Awaking Empathy for Nature through Landscape Design

Again, it is a late self-review of the second presentation. So fortunate to work with Claire and Jingyi who always brought up new inspirations for design and made fantastic drawing. I learned a lot in this assignment, not only from effective discussion with my teammates and instructors, but also from others’ miro displaying and presentation.

The topic of this time is to increase human awareness of and empathy towards a selected species and design a space, structure, thing, system, and process that improves the species’ life. Hence, we have two groups clients actually — — community and species. What we did was regarding western grebes, our selected species, as star performer for their melodious sound and elegant ballet dancing. In order to welcome them back to the lagoon, we created a park, centered around a pond, setting a eelgrass stage, a series of soundscape for an ecological theater the community can watch or hear throughout the year. The theater itself was an improved habitat and can concentrate species’ sound which was really helpful for grebes as a kind of sound-parasites species. In a nutshell, we attracted more grebes with a compatible habitat and amplify their merits when displaying to human. When appreciating this ecological melody and dancing with amplifier, people would better acquire spiritual enjoyment and empathy. That is our motif. It seems to be persuasive.

However, after a-week self-review, there is a voice deep in my mind hovering: maybe your motif is forced and express a kind of self-condemned and subjective will. Like I want people to sit here to enjoy envisioned flocks of grebes and I want birds to gather here and bear the human disturbance and insist on having a wonderful show. Our designs only have assumed and beautiful scenes but few space is left for people and grebes to further create and imagine. Under this circumstance, empathy is fake, I guess.

Recently, I watched the documentary of “ River and Tides” again to experience the empathy or reverence to nature awaked by Andy Goldsworthy. There is a art essence bedded in nature with its distinctive rhythm. Like river and tides, with god-gifted motivation (maybe time), to move forward, to change, to circulate, to be eternal.

What Andy did is to add the meaning of time into the flow of river and amplify the displaying of flow. For example, he piled hundreds of yellow leaves into a belt and put them in a creek to see how they move in a gorgeous gesture as the flow run. He also did some other experiments in community with timber matrix or ice graving and observe how they would be changed or even destroyed by natural power. He gets the material from the nature and give back to nature with gift and provide it with a motivation to create art masterpiece beyond human’s imagination. During the show of change, people could generate their own thoughts from any angles and see certain beauty and power from uncertain process. It demonstrates a humble perspective to form empathy or reverence.

It is a little shame in this project. If having chance, I am glad to have a try to make the subjective intention vague and let the nature speak louder with my subtle intervene.

Andy Goldsworthy’s work. Reference: Google