[Somewhere between Utrecht and Arnhem, Netherlands]

I was fortunate enough to travel to Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord this summer, among other places, with a grant from the grad studies department at RISD. My main motivation for visiting the infamous landscape post-industrial park was to understand the acceptance and conscious conservation of the ugly, and how minimal safety precautions were inserted to the remaining machinery.

Are the derelict steel and coke production structures modern ruins?  While crumbling feats of an empire's architecture and engineering are marveled and protected, the iconic structures of man's leap into the mechanized industry stand like frozen monsters in the landscape. Now safe to approach, to touch, but the massive static parts allow us to imagine unbearable sound of massive machine, of heat and flame, and the haze of smoke that once emerged from these now silent beasts.

I was staying in Amsterdam. I took the commuter train to Duisburg, a 2 hour ride. The flatness of the surrounding cowfields slowly morph into a system of suburban / ex-urban industry, passing through the Dutch cities of Utrecht and Arnhem along the way, accompanied by the small residential neighborhoods that once housed the employees of the surrounding factories. The town was not dissimilar to my own blue-collar town of Chillicothe Ohio. Sporadic development deleting chunks out of the otherwise idyllic country landscape. Towers of smoke plumes a fixture in the western horizon.

A bus led me to one of the further most entry points from the epicenter, which was ideal. All I could make out in the distance was the towering smoke stacks. The rest concealed by trees, a mix of meadow and wooded path appeared to lead the way. It was late June, and the weather pleasant, so I was happy for this derivation..

The main grounds adjacent to the main machine structure are relatively simple, or unimposing, a few modest curry-wurst shacks and a visitor center. The majority of the ground is open to exploration, even amongst the machinery. Little in the way of 'keep out' and 'do not enter' signage that would no doubt be so prevalent in the US. For example, the industrial  structures at Richard Haag’s Gasworks Park, a project in a similar vain, have been kept off limits to visitors. Allegedly Latz was able to get around many risk and accessibility issues by successfully having the site classified as a wilderness, rather than a park

The marvel of Duisburg Nord is the restraint Latz Partners showed in over-designing. Volunteer plantings dominate as growing material, existing structures and catwalks lead into internal surprises of sound and light installations, bowels of concrete bunkers became a series of gardens, fragmented walls re-purposed for recreational climbing.

[The stacks at Duisburg-Nord]

Duisburg Nord was given back to the landscape. Not to be consumed and taken over by it but as a supplemental typology that embeds into the existing. It is not apologetic, to its contentious past, which allows for a homeostasis to be attempted. The man-made platforms give once unseen vistas, channels and wind -powered pumps give access to moving water. Being the only visitor in site, I could sense the park is now functioning as a new nature.

There is an abundance of documentation for the project, and its association with memory and remediation, so I see no need to carry on with description and analysis. But experiencing the park caused me to think about the inevitable irrelevance in our built environment. As I have referred to derelict industrial structures as ruin, Marc Treib preferably refers to them as ‘remains’ quoting, “A ruin, for instance, may be neither new to us, nor majestik, nor beautiful, yet afford that pleasing melancholy which proceeds from a reflexion on decayed magnificence.”

[Volunteer species as planting strategy]

But consider that these ‘remains’ that exist today quite often became so in our lifetime. Change at large scale can occur within months creating rapid remains.

I like to imagine the possibility of landscape architects being engaged to design the future-future uses of industry. Knowing that resources in a given area would eventually be depleted and abandoned.

The industrial complex would be designed for sustainable excavation [as possible] and processing of material, limiting long-term ecological devastation. The machinery, buildings, and grounds are considered for spatial consequence, so as it one day is transformed into a public space, the transition is seamless. Perhaps taking note from the great Louis Kahn, and starting with the idea of ruin, and removing any indicators of time and scale, creating timelessness.

[Duisburg-Nord, belly of the beast]
How would this occur? What motivation would energy and resource big business have for taking these extraneous measures for the common good? I can imagine that post-industry design and planning becomes a requirement for all industry, where the question is asked, what are you doing for your inevitable irrelevance?

[Pressure and Deformation Diagram. Image by Adam E. Anderson]

I wanted to share some of the thesis work I did while at the Rhode Island School of Design. For me, it is the beginnings of what I hope to become the creation of a neo-nature. Please enjoy and share:

Metabolic Tectonic | Terraforming Waste into Our Perpetual City Organism [PDF Download]

We are a geologic force.

We make marks visible from space.

We can create our own geology.

This proposal is a designed geologic cycle, the geology being waste.
More specifically dredge material from New York harbor, and fly ash from incinerated solid waste.

I designed a mountain that breathes the city’s waste,
and fuels its growth.

These materials come together and through a process of accumulation, sorting, piling, bio-remediation, and solidification through bacterial calcification,  over time, grow into mountain.

The mountain has no finality. The pressure and compression caused by its growth create stone. Stone that will be harvested as the main building material for the city, completing the cycle.

Waste to mountain, mountain to stone, stone to building........

I am unapologetic to this growth and to waste.

This thesis explores waste not as marginal byproduct of a city’s function, but as an integral and perpetual metabolic component.

Infrastructure as inhabitable organism. Landscape as Machine.

I question ubiquitous ideas of nature, especially in the city.

We can design our own neo-nature.

This is first done by either dismissing, or accepting everything, as nature.

This thesis is a study of this dismissal.

[Image by Adam E. Anderson]

To begin to critique.

Infinitely amazed by both natural phenomena, and the artificial, the line between the two started to blur for me and I lost an understanding of these as separate entities. This was a wonderful moment, as I began to see everything as nature, or nothing as nature, the word simply lost meaning, but the beauty of what we make and destroy is equally as beautiful to what nature makes and destroys.

This thesis was in part an opportunity to explore the manifestation of these ideas into a visionary but believable concept in hopes others will soon join in sharing and developing a neo-nature. If it’s conceivable to build an inhabitable mountain of infrastructure within a centralized location within a city, then truly anything is possible, and landscape architects should relish in knowing that tradition and contemporary restraints, while important should not restrain radical thought and expression. I believe this to be an absolute necessity for the transformation of the profession.

[Angles Diagram. Image by Adam E. Anderson][Mountain Formation Diagram. Image by Adam E. Anderson]

I have been fascinated by the speed in which technology develops, and how these technologies and sciences might be utilized by landscape architects. Particularly the possibilities of large scale 3D printing and bio-engineering of plant life, both have inexhaustible spatial capabilities. An idea undeveloped within my thesis, was that the mountain would be built by an army of multi-functional drones, acting as a giant 3D printer, controlled through a mainframe by team of landscape architects and engineers. A highly detailed digital 3D model would be the data source for drone programming and their movement determined by its form. Rather than trying to recreate idyllic nature, I can imagine bioengineered plants to allow us to create environments that could function better than nature, more efficient and capable of resilience in face of the complexities of urban systems. As of recent developments, these are very achievable ideas, and worthy of further engagement.

[In the Canyon. Image by Adam E. Anderson]

This proposal is however fraught with difficulties of a political, practical, infrastructural, and economic nature. The inclusion of the public into an infrastructural system proved increasingly complicated. Whether the infrastructure should be simplified to accommodate inhabitation or additional layers and networks be added is a level of detail that needs to be further explored.

At 300+ acres, and with its centralized location, the question of “what else can it do” is something I hope to continue to study. I briefly touched on this in the “Program Potential” diagram but the spatial consequences of a more complex program holds exciting possibilities in developing new kind of esoteric park. A place in which the fear, meaning the positive experience of it found in the wild might be replaced with fear of daunting mechanical movements and unfamiliar biological reactions. What this looks like, and the best way for people to experience this, I’m still figuring out.

While I believe the siting of the mountain on the Bay Shore Flats to be just, I still question the location of the two incinerators. Particularly the southern facility, which would be susceptible to storm waves and would need further protection. As the shoals extend farther south into the channel, with further design exploration and modification to the planned waste barge shipping routes, this is achievable. The choice to use incineration was based on research showing with some speculation of further technological advancements in their operation, to be the most efficient choice for reducing a city’s waste volume into a manageable quantity. And there is a question of the fly ash, the non-toxic but certainly non-healthy by-product of incineration and how it is to be properly managed when exposure to the public is a possibility. Further study could be done into the capabilities and limits of dredge as a major material resource for maritime cities, as well as material potential in recycling other non-biodegradable waste such as metals and plastics. Additional city waste product such as sewage and e-waste were intentionally not addressed in this thesis due to the complexities associated with their treatment that time simply did not allow.

The form of the mounds, derived from the study of the formation of the angles of repose of similar material types is an area I aim to continue to push to achieve more radical form making a deeper relationship to program and site environmental factors of erosion, deformation, accumulation and decay. A more intense understanding of material deformation will allow the material itself to become more widely used, and for others to also continue to manipulate its form for use in creating public space.

I see this thesis as just the beginning of an long exploration into the ugly, and the design and creation of a Neo-Nature.

[Bingham Copper Pit, Utah]

Predicated upon accommodation humans have become one of the geologic forces affecting the earth. Growth required materials and energy. And to produce those forces, extraction is required from deep within the earth to reach material made from millions of years of geologic pressures. Technology has allowed us to hasten certain geologic processes at our will.

Many scientists believe we have ushered in a new epoch of the collective affect of human intervention on biological, physical and chemical processes on the Earth system, they are calling it the Anthropocene. The Royal Society in one of its papers describes the name as “a vivid expression of the degree of environmental change on planet Earth.” It means that human activity has left a “stratigraphic signal” detectable thousands of years from now in ice cores and sedimentary rocks.

[Coal slag heap pile, West Virginia]

We can imagine geologists many of years from now studying the stratification layers and wonder how our epoch will unfold? Could it mark the end of an era caused by a self-inflicted catastrophic event, digging and burying ourselves out of existence. Or might this layer reveal the change that occurred at a period where the foresight to design our own geology perhaps delayed such an outcome. The boundaries between epochs are defined by changes preserved in sedimentary rocks—the emergence of one type of commonly fossilized organism, say, or the disappearance of another. The speed at which vast amounts of non-organic material can be produced might define a shorter geologic time frame. One that is conceivable to occur within our own, or our children’s time, even containing multiple layers.

The Bingham Copper Mine in Utah is one of the biggest man-made depressions in the world, it can be seen from space. Operating for more then a century now the mine represents one of the largest zones of human existence. Faced with the thought of what happens to the mine when profitable extraction ends, the operators looked to Robert Smithson to engage the mine. Rather then hiding the scars, Smithson proposed highlighting the violence of the creation of the negative hollow form, the realisation is made into the revelatory through physical manifestation. Bingham is of course only one of a long list of Anthropogenic zones of extraction. By 2250 most of the natural resources will be mined out of the Western US, leaving 100,000 square miles of reclaimed landscapes.

[Landfill Mountain]

Cities are possibly the biggest human geologic intervention. New York City, as stated by Friends of the Pleistocene, is its own geologic force. Buildings constructed from local sandstones and schist from the triassic and jurassic period form skyscraper canyons of transformed rock, at times aligning celestially with the sun displaying the phenomena of time in the same way stone monuments have done for millennia. Before the Pangaea split, the tallest mountains in the world stood where the skyscrapers currently sit, mimicking there scale, constructed from their remains.

The dredging of the harbor and digging of tunnels continues to altar the shape of the coast. Governor Island’s current form was created with the 4,787,000 cubic yards of fill excavated form the Lexington Avenue Subway tunnel in 1901. Battery Park extended Manhattan southward into the harbor using debris from the 9/11 attacks. The major shipping routes in New York Harbor need constant dredging. The Army Corps of Engineers plans to extract  roughly 2 million cubic yards of dredge material from the Harbor each year, that material most often getting shipped out of state to landfill or abandoned mines to be disposed. The dredgers artificially repeat the process that created the harbor, scraping the bottom sediment as the Wisconsin glacier did 12,000 years ago. The city is in constant flux due to it’s own geo-dynamics that will continuously transform it for thousands of years to come.

[Anthropocene Construction Sketch. Image by Adam E. Anderson]

We are focusing on the “Anthropogenic” layer of waste. The effort and energy of extraction, production, and disposal of fossil fuels, geologic commodities, and construction is awesome in scale, as well as the waste material created as a result.. The now closed Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island New York is monumental, reaching over 150 ft. in some areas and containing some of the most noxious chemicals known to man. It is a human geologic event, an archeology of excess caused by rapid city growth and abundance. The landfill upon becoming full, and closed, becomes a mountain. In the case of Fresh Kills it was treated as a massive wound, covered with little acknowledgement to the toxic human generated strata below.

We seek to understand the fear associated with waste that results in its displacement to marginal landscapes, often to the detriment of low-income inhabitants. Part of this fear we believe stems from how many view nature as idyllic memory of it without us. Landscape paintings from the romantic period depict pristine wilderness’s and disregard the reality of human development, which inevitably leaves behind the ugly, waste. The images of Field Operation’s Master Plan propose a similar notion of nature rescued, with renderings of flowered covered meadows, and as critic John May refers to as “wholly fantastical Photoshop collages of upper-middle class recreational enjoyment.”

[Anthropocene Geologic Construction Timeline. Image by Adam E. Anderson]

The critique of the Fresh Kills proposal stems from its contribution to the perpetuation of the fallacy of pristine nature, especially in urban conditions, and when, and only when we are able to think beyond these ubiquitous idyllic notions can innovation in how waste is treated in the urban system occur.

This is a proposal of constructing this layer of the anthropocene in a way that challenges how we view waste, not by romanticising it, but by giving it authenticity, by accepting the ugly and transforming it into a perpetual functional organism of the city.

The landscape architect becomes not only a designer of landscapes but of geologic processes. The landscape architect is contracted to a project for life, continuously sculpting the site at his will. The landscape becomes a long performance, and the architect its conductor.

[Image: "Howl" (2007) by Amy Stein; from The Altered Landscape edited by Ann M. Wolfe]

Nature / wilderness are human inventions. We put them on the fringes of our inhabitation because we've defined them as separate entities. We like the idea of both because through them we believe we understand where we come from and they serve as a datum of where we need to be, how we need to live.

Nature makes us feel good.

Nature is a connection.

Nature is green.

Green equals healthy.

It's hard to argue with these statements because my intuition assigns similar value. But if we were to remove the notion of nature and wilderness from our vocabulary what are we left with? What arguments of sustainability and ecological design can we have? If climate change cannot be defined as a human or natural condition does this alter perception and mode of response? Contemporary understanding of the terms "nature" and "wilderness" might be stated as:

Wilderness is mostly experienced through media.

True wilderness is frightening.

Wilderness provides wildlife habitat.

Wilderness and nature can only be visited by people.

Computers are as natural as a wetland, technology as natural as ecology. Geographer David Harvey writes:

There is nothing inherently unnatural about a built environment such as Manhattan, neither is there anything inherently natural about any landscaped environments. Both the landscape and the urban operate as systems organised around the exchange, processing and distribution of life and matter within contexts which are immanently social, political, and economic, and do so interdependently  to form larger ecologies which are not only environmental, but also social, subjective and historically contingent.

[Image: Gold nanoparticles, courtesy of Georgia Tech]

In nature we identify a healthy organism with growth, but growth cannot exist without waste. But the "non-human" nature has evolved to metabolize all waste, and all byproducts of growth are reintroduced into the system. Cities in this way act very similarly to organisms in relation to growth. If we were to look at a time lapse video of NYC starting 100 yrs. ago this would be very evident, yet we view our waste as a dirty little secret of consumption and production, and not a natural byproduct of a well-functioning healthy city.

Without getting too deep into the origins of man's earthly dominion I ask these questions to challenge the idea of pristine nature in regard to landscape architecture, urbanism, and design responses to reclaimed land, in particularly, landscapes of waste. If we equate waste as growth we can look for a moment at landfill, in particular the well documented developing project of Fresh Kills Park, imagined through Field Operations.

A critique of Fresh Kills by John May in an essay [and another by Mario Ballestros] parallels some of our thinking, in that attempts by landscape architects to return to an idyllic vision of the "bird's in a meadow" depiction has put a stranglehold on what marginal landscapes, or urban parks should/could be. Or even if the use of the term "park" is a appropriate connotation for every public open space condition. Ballestros quoting May writes:

In the urbanism of Fresh Kills, before and after closure, a series of enormous corrective measures and technological “fixes” (along with minor changes in the official rhetoric) are supposed to heal and cleanse and erase the ugly from the site, leaving a landscape that can be consumed without guilt as the “wholly fantastical Photoshop collages of upper-middle class recreational enjoyment” of the proposal demonstrate. One has a nagging sense of this whole idea of a place set back on the right track, and healing itself back to normal is something of a hoax, “a remarkably compelling lie, beautifully rendered, but a lie nonetheless.”

And May again:

There was no acknowledgement of the terrible environmental legacy the landfill had left. Only blind faith in a picture of rescued nature that had been draped both across its unholy terrain and over our collective consciousness.

What interests me about May's writing is a need to challenge the nurturing motherly qualities of so much of contemporary park design. They are safe and green, comforting, depicted through renderings for all walks of life, revitalizing even.

[Hylozoic Ground by Phillip Beesley]

Could we not achieve other positive responses of the human condition through landscapes of fear, danger, and the sublime of the vast? In the same manner that wilderness once evoked these senses, the dark emptiness of the forest, or the scale of the mountain could be designed on Fresh Kills. Imagine massive canyons of bacteria solidified landfill, glowing at dusk through bio-luminescence which responds to toxicity levels within the layers of ground. Heat produced from the breakdown of organic material provides opportunities for microclimates, exotic plantings resilient even in winter disperse the landscape. Cooler moist temperatures mix with warmer pockets creating mist and fog, obscuring the occupants sense of space and time. Upon the massive artificial mountain, the view of the not so distant city becomes clear, but to be able to return is still unsure. Like true wilderness, predatory animals have been re-introduced and all senses must be active to negotiate their presence. There are no soccer fields, and you have never felt more alive.

The metabolizing of waste happens within the landform through bio-tech soil injection [bacteria] and protocell deploying geotextiles which alternate through seen and unseen as they move through the site. Methane capturing architecture is integrated both physically and visually so that the occupant understands the relationship of the living but artificial tectonic transforming under one's feet.

This is an idea of a Neo-Wilderness, taking what we understand of idyllic nature and assimilating that into the margins of urbanisation.  These are the zones where growth ends and waste begins to form a spatial condition to experience all that is sublime of the technological capabilities of man and the resiliency of all living organisms.

[Image by Vince Guallart. Denia Mountain.]

My recent work at RISD has led me to a final proposal in which I will be looking at the formal and chemical transformation of waste heaps to build a new landscape tectonic, particularly using the deployment of protocell and soil bio-technology.

RISD has dominated the schedule as of late so posting has been sparse, but this will begin a series of posts on my exploration and research of metabolic landform.

We'd like to consider a post-natural agenda that accepts the implausibility of recovering a pristine version of nature, but understand that the instinct of nature still exists within us, and around us. In the construction of our habitat, let us move beyond the role of landscape as a decorative device, or merely pragmatic sustainable infrastructure. A new framework can act as a catalyst for change, for a co-evolution of nature and man, progressing us towards non-autonomous landscapes that emphasize and value the inseparability of ourselves from the environment.

By constructing through the deployment of protocell technology we have the capacity to create devices that co-evolve with surrounding environmental conditions, metabolizing with that condition to establish a new landscape typology. This new metabolic landscape typology will make the once or soon to be un-inhabitable, habitable. Most importantly, this is a low-biotech solution, which uses ubiquitous materials that are available, durable, and affordable throughout the world..

Landfills and waste heaps are a landscape stratum that demarcates the human condition. Both sublime and tragic in their colossalness, they present a severe environmental detriment, but also an opportunity to use the remediation as a process to utilize its massive scale in creating a habitable condition.

One adequate and seemingly successful transformation of the landfill is through burial and park creation. This however is only a surface treatment, leaving a potentially collapsible landform, CO2 emission, and leachate [trash juice] which inevitably penetrates insufficient protective liners, and enters the groundwater system.

We will be looking at the potential of protocells, which have the capability to be chemically programmed to respond to certain environmental conditions. Through the design and development of a skeletal fabric structure as the form work for landfill, artificial landform is constructed. The landform however is not static. Stored protocells from the skeletal fabric are released and begin to chemically lithify the waste and leachate, preventing its release into the groundwater, and creating a structural landscape typology.

There is the potential for additional benefits of artificial landform generation beyond the obvious management and remediation of landfill. As our climate warms, and sea levels rise, our landscape systems need to adapt. With a new capability to build up quickly, we can begin to inhabit cooler atmospheres and avoid the encroaching sea rise. Micro-climates in interstice of landform can respond to a multitude of extreme atmospheric conditions.

At the moment we are not sure that this is even possible, but in reality, anything is possible, so we will proceed.

We're pretty excited for an open student proposal event to be put on by the AIAS here at RISD; The Media Facade Festival:

This Spring RISD’s newly formed American Institite of Architecture Students(AIAS) brings you the Facade Media Festival – an event exploring building scale projections, the relationship between media and space. This event will follow an afternoon symposium presented by the architecture deparment, Teaching Architecture Beyond the Desktop Horizon.

The event will showcase selected works projected onto the north facade of the BEB, viewed from the parking lot. Performances, visualizations, installations, interventions, any media. The AIAS is accepting submissions until April 1st. (no joke) Submissions might engage questions of architecture/space, technology/media, scale, light etc. Sound accompaniments are welcome. Proposals should account for a 2-10 minute performance. The projection dimensions are roughly 100’ x 75’. Along with the performances, selected student projects will be documented and profiled by some of our media partners.

Projection has been a particular interest to DUS for it's capabilities in spatial context. While contemporary projection technology is powerful in the distance it can cover, we're really looking to advancements in 3D. Add sensing, sound, and light, and our ideas of space manipulation and interaction enter new territories.

We will be at the event and feature some of the nights highlights as well as possibly look at projection work from today's artists.

[Image by Adam E. Anderson]

Zones of contention, borders, and transboundary parks have continued to be an interest of mine. Recent rising tensions and legislature in regard to the US/Mexican border and illegal immigration render this particular zone a terribly awesome area of conflict.

The idea of reinforcing the border with 2,000 miles of physical barrier seems an impossible idea, and futile. By the time one generation feels they have the solution, and a construction is implemented, the next generation comes to power, equipped with their own ideologies, new circumstances, and technologies.

[Image by Adam E. Anderson]
I wanted to share this hybrid drawing study I've been working on that aims to construct a narrative of what this border zone might look like after several generation’s failed attempts to construct what I am calling “The Great Wall of America."

During the initial constructed perspective process, the narrative of the place began to develop. I saw “new and improved” additions being made to pre-existing wall structures. “Immigration Sectors” were added to cantilevering platforms and “Great Towers of Future Energy Harvesting” replaced the cantilever all together in some sections.

The material might also hint at ownership and transitions of power. Perhaps a militant regime constructed the original wall platforms, then, discovering a natural energy source in the area the wall became privatized and massive energy harvesting structures were erected.

[Image by Adam E. Anderson]

The first drawing's intention was to portray a period of transition and lawlessness. This marks the beginning of a new frontier where few permanent inhabitants exist and power struggles over resources make for a hostile environment. The following two depict an evolution of that transition, homesteading and inhabitation.

The entourage was carefully chosen to depict how the wall becomes inhabited and ideas of culture, but, some of this was intentionally left ambiguous, so that each viewer can construct their own narrative with the characters and components provided. This I hope might challenge each of us to reflect on the arguable relevancy of the contemporary idea of "border." Furthermore, is there a process for landscape intervention that can be deployed on all zones of contention that might resolve conflict?



[Photo: Noah Shachtman]

Plants are living. If they do not receive one of their requirements for life they physically change alerting a caregiver if present the need for intervention. This ability naturally has environmental quality implications. If a plant is subjected to an overdose of pollution it signifies that maybe things are not suitable for humans as well.

The unfortunate part is that this is not a real time process and does not really allow anyone to react appropriately. But what if plants were trained to visually respond to their environments immediately? Even enhanced to broaden or even focus the elements to which they responded to.

We were excited to find a research group at the Colorado State University who is very close to making this happen. As reported on Wired, the research team has successfully injected "receptor" proteins into a plants DNA which makes the plant turn white in reaction to proximity of certain chemicals often used for bomb making.

As Wired, illustrated, anyone attempting to transport these chemicals near one of the receptor plants a botanical alarm would be sounded as all them would immediately turn to white. They could be placed in all public places susceptible to terrorist attacks.

Does this present a potentially new niche for a landscape architect? Counter terrorism through landscape, through horticulture? The design of public spaces arranged to unknowingly filter people through stages of botanical surveillance, measuring possible hidden threats of all kinds. There are definite positive advantages to this alarm system but do complications with privacy rights propose problems down the road?

Imagine receptor plants becoming the common choice for urban parks because of their pollution detecting capabilities. But this science becomes more advanced, more variable in what they can detect. Plants that were once used to detect "terrorist" chemicals can now detect data streams through wifi signals, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation. Parks that were once places of refuge become, unbeknownst to the general public big brother surveillance zones.

A less dystopic vision, is the ability to compose the visual change in response to other plants and elemental factors. Certain plants placed in proximity to each other begin to change in color as one detects the other. Imagine being able to see the actual process of pollination, a plant illuminated each time it interacts with a bee or butterfly.

Either way, this will be exciting research to follow.

[Cylinder [extraversion.co.uk] is a small collection of physical data sculptures based on STL file data captured by the analysis of sound samples from spaces, creating site specific sculptures reflecting the acoustic of an environment. A mapping of the frequency and time domains produced cylindrical forms that represent the specific spatial characteristics of the sound input. Physical versions of the digital 3D models were then "printed" in 3D using stereolithography.

“Beginning with the primordial sounds of nature, we have experienced an ever-increasing complexity of our sonic surroundings. As civilization develops, new noises rise up around us; from the creaking wheel, the clang of the blacksmith’s hammer, and the distant chugging of steam trains to the ‘sound imperialism’ of airports, city streets, and factories.”  - R.M. Schafer

Sound is an element that can define space, either by design in an effort to control and defend against noise (unwanted sound), or by using the composition of sound (often referred to as music) as an organizational method. This growing concern of the ever increasing complexities of our sonic environments is asking for innovative solutions to not simply mask or blind us to unwanted sound, but to compose it.

How can we integrate sound and site in a deeper and more meaningful way other then the traditional roles of sound integration with landscape architecture as simply a defense against sound, or imposing a non-site-specific musical composition to define spaces?

There is a needed opportunity of a hybrid landscape architect/sound artist, masterful in composing the inherent sonic qualities of a site and its context to create a unique spatial composition that more justly informs us about our environment. By recording and studying the existing site sound, and by using sound technology (accelerometers/sound sensors, microphones, speakers, etc.) a translation of that sound can be made to create a Composed Sound Filter, or an Acoustic Ecology Site Score which guides the spatial design.

We typically do not think of sound as having spatial implications. We have so naturally become tied to the visual it is hard to imagine this unseen force and how it can define and engage in our physical and spatial world.

Sound is often invisible to the eye, but, with the right tools, can be measured with a clearly defined form (amplitude), which has limitless possibilities of alteration as we begin to modify frequency and pitch. A powerful thought about sound and its relation to a landscape, is that it needs time to exist. Relatively speaking in comparison to architecture, landscape shares this same quality as it exists in the constantly changing moments of the environmental elements.

The amplitude and tone of sound has the ability to define space at various scales. The church bells found in the landscape of 19th century rural France for example prescribed an auditory region, and their meticulously composed tone and sonic reach actually defined the spatial regions of given townships. Disputes were common when these tones overlapped in the extents of neighboring towns, and also over who would ring the bell, and for what purpose.

These church bells at the time, served as spatial beacons for those lost in the nearby forest, and before lighthouses, as a sonic guide for wayward sailors. It was believed by many, that these bells had the ability to alter the weather, separating the clouds to create a clear path for angels traveling from heaven to earth.

Is there a modern example of the French church bell? Radio waves and stations perhaps act as a form of spatial definition, but I would argue that acoustically, our cities are two engulfed with an ever increasing amount of noise pollution that it becomes more difficult to spatially locate sound, which can have psychological implications to urban inhabitants.

The use of headphones can be viewed as of a kind of “urban tactic” in which we have the ability to deconstruct and construct the territorial structure of the city, to lose oneself in your own sonic universe when at any moment the physical world can interact and disrupt and bring the individual back to their surroundings.

As Harold Garfinkel in ‘Breaching Experiment’ (1967) noted. Making observable what usually goes unnoticed, the walking listener provides partial access to the mystery of appearance. By establishing a disjunction between the visible and the audible, a disturbance of the sensorium and form of strangeness in everyday life, it questions the evidence of the ‘perceptive faith.'

Our cities are rapidly growing and with it so does the production of noise pollution. Experts are greatly concerned about the possibility of universal deafness as the ultimate consequence as our cities produce untethered sound.

There is prominent research done, and being done in the recording of sonic environments that landscape architects can begin to pull from, in both built and non-built environments.

What if our landscapes could speak to us?  How would our environmental relationships and connections change if our impacts received a verbal response?  Perhaps we could finally answer the age old "If a tree falls in the woods" question.

[Recording the acoustic ecology]

On the ecological side. Scientists are intensifying studies to monitor ecosystems by recording and measuring biodiversity in soundscapes.  Sounds of individual species have been the traditional area of focus, but as Michigan State University Ecologist Stuart Gage states:

"I'm not particularly interested in species.  I'm interested in the biodiversity, species timing, habitat disturbances and communications issues.  It's using sound as a metric to look at ecosystem dynamics."

Like the coal miner's canary, by audibly monitoring the landscape it might provide us insight into forthcoming ecological demise. But to hear and comprehend the warnings takes time, technology, and expertise.  I wonder if our ancestors and those less effected by swelling urbanism were more in tune and thus able to detect ecological shifts purely by sound.  How about the health of cities?  If scientists were to study acoustical patterns of street noise could an early detection be made of overpopulation and mass transit deficiencies?

There was a time we all had the inherent capability to listen and speak with nature, but at some point something was lost in translation and we simply stopped listening.

The World Soundscape Project (WSP) was established as an educational and research group by R. Murray Schafer in the 1970’s as a response to the heightened concern of noise. It grew out of Schafer's initial attempt to draw attention to the sonic environment through a course in noise pollution, as well as from his personal distaste for the more raucous aspects of Vancouver's rapidly changing soundscape. Schafer was one of the first to inquire as to the relationship between man and the sounds of his environment and what happens when those sounds change.

The Brooklyn Bridge Park project completed in 2005 by Michael Van Valkenburgh and Associates is an example of a direct physical design response to abatement and construction to defend against unwanted sound. The site, located adjacent to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway is deafening.  According to MVVA’s research without any sound attenuating structures, the majority of the site would experience at least 70 decibels of noise generated by the BQE and Manhattan Bridge subway lines. At that noise level, two people standing six feet away from each other would need to shout to be understood (Berrizbeitia 241). MVVA recorded and mapped decibel levels at the site and addressed the incoming sound from the BQE by designing large planted landforms that physically block unwanted sound into the park.

[Landforms at the Brooklyn Bridge Park by MVVA defend against the massive sound of the BQE. Image by MVVA.]

Lawrence Halprin’s Freeway Park built in 1976 in Seattle addresses unwanted sound by cancelling out its affect with designed sound. Freeway Park, situated in the heart of Seattle city centre, was designed in the early seventies to reduce the impact of the the I-5 freeway and to reconnect the city centre with First Hill, an older area on the east side of the freeway. Halprin wanted to integrate the I-5 freeway into the park and to emphasize the highly urban nature of the site. The passing cars below make a constant, obtrusive element of the park. The 1976 park brochure describes the canyon fountain: “The freeway has been silenced, bested on its own terms, its power and scale matched and opposed by the natural force of churning water.” Halprin uses a sound with positive, natural environment connotations to negate what we view as unwanted sound, that of the active freeway.

[Halprin's Freeway Park. Waterfall couteracts freeway sound.]

In these two examples the understanding of the affect of sound on the site is studied but I think intentionally shallow. Both designers understood that the noise attached to the site had negative human impacts and chose to remove the noise through design intervention. In MVVA’s case, large mounds at Brooklyn Bridge were formed creating an acoustical opaque barrier from the sound source. With Halprin and Freeway Park, the idea that the more pleasurable sounds of water will overcome urban noise. Both projects, while successful in the defense against noise pollution begin to form a narrative of our understanding of the position we find ourselves in regard to it. A larger scale problem of uncontrollable noise coming from our built environments is treated through design that act as sonic blinders and band-aides.

I believe simple defense against noise pollution will be instrumental in future landscape architecture projects. However certain projects may lend to an opportunity and challenge to designers to rethink sonic site conditions and their treatment just as they would physical ones. Brownfield sites for example often speak to a greater environmental concern and the design engagement works in remediation to polluted site conditions to restore a landscape in a beautiful way, often with natural ecologic systems.

Another interesting project that the design was guided by a musical composition is the Toronto Music Garden, a collaboration between famed cellist Yo Yo Ma and Landscape Designer Julie Moir Messervy. Each dance movement within Bach's Suite No. 1 in G Major for unaccompanied cello, BWV 1007 corresponds to a landscape reflection in a different section of the Toronto Music Garden. For example, the Prelude becomes an undulating river scape with curves and bends. The first movement of the suite imparts the feeling of a flowing river through which the visitor can stroll. Granite boulders from the southern edge of the Canadian Shield are placed to represent a stream bed with low-growing plants softening its banks. The whole is overtopped by an alley of native Hackberry trees (Celtis occidentalis), whose straight trunks and regular spacing suggest measures of music.

The notion of using a music, the movement of composed sound to translate its physical qualities to spatial form is very exciting. But the issue I take with the Toronto Music Project is its lack of site specificity. What if we were to take this same idea but use the sounds that are being blocked, for example the BQE in the Brooklyn Bridge Park project, and reinterpret and compose those sounds to either create a harmonic sound installation for the park, or use this new composition to create an score, which guides the sequence of spaces and form for the design of the park?

By studying with greater intensity negative sound sources and understanding or working with sound/music composers/engineers we can not only design our physical environments, but sonically as well that build a narrative of multi-sensory experiences.

I did not come across a landscape architectural intervention that exemplifies my proposal, but there are several sound artists that are addressing the site specificity of sound spatially.

Ed Osborn, a sound artist and professor at Brown University does so with his Ground Creeper Variations project at the Fulton Mall in Fresno California. The project is a series of site-specific sound compositions designed for the space of the Fulton Mall, a downtown pedestrian area which was designed by Garrett Eckbo, who based the ground patterning and spatial organization from the pre-existing topography lines. The compositions are based on the physical space of the walkway itself using the location of various elements such as fountains and planters, sculptures, loudspeakers, and the curving patterns embedded in the pavement as sources for the pieces' compositional framework. Working from scans of the original plans of the Fulton Mall (which was completed in 1964), features of the walkway are selected and their images rendered into audio such that pitch, timbre, and textures of the sounds are determined by their placement, spacing, and contours.

Ground Creeper Variations is a good example of sound creation that creates an aural identity based on the physical makeup of a specific site. In sound artist Bill Fontana’s Harmonic Bridge, the sound sculpture explores the musicality of sounds hidden within the structure of the London Millennium Foot Bridge. This bridge is alive with vibrations caused by the bridge’s responses to the collective energy of footsteps, load and wind. This sonic world is inaudible to the ear when walking over this bridge (Resoundings). But the sound is then revealed by the use of the accelerometers (vibration sensors) that are listening to the inner dynamic motions of the bridge. Harmonic Bridge is realized by installing a network of live accelerometers on different parts of the Bridge in order to acoustically map in real time its hidden musical life. The live sonic mapping is translated into an acoustic sculpture by carefully rendering sounds from this listening network into a spatial matrix of loudspeakers. This sculpture will not only render the natural acoustic movements of the bridge, but will tune the presence of this live sonic data to the characteristics and architecture of the two spaces in which the work is presented: the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, and the Main Concourse of Southwark Station of the London Underground.



Taking ideas from all the projects mentioned, which have their own merits in addressing sound. I believe it possible to create a new style and facet of landscape architecture that embraces the sonic environment as it would any other element that we typically deal with in designing a site. There is the inevitable existing condition of a site like the Brooklyn Bridge Park that experiences noise levels that are not suited for the human ear, and would disrupt any positive qualities of a space. As an alternative, MVVA might of built their sound barrier mounds, needed to disrupt the impossible decibel level of the BQE, but also installed within the mounds accelerometers which which pick up the vibrations of the massive sonic vibrations from the freeway. Mixed through multichannel speakers placed throughout the mound area a harmonic reinterpretation of the freeway noise resonates throughout the area. This would allow visitors to enjoy the site while still communicated the larger issues of overpopulation, our car-centric societies, and their impact on noise pollution in the acoustic ecology. The anticipated sound of the new design might also play a role in the sonic composition. The footsteps of joggers, children playing, etc. all could become the final “notes” that solidify the piece.

Another sound sensitive approach to designing the Brooklyn Bridge Park could be record the sound of BQE and other existing sonic qualities of the site, and working with a sound artist such Alva Noto, who often uses recorded urban sounds to compose music that suggests spatial implications, or soundscapes. Using a similar approach which Julie Moir Messervy did in creating the Toronto Sound Garden, an acoustic ecology site score would be developed from Noto’s composed piece based on the site recordings. The landscape architects would then use this score to development the site plan, manifesting the aural identity into a unique spatial identity.

I am sensitive to the fact that the aesthetics of sound are far different then that of visual sensory. Sound has a way of drilling in your head, and if unwanted, not as easy to escape as simply turning the other way, it surrounds us.  So designing with this medium is extremely difficult, and perhaps why it has been avoided by landscape architects until now.  My proposition of composing site specific sound to formulate spatial design would most likely be addressed for projects with a unique sound or noise quality.  I also believe its possible, unlike the two examples of the Ground Creeper Variations and Harmonic Bridge projects, to work acoustically withing traditional medium of landscape architecture. Trees, combined with wind have the capabilities. Concrete, steel, and wood all have very different ways of absorbing and resonating sound and hold unlimited potential to be used to organised in such a way as to beautifully manipulate and harmonize with a given site soundscape.

This idea of sound’s ability to surround and consume us, especially in the urban realm is why it is so terribly fascinating, and necessary for landscape architects, as spatial designers, to begin using that quality to not only better inform design, but the ever increasing complexities of our sonic environments.

Alva Noto_Meta Phaser

[Group reviewing a student projection project based on the four sacred peaks of the Navajo from my Sound, Media, and the Urban Space Studio in the RISD Digital+Media Department.]

Its been a minute since last posting, my apologies. But I have a few decent excuses. D.U.S. has since relocated from California to Providence RI where I've been studying/researching art, sound, architecture, and landscape at the Rhode Island School of Design. My focus, as always, is to explore and expand the field of landscape architecture into new realms of disciplines, and RISD provides an ideal environment for this pursuit.

I plan to post some of the interesting student research and design projects that are happening all around me as well as hopefully posting more frequently.

To get things going again I've uploaded Ian Quate's thesis proposal, which he raps (only at risd) about mining, microbiology, and possible futures. Ian is a third year grad in landscape architecture.

This Thesis

Thanks for hanging around.