface of Mars. Image courtesy of NASA.

GU : ISSUE 07

ABOVE Percival Lowell’s sketch of Mars circa 1895, with
instructions to the printer. Image courtesy of Lowell Observatory
Archive and Dying Planet.
112 Many of these companies—from SpaceX to Virgin
Galactic—have set their sites on colonizing Mars.5
Others, like Google, are involved in mapping and
supporting Mars missions.
A manned trip to Mars is both an emotional
fixation, rooted in a narrative dating back to the first
maps of Mars, and a practical fixation. Mars is the
most likely candidate for extraterrestrial human
colonization because it is similar and close to Earth.
Robotic exploration of the Martian surface shows
it may have once supported life and liquid water
oceans. As such, Mars is seen as a viable location
for a human colony, offering redundancy against
the destruction of Earth. Emotionally, Mars has
been a promised destination for humanity since
the space race of the 1960s, at least, and Martians
have been both endearing and frightening foils to
our human experience in movies, TV, and books.
Most importantly, we believe that Mars can save
society. The caveat: Mars can save society, but only
if society can save Mars first.
THE LANGUAGE OF MARS
“This independence day, it’s the U.S. that invades
another planet—Mars.”6
- ABC News, 1997
New Space and space colonization have the
potential to radically shape the future. Thus, it is
important to be critical of rhetorical devices used to
shape this future. A 1975 report from NASA states,
“Why build space settlements? Why do weeds
grow through cracks in sidewalks? Why did life
crawl out of the oceans and colonize land? Because
living things want to grow and expand. We have the
ability to live in space, therefore we will.”7 SpaceX
has named their future Mars-faring spacecraft the
Mars Colonial Transporter (or MCT).
This language is incredibly inspiring and calls
to mind the drama and excitement of American
Westward Expansion. At the same time, it has
an unmistakable resemblance to the language
on Manifest Destiny—Mars has no inhabitants
to displace, yet we still speak about it in terms
of colonization. These rhetorical devices should
be considered critically as we move towards any
future on Mars. Looking back at historical examples
provides insight into how our current discourse has
been shaped.
Once, there was only NASA.
Today, private-public partnerships
are taking the place of government
space entities.
A Douglas Aircraft ad from 1960 (lower right) shows
a lozenge spacecraft hovering above the surface
of the moon, where 1950s-esque, futuristic, space
architecture stands on a craggy, foreign landscape.
The viewer, a voyeur, peers around a jagged hill
in the foreground, watching the spacecraft from
the surface of the Moon. The accompanying text
reads, “When only explorers dared cross darkest
Africa, few foresaw it as a future vacationland. Outer
Space now stands in a similar position. What will
Lunar vacations cost? When rocket development
is written off and we have nuclear power, a traveler
may go for about the present price of a tiger hunt
or African safari!” The ‘Darkest Africa’ he refers to
was ‘lightened’ by explorers and vacationers who
normalized a seemingly alien region of the world, a
feat that parallels our goals to make the red planet
familiar—to make it our own.
In Google Earth Mars, users select Mars from a
dropdown menu—Mars is literally embedded
within Earth—to reveal the planet, around a
patchwork of long rectangular photos stitched
together from satellite imagery,8 eerily
reminiscent of lonely, fragile Earth in the famous
1972 ‘Blue Marble’ image.

By taking a look at A Trip to the Moon, a silent Familiar tourist icons (e.g., a camera and hikers)
film created in 1901 by Georges Méliès, one branded onto the surface of Mars reinforce the
can see the travelers to the moon encounter possibility of putting humans on the planet. Green
‘moon-natives,’ dressed as African aboriginals— icons of two hikers with walking sticks dot the map;
an orientalist ‘other’ that lends an exotic but humans become green Martians. These hikers walk
familiar quality to the foreign, unimaginable, lunar on the tallest mountain on Mars and in the dried
landscape. Since much of Africa was colonized river beds. This representation of human bodies on
by 1900, the placement of (a generic ‘African’ or maps of Mars, without spacesuits, suggests human
‘other’) aboriginal on the moon suggests that ownership of the landscape, as well as its future
the moon, too, can be conquered. Similar tropes
were followed in later films about Mars, including
Thomas Edison’s 1910 Trip to Mars and Out of the
Inkwell’s 1924 cartoon of the same name. In both
films, Mars is human-scaled and the protagonists
interact with characters that reference on-Earth
113
realities, from the gas masks of WWI to tattoos that
allude to the African colonies of the time. In all of
these examples, the creators use the landscapes of
Mars and the moon as tabula rasa, projecting
their own humanity and experience onto a
foreign ‘other.’

GOOGLE EARTH: MARS

“We are investing in the future of generations of
scientists to come ... and we may be preparing the
ground for somebody to go to Mars one day.”
- Gerhard Neukum, principal researcher on Google Earth Mars

Google Maps is the most widely used 2D mapping

tool in America, with over one billion users
each month. Google Earth is its 3D interactive
counterpart. Both platforms contain a map of Mars.

RIGHT This Douglas Aircraft ad appeared in Missiles and

Rockets on August 1, 1960. A space tourist peers down at
the moon from their spacecraft, which is about to land. The
BUTCHER

accompanying text compares space tourism to the darkest

reaches of Africa. Image courtesy of Another Science Fiction.

GU : ISSUE 07
 habitability. Gray camera icons denote images
taken by rovers.

In the Google Earth Mars image to the right, a

thick red line dotted with camera icons traces the
path of the Mars Opportunity rover at the Victoria
crater. The image recalls a brochure at a National
Park, with a suggested route for visitors and scenic
viewing areas. Google Earth Mars also has a feature
where one can overlay antique maps of Mars—
such as Schiaparelli’s—onto the globe, effectively ABOVE A screenshot of Google

placing Google Earth Mars in the history of Mars’ Earth showing the Mars map
LEFT Details include the
cartography. Within Google Earth, Mars awaits the
dropdown menu in which Mars is
arrival of humanity.
embedded under Earth (A), hiker
icon (B), and camera icon (C).
Image courtesy of Google Earth,
Mars offers a utopic alternative to ESA, DLR, and FU Berlin, 2014.

Earth and Earth’s problems.

Furthermore, users can also explore scientific

discoveries of Mars, clicking on markers to reveal
names of places and descriptions of geologic
114
features. The act of naming, even without
indigenous names to ‘uproot,’ can be read as a
political exercise of power by NASA and others.
Place name origins are also included, such as
Tooper, a town in England; Bigbee, a town in ABOVE Screenshot of Google Earth showing the traverse
path of Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in 2006. The rover
Mississippi, USA; and Holdman, an American
follows the edge of the Victoria Crater. Camera icons denote
astronomer. Again, it can be noted that Mars is
photographs of the Martian surface, recalling a map of scenic
being mapped as though it were a version of Earth. rest stops in a national park. Image courtesy of Google Earth,
ESA, DLR, and FU Berlin, 2015.
A FUTURE UTOPIA

“All Utopias require mapping.”9

- Dennis Cosgrove
like a fantasy. The isolation of space—whether the
The hope that began with the errors of Lowell, enclosure of a spacesuit or the distance of another
now being flamed by New Space, has led us to the planet—lends itself to utopian visions. Utopias have
utopian idea that if we can save Mars, Mars can shifted from being spatially isolated, by rivers and
save us. NASA dubbed the first landing site of the lagoons, to temporally isolated, by the future.10
Viking rover Utopia Planita, reflecting 1970s hopes
for Mars. In spite of the inhospitable images we And Mars hovers ... waiting.
have of Mars, the planet offers a utopic alternative
to Earth and Earth’s problems. Mars is both similar
enough to Earth to seem like a plausible alternative,
and radically different and distant enough to seem
ENDNOTES

1 Washam, Erik. “Cosmic Errors: Martians Build Canals!” Smithsonian 115

Magazine, December 2010.

2 Lane, Maria. “Geographers of Mars: Cartographic Inscription and

Exploration Narrative in Late Victorian Representations of the Red Planet,”
Isis 96, no. 4 (December 2005): 490. Accessed March 5, 2015. http://www.jstor.
org/stable/full/10.1086/498590.

3 Dittmer, Jason. “Colonialism and Place Creation in Mars Pathfinder Media

Coverage,” Geographical Review 97, no. 1 (January 2007). Accessed April 5,
2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30034045

4 Markley, Robert. Dying Planet: Mars in Science Fiction and the

Imagination. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.

5 It is worth noting that the major players in New Space and Mars
Colonization are predominantly white male billionaires. Most publicly, Space
X’s Elon Musk, former PayPal founder; Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos, founder
and CEO of Amazon; and Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson, founder of
Virgin Group. In effect, the wild economic disparities of our current time are
enabling space exploration in a way that NASA has not been able to with
limited federal funding.

6 ABC News. World News This Morning, New York: American Broadcasting
Company, July 3, 1997. Cited in Dittmer, “Colonialism and Place Creation,”
126.

7 O’Neill, Gerard K. Space Settlements: A Design Study. Honolulu, HI:

University Press of the Pacific, 2004.

8 “Man with a Plan: Interview with Gerhard Neukum,” European Space

Agency (blog), December 10, 2003. Accessed March 1, 2015. http://www.esa.
int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/People/Man_with_a_plan_An_
interview_with_Gerhard_Neukum

9 Cosgrove, Dennis. “Mapping Meaning.” Mappings. Islington, UK:

Reaktion Books, 1999. The full quote reads: “Thus the map excites
imagination and graphs desire, its projection is the foundation for and
stimulus to projects ... All utopias require mapping, their social order depends
upon and generates a spatial order which recognizes and improves on
existing models.”

10 Jameson, Frederic. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called

Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London & NY: Verso, 2005.
 08 JUDEE BURR is a queer freelance writer and activist living
in Providence, RI. She studied the dual majors of Philosophy and
Earth Systems at Stanford University and now works at Freedom
Food Farm, serves on the Environmental Council of Rhode Island
and the board of Groundwork RI, and organizes with Showing Up
for Racial Justice RI (SURJ RI). Her articles on sustainability, science,
and culture have been published in Motif Magazine, ecoRI News,
Grist, and the journal Occasion.
19 MOLLY BUTCHER was born and raised in California, and has
a deep connection to landscapes with little water. She holds a BA
in Art Practice, an MA in Design Research, Writing, and Criticism,
and is currently pursuing an MLA at UC Berkeley.
01 PHIL EVANS began his professional education in 1970 at
UC Berkeley in Landscape Architecture. He obtained advanced
degrees in agricultural sciences, and went on to develop
community college horticulture facilities and curriculum, managed
park maintenance for a large municipality, and devoted 25 years
to developing the SF State University campus as a model for land
use innovation and site design. After retirement, he founded the
CityWrights Collaborative, a volunteer civic design and community
design engagement network.
116
0 6 MICHAEL JENKS Originally from Nashville, TN, Michael
Jenks now lives in Southern California studying architecture as well
as founding SOVRN skateboards in Los Angeles.
15 MARIA KARATSIOMPANI, KONSTANTINA LOLA, &
NINA TSONIDI are graduate students at the National Technical
University of Athens. They share an interest in landscape
architecture, and center their work around identities and social
aspects of architecture, introducing parameters of interaction
between personal and collective memory.
04 NATE KAUFFMAN is a PhD student in UC Berkeley’s
Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning department
at the College of Environmental Design. A national award-winning
educator, his research focuses on the optimization of material
flows through large spatiotemporal fields for climate change
adaptation purposes. He founded the Live Edge Adaptation
Project (LEAP); the Climate, Infrastructure and Resources Group
(CIRG); and is the principal at Biosphere Design Lab, a
consulting firm focused on the emergent challenges of a rapidly-
changing world.
0 3 GREG KOCHANOWSKI is a principal at Rios Clementi Hale
Studios in Los Angeles, CA. He works to combine the techniques
and strategies of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban
design to create unique, forward-thinking environments that build
upon and enhance the specific qualities of place.
13 ETHAN MCKNIGHT is interested in our complex
relationships to industrial landscapes. He earned his MLA from
the University of Minnesota where he received numerous awards
and recognition for his academic work. He is currently a Project
Designer at D/O in Minneapolis.
02 CLAIRE LATANÉ is a mother, writer, and ecological designer.
She advocates for public high school environments that support
mental health through her fellowship for leadership and innovation
with the Landscape Architecture Foundation. She practices
landscape architecture as a senior associate at Studio-MLA.
10 ZANNAH MATSON is a PhD Student in Human Geography
at the University of Toronto where her research focuses on
the construction of territory through highway infrastructure
development and counterinsurgency doctrine in Colombia. She
teaches urban planning and design at both Ryerson University and
the University of Toronto. Matson holds a Masters of Landscape
Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
09 REBECCA PARTRIDGE was born in the UK, and currently
lives and works between Berlin and London. Since graduating
from the Royal Academy Schools in 2007 she has exhibited
internationally. She has been awarded several international
scholarships including awards from The Nordic Kunstnasenter
Dale, Norway; The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, USA; and
The Terra Foundation for American Art Fellowship in Giverny,
France. She is currently co-curating “Scaling The Sublime,” an
exhibition at Nottingham University, UK, in 2018.
07 BORDERWALL URBANISM STUDIO is a multidisciplinary
studio in the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley led
by Professors Ron Rael and Stephanie Syjuco.
14 SANDRA SAWATZKY is a film writer, producer, and director.
Her productions Passing Lane, The Water Cooler, Belly Boat
Hustle, Indian Blue, Swing Fling Thing, and feature film The Girl
Who Married a Ghost are told through choreographed action and
without dialogue.
05 PUB LIC SEDIMENT TE AM | SC APE is a
multidisciplinary design team that views sediment as a core
building block of resilience in San Francisco Bay. The team is
led by SCAPE Landscape Architecture with Arcadis, the Dredge
Research Collaborative, TS Studio, the UC Davis Department of
Human Ecology and Design, the UC Davis Center for Watershed
Sciences, and the Architectural Ecologies Lab. Their proposal
was developed for the Resilient By Design Bay Area Challenge,
a collaborative research and design project to explore and
implement innovative solutions to the issues brought on by
climate change.
18 CHIP SULLIVAN is an artist and professor of Landscape
Architecture at the College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley.
Chip received the 2016 Jot D. Carpenter Teaching Medal from
the American Society of Landscape Architects, which recognized
significant excellence in landscape architecture education. His
latest book, Cartooning the Landscape, concerns the metaphysics
of drawing and learning how to ‘see.’ The Foundation for
Landscape Studies selected Cartooning the Landscape for the
2017 Jon Brinckerhoff Jackson prize for accomplishment in the
field of garden history and landscape studies.
17 ALEXA VAUGHN is a Deaf woman studying at UC Berkeley
(BA, 2016; MLA, 2018). She specializes in designing landscapes for
difference and dis/ability and hopes to remove systemic barriers
to the urban landscape in professional practice, teaching, and
writing. In 2017, she received a Student Award for her research
poster highlighting campus inaccessibility (Crip the Campus Map)
at the Berkeley Circus. Recently, she was nominated for the 2018
Landscape Architecture Foundation Olmsted Fellowship.
16 W.W. SMITH is a nomad by nature, adrift in his vessel on
the stream of consciousness, flowing forth from flood to sonder
seas of soul’s soliloquy. His poetry and prose contemplate the
intertwining relationships of the perceivable universe with and
amidst us—the intrepid perceivers! His temple is the forest, his
deities the trees; his words will whisper on the wind, in time from
he to thee.

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12 ANYA DOMLESKY is an urban designer at SWA Group where
she co-leads XL: Experiments in Landscape and Urbanism, the
firm-wide innovation lab undertaking practice-based research. Her
research on the built environment focuses on scales beyond the
designed site, both larger and smaller. Anya has taught at Harvard
Graduate School of Design and Boston Architectural College. She
completed her graduate work in landscape architecture at Harvard
Graduate School of Design and in architecture at McGill University.
ONLINE ARTICLE: www.groundupjournal.org
0 0 CARLA FISHER SCHWARTZ is a visual artist and
educator based in Chicago, IL. Her studio practice
investigates the relationship between the mapped image
and contemporary notions of exploration, virtuality, and the
simulated environment through print media, sculpture, and
video installation.

12 EMILY SCHLICKMAN is a designer and co-lead of XL

at SWA Group, where her work intersects urbanism, ecological
infrastructure, and immersive design. Prior to joining SWA Group,
she was an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Human
Ecology at UC Davis. She holds an MLA from Harvard Graduate
School of Design and a BA from Washington University in St. Louis.

11 MARK WESSELS is an arborist, acrobat, and landscape

architectural designer based in Oakland, California. He’s obsessed
with city streets, hidden creeks, and urban trees.

GU : ISSUE 07
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GROUND UP...
IS the student journal of the Department of Landscape
Architecture & Environmental Planning at the University of
California, Berkeley.

IS an annual print and web publication intended to

stimulate thought, discussion, visual exploration, and
substantive speculation about emerging landscape issues
affecting contemporary praxis.

IS an examination of a critical theme arising from the

tension between contemporary landscape architecture,
ecology, and pressing cultural issues.

IS intended as a discursive platform to explore concepts

grounded in local issues with global relevance.

WILL be guided by the interests of our readers and

collaborators. We operate on an open call with invited
LAST NAME(S)

entries from academics, practitioners, students, designers,

scientists, and activists.

GU : ISSUE 07
Borderwall Urbanism Studio

Judee Burr

Molly Butcher

Phil Evans

Michael Jenks

Maria Karatsiompani, Nina Tsonidi, & Konstantina Lola

Nate Kauffman

Greg Kochanowski

Claire Latané

Zannah Matson

Ethan McKnight

Rebecca Partridge

Public Sediment Team / SCAPE

Carla Fisher Schwartz

Emily Schlickman & Anya Domlesky

Sandra Sawatzky

Chip Sullivan

Alexa Vaughn

W.W. Smith

Mark Wessels