Open Collections

McKenna, David

Landscape architects have demonstrated their ability to design in polluted and extractive landscapes through post-industrial landscape design. However, heavy industries continue to exist, pollute ecologies, displace wildlife and vulnerable people across the globe, albeit now far from the public eye. Yet these landscapes ultimately provide the foundational resources for human needs, comfort and culture. While de-carbonization of these landscapes is essential (yet outside the scope of landscape architecture) in the context of climate change, it over-simplifies the industrial ecosystems in which they exist. A de-carbonized future still requires extraction, processing and management of material streams. This graduate project outlines why landscape architect’s need to shift their focus to working heavy industrial landscapes. It reviews ways that landscape architects have begun to address these types of spaces and ultimately argues that both industry and designers need to be involved to find truly holistic solutions for industrial systems. Ultimately it highlights that more collaboration and understanding is required between industrial stakeholders, designers, and the public. The design portion of this project uses the iconic sulphur stockpiles of Metro Vancouver’s North Shore to foster this collaboration. Sulphur’s significance in both natural and industrial systems suggest human distinctions between these landscape require reevaluation. The design proposal displays ecological and industrial processes in on cohesive landscape, and invites the public to satisfy their existing curiosity of the sulphur piles, stand in awe at the scale of site features, and ultimately come away with a greater understanding of how integrated industrial landscapes are in our lives. Ultimately this project aims to inspire further collaboration between designers and industrial stakeholders. By implementing a project in a highly visible crucial node in the industrial fabric, subsequent system wide collaboration may become possible.

Text

University of British Columbia. LARC_V 598

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0448766

Applied Science, Faculty of; Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/