Memories as moments of intersection between people and their environment.
My thesis was the start of my journey as an ecological designer. It started with two concepts:
1. Design should consider generations
2. Place is a construct of people and it cannot exist without their memories to define it across time.
The project explored changes in the site across generations (floods and dam failures) and the subtle cyclical changes that happen to a place across a month, a season, or year. Some changes people may experience when they revisit a site, others may be experienced by their children in years to come.
THESIS: Virginia Tech Landscape Architecture
DURATION: 1 Year
MY ROLE: Research, Landscape + Architecture, Visual Design
AWARDS: Stanley Abbot Award for Excellence in a Senior Thesis, ASLA Virginia Honor Award
Process
Memories
Poetic prose was used to describe the past, present, and future explorers and inhabitants of the site. Their memories tell the story of change in the site across time.
Past | The ones who came before [C. 1400]
The Story of the Dogue
We called it, “at the end of the water,” for it was the end of our journey and the place where all water brought us before it opened into a larger body.
South of the hemlocks and before the bay we found our home. A bird unknown circled above, drawing a boundary that was to define the place through which we would live.
Pulled toward the water, we watched.
Fish, flowing with the water, formed constant ribbons of color that cut through gentle ripples of the river as they quickly passed us by.
Prosperity. We saw the place that was alive before we came. Forest, to rocks, to river. The gentle melting of the land into the valley of the river until it all became fluid.
Endless lives among us, yet one with us. We wanted not to destroy this place with a life before us. At every death, a prayer. At every birth, a celebration. Both land and man entwined.
The end of the water was the end of our peace, but the beginning and, perhaps, the end of those who would live beyond us.
Present [2013]
New Explorers
With my camera, I hoped to hold on to the moment. As humans do, I wished to fight the passage of time, of emotions.
We crossed the bridge and saw the unintentional view of the town, our eyes drawn in by a massive steel structure that grew out from the street, the wreckage of the old mills crumbling beside it. This was past and present and future colliding.
We imagined what it was.
We imagined what it could be.
Questions were better than answers as our eyes and minds worked together to define our own story of this place. Rust climbed up each beam as vines wove around rust. The trees of the hillside were pulling the structure back within in it as the hill fell to the river. The gentle melting of the land into the valley of the river until it all became fluid.
I returned a year later. Two feet, one pair, and the eyes of one (singular). Dust rose up from the site where the cylinders once stood. I held up my image to the face of what was and I realized it now existed only in my mind.
I walked across to the view of the steel structure. Time changes all, but it could not touch what I had once imagined. This place was changing, I would change with it.
Future [2075]
The Final Flood
I moved by the place my mother made, so I might remember her. When the river broke the old walls and the floods consumed my home, I found refuge in my mother’s arms. Though she was gone, her structure embraced me, lifting me above the vicious waters. When the water returned to the river, the town was left in ruins. This was the final flood.
Time passed and tall grasses filled the site. The gentle melting of the land into the valley of the river until it all became fluid.
