11th Annual UBC Summer Field Studio (Aka: Oyster River)

I once heard reference to a senior civil engineer’s rule of thumb on the time it takes for a student to evolve into a practicing professional.  The rule of thumb, in a nutshell, was that it takes two years after graduation to determine whether a student has the potential to succeed, and ten years of practicing to stop being dangerous.  It’s a saying that I thought was a bit laughable and haven’t paid much attention to – that is, until recently, after realizing that lessons I had learned years ago are now only starting to sink in.

I have been fortunate through the early part of my career as a Landscape Architect to have retained a link to the University of British Columbia (UBC) Landscape Architecture program, specifically through Professor Will Marsh.  I started working with Will as a teaching assistant eight years ago, and was subsequently (annually) invited to work with him as a co-instructor for the Oyster River Field Studio (a summer field studio run through the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture).  I just finished my ninth year of participating in the course, rehashing old ideas and trying to present concepts in new and creative ways to over 200 students that have now endured the studio.  Suddenly, this year, it seems as if everything about the course content has become particularly fresh and relevant to my practice.  Maybe it’s that ten year rule of thumb – maybe it actually takes that long for ideas to germinate, take root and emerge as something relevant; or maybe it’s just me.  Regardless, following is a brief synopsis of what I have ‘re-discovered’ after a week of exploration and dialogue with UBC architecture, landscape architecture and planning students, and after re-absorbing lectures from Will Marsh who remains what I think of as one of the great North American minds in Landscape Architecture.

Balance vs. Stability:

Typically, our response to change in landscape is to impose stability.  When building around powerful landscape systems like rivers, shorelines and hill slopes, a heavy hand is often used to lock landscape in place and make a site and its context more predictable.  Do we begin to lose a sense of the spirit of a place, and erode our ability to develop sustainable responses when we fight landscape in this way?  Should we not seek to work in a more balanced manner, and seek to understand the dynamics of landscape systems and natural processes such that when we develop site designs and community plans, that they are adapted to site?  Would we not then achieve more sustainable, less costly and more pleasing designs and community plans?   These were questions posed to me almost a decade ago through the field studio, and they have become particularly relevant and challenging to me today.  As a designer, it’s the difference between locking up a site for fear of risk, versus developing an understanding of site to facilitate a more balanced design response through management of risk.

Part of Nature vs.

information transacrion wire

Protect Nature:

Are we a relevant and legitimate part of landscape, or are we somehow apart from and incapable of living harmoniously with nature?  If we are incapable – as it often seems – of living in harmony with nature, should we not aim to lock ourselves out of pieces of treasured landscape for the sake of landscape preservation?  My undergraduate degree was in Geography and Environmental Studies, where I became entrenched with a sense of reverence and respect for nature, that had already been instilled at a young age through my father.  I have had many of what I would describe as ‘spiritual’ experiences in the outdoors starting from a young age, and have developed a deep connection to landscape, particularly landscapes along the Pacific west coast.  As a Landscape Architect, the question posed above – dwelling vs. exclusion – has become one of the most gut-wrenching problems that I have had to wrestle with, and until recently, have had the luxury of simply setting aside.  I have come to realize that it is essential that we view ourselves as relevant dwellers in landscape, because only then will we begin to truly explore how we legitimize the act of dwelling in landscape.  There are simply too many of us on the globe to lock up landscape for the sake of preservation – this summer’s conversations with students have further deepened my resolve that we need to change perspective on our participation in landscape from “users of some bits and preservers of other bits“, to “legitimate dwellers of the whole“.

Site, site, site…

Did I mention site is important?  Sites differ from place to place in form and function, and these differences are important and relevant – we ought to be more concerned with site when we build.  Why?  Well, over the years of teaching the field studio, we have tried to help students see that landscape form and function is inherently predictable and really, not so scary at all to investigate.  We have tried to drill home three basic arguments (applies to both rural and urban settings):

1. Site exploration can lead to all sorts opportunity for design inspiration;
2. Paying attention to site and designing in a ‘site-adaptive” manner should really be thought of as the most basic of prerequisites for sustainable design; and
3. Paying attention to site almost invariably facilitates, if not forces, incorporation of multiple values into design efforts.

But invariably, the conversations about site-adaptive design and site-adaptive planning come round to “why bother, really?”  What’s the problem with ignoring site?  We are developing  all sorts of building technology and have all the construction technique and machine power necessary to re-shape sites in ways that suit our elegant designs, so why should we design site-adaptive?

Well, if the arguments for design inspiration and sustainability above aren’t enough, here are the primary reasons Will Marsh uses to argue why paying attention to site makes sense:

Site-adaptive design can:

1. Decrease construction costs;
2. Decrease maintenance costs;
3. Decrease risk and liability exposure;
4. Increase user satisfaction and public perception; and
5. Increase real estate sales value.

Again and again over the several years that I have been involved with the field studio, students want to know why site really matters.  It is the latter list of 5 largely economic drivers that catches the most attention, and true to my experience in my own practice, it is these five points that also attract the most attention from clients and colleagues in other disciplines.  It is not always that the five points are broadly applicable, and sometimes they are only realized in subtle ways, but not always.  For example, decreased maintenance costs can be difficult to use as an argument in support of a site-adaptive approach for a real estate developer, but more relevant and important with someone involved in municipal design where long term maintenance is a concern.  Likewise, identification of site features or functional attributes might affect construction costs only marginally and could even restrict development, or in contrast, a site feature can become a powerful organizing element and a tremendous resource that saves money outright.  Regardless of where and how the benefits are realized, it is the combination of the list of five and three which I return to and which continuously motivate me to pay attention to site in my projects.

If that civil engineer was correct, maybe it is finally after ten years when we begin to realize that continually re-visiting basic planning and design principles – like paying attention to site form and function – helps us become less dangerous designers and leads to richer and more sustainable outcomes!