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There Is No More Time For A Blank Slate- Opinion Piece
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I just don’t believe in anything but a ground-up approach. That concept is quite general and applies to many facets of life. It’s all about digging deeper. There is no such thing as starting over, truly. Whether you bulldoze a site to flat ground or throw out a concept, there is and always will be layers underneath that bring you to a point in time, an action, reaction, or decision.
Landscape architects do not have time for a blank slate anymore. We must work with what we have on-site. There has been a pattern of wiping away a landscape’s history and attempting to landmark a new and modern ideology on top of ancient grounds. What this ends up bringing is destruction at its core- destruction of the value of palimpsest, culture, community, history. Of course, there are arenas where a history is maybe not meant to be given validation by being included in a site design. But I think that’s all in the way you portray it. There is much history to be cherished- especially in the mundane, which seems to be wiped away the most. Either the building goes down, the weeds torn out, or the whole entirety of an area re-realitized (I’m aware this isn’t a word, but cant think of a better way to put it. Someone comes in and warps the meaning of a place).
We don’t have time to play with ecological destruction in the name of art. We truly don’t have the authority to decide if a place is degraded or not. Everything around us holds value. Let me give an example. Take an old industrial site, proposed to be turned into a park. Will all that infrastructure be wiped out so that our current ideas around play are instilled? What does that say about the value we hold to the past? Sure, there are times where things and concepts may need to be taken out because it’s either contextually over-saturated or a potential health hazard. But what if we went into designs with an analysis of historical context and current conditions not just to idealize what the land could be instead but what the land could be with additions of knowledge, experience, and art?
We must acknowledge what has come before, working with the layers that have made a site what it is today. When we re-imagine, we should improve on what is already there, not wipe the slate and attempt to impose our concepts on a space. I think true creative genius comes from tweaking, realizing not all is lost or broken. Americans have for too long swept culture under the rug in favor of profit. Why can we not have both? We should landmark our ancestor’s accomplishments and failures (appropriately, and not isolated). We should take our advancements and place them in like puzzle pieces.
There is no more time for starting over. We must be visionaries of reality.
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