Deconstructed Landscape

LANDSCAPE:

The ecological functions of landscape play a critical role in the health of our environment, in particular the health of our water resources among others.  Buffalo is uniquely positioned on the edge of the foremost supply of freshwater in the world, the Great Lakes (EPA).  In addition, it is next to one of the largest freshwater falls in the world in Niagara Falls.  Every second 750,000 gallons of water go over its edge (NYS Parks).  The average house in Erie County uses about 230 gallons per day, and about 84,000 gallons annually (ECWA 2015) or about 12% of the per second capacity of the falls.  Things like sewage treatment, agricultural runoff, and storm water runoff can have large impacts on the health of the Great Lakes.  For instance, high levels of phosphorus in Lake Erie have caused algal blooms so large that they reduce the amount of oxygen in the water, potentially posing risks to fish and plant life (EPA).  The role of landscape in controlling surface water runoff is key to protecting our water resources.  Contemporary architecture uses landscape design to decorate or to hide imperfections, relegating landscape to a purely aesthetic role.  This form of thinking stymies the ecological potential of integrated landscape and architecture.  The disciplinary and formal seam between architecture and the landscape needs to be explored to produce new languages of interaction as well as re-introduce old languages in the hopes we can create a new paradigm from which we can design from.

ARCHITECTURE:

The creation of works of architecture also creates works of waste.  The building sector created 530 million metric tons of construction and demolition waste in the United States in 2013, 90% of which was purely demolition related (EPA. Advancing Sustainable Materials Management. 2013).  For scale, the United States produced 254 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW consists of residential and commercial garbage and recyclables) in 2013.   Between 1996 and 2003 New York City saw a $400 million increase in its sanitation budget due to the closure of its last remaining landfill in Freshkills, Staten Island causing the city to start exporting its solid wastes to other states(NYC Sanitation 2004).  Connecticut is running out of landfill space rapidly, in particular for C+D wastes and Massachusetts is considering a ban on the disposal of C+D waste products entirely(NYC Sanitation 2004).   A shift from demolition based practices toward a reuse and recycle based approach will begin to lessen the amount of waste that enters the landfills annually from the building sector.

ARCHITECTURE+LANDSCAPE:

Through the deconstruction, or “unbuilding” of a vacant Buffalo property, we can begin to take a landscape up approach to building that could provide ways to blur the boundaries between deconstruction, landscape, and architecture. Utilizing the materials from the home, a series of reformed architectures in the form of ecological installations could be built.  The installations would be both performative and informative.  These “living structures” would integrate with the landscape to allow the former house site to become a positive environmental influence by augmenting any existing positive ecological functions and perhaps providing additional ecological functions such as water runoff control, filtration, and C02 sequestration .  The architecture of the constructs would address the importance of aesthetics in ecological design and the impact that it has on public perception of “green” design. The economics of ecological design through the reuse of existing materials would also be furthered by showing what is possible with the introduction of closed-loop material practices.  Temporary rebuilding on site utilizing recovered materials could also serve as a way to avoid having to transport some materials off site to recycling facilities or waste facilities by serving as creative ways to store construction materials on site for future projects.  The end goal of this process being the transformation of a vacant property into an environmentally regenerative, socially stimulating, and commercially viable site.  Repetition of this process at multiple sites across the city could begin to develop a network of temporary socio-ecological interaction sites that also store reusable materials for future construction, therefore exhibiting the evolutionary characteristics of a living system.