Let's Build A Landscape Again

(Like We Did Last Year)

students
Ellen, Jared, Haobo, Robert, and Yiran on the case.

This semes­ter, when cir­cum­stances per­mit­ted, I worked with our sec­ond-year grad­u­ate stu­dents again on apply­ing game­like sys­tems to vacant lots in St. Louis.

While each stu­dent end­ed on an indi­vid­ual study, our last activ­i­ty before the veil of chaos descend­ed was a group effort from all nine of us. Work­ing on the 20th Street exit ramp from Route 40, just north of the so-called St. Louis Sum­mit, we imag­ined an open space instead of the soc­cer sta­di­um which is cur­rent­ly (maybe?) slat­ed to be built there. Each stu­dent con­tributed to a com­mon plant palette and ros­ter of built ele­ments, and we all playtest­ed ways to com­bine those ele­ments in a way that was sur­pris­ing, fresh, and some­what sensible. 

Work­ing with some 16-bit tem­plate images which were more balky than they should have been, we man­aged to make an over­whelm­ing – maybe gar­bled? – land­scape with­out any clear author but with some actu­al spaces peer­ing out of the madness. 

lets build
Work from Jared Brocklehurst, Robert Keast, Justin Parscher, Sarah Sanders, Haobo Sun, Harshat Verma, Ellen Warfield, Yiran Yang, and Yichen Yin.
lets build
Red maple fever!
lets build
A chain of little plazas.
lets build
We are all especially fond of the little island sanctuary just to the upper left.

(April 2020)