Narrative Summary: Without revealing the identity of the school
or the student(s) or faculty advisor(s) contributing to this project, please
describe:
- project location;
- project scope and size;
- site and context investigation;
- design program;
- design intent;
- environmental impact and concerns;
and
- design challenges/significant issues
addressed.
- Plant list may be submitted as an
additional page in the entry binder
PROJECT LOCATION
The site is located on cultivated agricultural land straddling
Highway 16, east of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (Canada).
PROJECT SCOPE AND SIZE
The project covers a total area of 1.2 km2 (0.45 mi2).
The main focus of the work is a highway light garden (0.15 km2/0.06
mi2), which has been placed within a secondary context of a series
of strip plot plantings running north and south, in opposition to the prevailing
winds. These plots are intended to extend the opportunities for interacting
with the work - the texture and scale are perceivable at a distance of a kilometre
or more for the visitor traveling past; on the ground, the scent and colour
of the plantings, the sculptural possibilities they present for drifting snow,
add another experiential layer.
SITE AND CONTEXT INVESTIGATION
An investigation of context was conducted through primary and
secondary research on a regional scale. The intent was to question my preconceptions
about a very familiar (native) landscape in order to discover ways in which
the garden could evolve in this context. Primary research included: a series
of interviews with private gardeners, both urban and rural, about their own
gardens; experiential analysis of local landscapes on road trips between towns,
documented in photographs, sketches and notes; once the site was chosen, analysis
of existing infrastructure (including highway, railway, agriculture, utilities,
etc.), wild and cultivated vegetation, climatic conditions, water, wind, and
topography; and photographic experiments with coloured Christmas lights which
would become the catalyst for the final design work. Secondary research included
an historical investigation of the garden in Saskatchewan, with a particular
focus on the railway station garden and the role it played in the settlement
of the West; an application of key themes found in the primary research to the
international garden theory of John Dixon Hunt and others - specifically the
notion of first, second and third nature - as a way of situating the Saskatchewan
garden in a greater context; and an investigation of the play theory of Hans
Georg Gadamer and James Hans which provided a set of principles to guide the
project.
DESIGN
PROGRAM
The design program was to create a garden which embodied a spirit
of play; which reflected its Saskatchewan prairie context but also introduced
difference into that pre-existing structure and, as such, allowed for the evolution
of the idea of the garden on the Saskatchewan prairie. The physical program
for the light garden was to create the opportunity to interact -- in winter
and summer, day or night -- with what is often a hostile and uninviting landscape.
The physical reality of the rural prairie is that, despite all this space, there
is little opportunity to just 'be' here -- to walk, to wander, to explore. Its
vastness, extremes of temperature and an ever-present wind conspire to keep
people indoors and in their cars. The garden will serve as a point of access,
and offer enclosure and exposure, light and darkness, recreation and contemplation
for those who accept its invitation to play.
DESIGN INTENT
The work has to do with the ubiquity of power poles, Christmas
lights, the horizon, the sky - with imagining what might happen to the grey
flat prairie when it is plugged into the grid for the first time. Light, energy,
maybe power. It has to do, too, with infusing our comfortable second nature
(productive) landscape with third nature (the garden), with colouring outside
the lines.
Tommy Douglas was the Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944-60, and
is widely credited with being the father of Medicare in Canada. But he is also
responsible for the Rural Electrification Act of 1949, which brought electricity
to farms and ".every incorporated village in Saskatchewan." (Richards &
Fung 1969) within the decade. And it was electricity, not Medicare, which Tommy
Douglas himself considered to be his greatest contribution (www.saskndp.com/cw/64.5/greatestcanadian).
The prairie landscape can be both utterly captivating and desperately
bland, but most of the time it just is; not even a stage set but wallpaper,
two-dimensional. It is a place to pass through on your way to somewhere. This
garden is intended to celebrate what has become ubiquitous, to refigure it in
the landscape so that we might see it again. The box of lights in every prairie
basement strung together across the fields, the ditches, the miles of dark,
straight highway between small towns. Best in winter, best, of course, after
dark. And powered by the relentless prairie wind. It is a garden that can be
read from a plane, from a car on the highway, or experienced up close, on foot
or skis or sled. It illuminates the landscape and becomes a volume itself, a
destination.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT AND CONCERNS
The existing condition of the site is agro-industrial, and its
essential character would remain unchanged, although the work aims to facilitate
the movement and exchange of natural process on as many levels as possible:
by connecting human-made ditches with naturally occurring sloughs, by introducing
vegetated corridors to reduce wind erosion and increase the comfort level for
visitors (human and other), by using wind power to illuminate the garden, by
inviting people to stop their vehicles and explore the prairie landscape, wild
and cultivated, as one system. As such, the environmental impact - not least
in terms of increasing the visibility of natural processes -- could be seen
as a positive one. The effects of increased pedestrian and vehicle traffic in
the area (if the garden was successful in its aim to become a destination) are
difficult to predict at this level of investigation, but are potentially cause
for concern.
DESIGN CHALLENGES/SIGNIFICANT
ISSUES
The main design
challenge - and, ultimately, reward - was to create a space which held its own
in the vastness of the open prairie and yet attracted visitors on a human-scale
with warmth, intimacy, and humour. The main personal challenge has been to
overcome my own idea of what is possible here, for landscape architecture and
for my own development as a designer, as I move from academia into practice. I
had hoped with this project to express what I love most about the study of
landscape, and that is its potential for play - in the design
process, in the continual exchange of ideas, in creating spaces that engage
people with mystery and beauty. In this sense, if only to me, the project has
succeeded.
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