Friday, October 14, 2011

Update Oct.7th - Oct.13th


Time for some thesis progress update.

THESIS ADVISOR

My thesis advisor is going to be Pierre Belanger. I worked with Pierre in Fall 2009 for my first core studio at GSD, which is one of my favorite studios ever. Even better, we got distinction for that project.

After graduated from SCI-ARC with B.Arch degree in Spring 2009, I decided to learn something different. Pierre is the one who show me how DIFFERENT landscape architecture can be from architecture: they have different scale, perspective and approach. For me, the best part in life is about experiencing those thousands of ways to look at something, instead of what you are looking at. 

I was auditing Pierre’s ‘Theories of Landscape as Urbanism, Landscape as Infrastructure: Paradigms, Practices, Prospects’ during my early stage of thesis topic exploration. I found it quite helpful. He always starts by asking questions which are thought provoking. For example, his question during one class ‘What makes Europe so beautiful?’ leads to his argument that ‘they know how to make good use of their underground.’ He mentioned Germany were using a process by which they would take trash and other toxic material and bury it in sites that had already been dug for another purpose, such as granite quarries or coal mines. This in turn allowed them to use the landscape above instead of building landfills like people do here in the States.

One of the case studies he showed us is the Heilbronn Underground Waste Repository (Austria-Germany).

‘Austria’s wasteshed can be divided into three streams: ash, slag and hazardous waste. As the respective residues of incineration and smelting processes, ash and slag are handled within the borders of Austria, while hazardous waste is transported abroad to designated storage facilities across the European Union (EU). According to the German Federal Environment Agency, Germany boasts the highest concentration of landfills and is considered to be the most significant importer of waste of all EU countries. Maintaining the bucolic character of Germany’s rural landscape, most of its facilities are located far below the earth’s surface, in former underground salt mines developed between the 14th and 20th centuries. Currently, Germany maintains approximately 24 mine-filling sites for two types of waste elimination: mine-valorisation sites (tourist sites) and underground landfills (waste storage facilities). Lacking surface and sub-surface storage capacity, Austria is currently employing the former Heilbronn-Kochendorf salt mine in southern Germany as a disposal and containment site. As an endlager, the Heilbronn-Kochendorf underground complex will provide permanent storage for the more than 10,000 tons of hazardous waste generated by the petro-chemical industry. Part of a network of active and decommissioned mines, Heilbronn is an underground complex that, through mining over the past two centuries, has created over 45 million cubic metres of underground cavities, tunnels and shafts. In order to safely store hazardous materials, waste in the Heilbronn-Kochendorf underground complex is geologically isolated from the groundwater and biosphere by the existing strata of salt and clay layers, according to practices sponsored by the European Atomic Energy Community since 1955, creating stable conditions for permanent disposal. With the more than 1 billion cubic metre storage capacity below Germany, there is reportedly enough capacity to supply of hazardous waste storage services for big cities across the European Union during the next 150 years. (Sources: Südwestdeutsche Salzwerke AG, 2008, City of Vienna, Endlagerung in Deutschland, 2007 / information collected by Maria Julia Budnik and Ingebjorg Lose)






All images above are collected and produced by Maria Julia Budnik and Ingebjorg Lose

To me, the most beautiful part of landscape is always something ‘invisible’. The landscape researches are quite often about mapping those ‘invisible’ facts, systems and flows (like what we did for Nutrient Cycling project), which is an extremely exciting process.

Relate this back to my thesis. During our first thesis prep class, we were asked to talk about what our thesis going to be about. At that moment, the phase ‘the art of touching the ground lightly’ haven’t came to my mind yet and I have no idea where Laos is and the have never hear of 'UXO' in my life. However, I do know what I am interested in. I am always fascinated by how violently people ‘touch the ground’ throughout history and its subsequent spatial quality and territory characteristic: coal mining, land reclamation, landfill, etc. Huge amount of materials being moved, huge energy flow and tremendous change created to the system amazed me all the time. I was saying in that first class that I am going to do something with the land reclamation in Netherlands. Then after Pierre’s theory class and looking at the Heilbronn Underground Waste Repository, I picked my site in Shanxi province, China, trying to do a project by creating a connection between the problem of abandoned coalmine to the problem of lacking of space for landfill in the same region. Then two days later, after realizing how hard it is to get some China mainland data, I finally picked another topic and change my site-postwar landscape in XiengKhuang, Laos. It seems like my potential thesis site and topic has been jumping around the world in a short 3 days, however, they all share the same characteristic, which is 'how we touch the ground'. 


The thesis is about an argument. The design project is just an example helps to explain the argument. That’s my way of taking the thesis and I keep this value on things in mind all the time. For example, while I am doing thesis research on Laos, there are huge amount of data and fact I dig out everyday. It is really easy to get frustrated during this process: you have to compare information on the same topic but come from different sources; there is always data you know does exist, but can never get it due to reasons ranging from political, historical or authorization issue. However, when I realize the data just need to show the fact that ‘we touch the ground violently’, that’s enough. What matters the most is the argument ‘we need to learn how to touch the ground lightly’; and what matters the most is I am going to do a design project (no matter in Netherland, China or Laos; no matter about reclamation, coal-mining or UXO leftover) and showing you what beauty or benefit can be generated by utilizing ‘the art of touching the ground lightly.’

About how to work with Pierre... He is the one whose thoughts are always so smart and fast, plus the fact that he has super strong mind; I am not as smart as he does, but my mind is even stronger and I am always quite clear about what I want the most - in terms of doing a thesis project, that’s something positive. I will learn as much as I can from Pierre, and at the same time, I am going to do something driven by my own heart not others. What I am expecting from my thesis is not how good a project is in the end, rather, I am using thesis as a media to communicate with other people, sharing my truest thinking and feeling about something in this world.


SITE DESCRIPTION

I got the two pieces of the most important data less than 24h before my thesis prep pin up today. I have been sending more than 20 emails, more than 10 facebook messages, making calls to 5 organizations overseas who supposed to have those data. On the 11th, I found an image showing the information I really need on this website and then send the blogger an email:

Peter, who is the blogger writing this article, send me over the data which I have been looking for more than one month. Peter is a PhD candidate in the Department of Epidemiology within the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. He kindly share with me the bombing data and we talked about the potential of working together on certain parts of my thesis topic. It is always good to hear the voice of people from other disciplines. It is not just about the diversity of ideas, rather, what interest me the most is the diverse logics on the same topic from different people. As I said in my thesis update few days ago, the thesis process is so interesting. You started to know something you have never heard of, and you began to know people that you may never talk with or meet in your whole life.

Here is my site description board.

I started converting the excel data got from Peter to something can be visualized in GIS around 11am yesterday. Then after studio meeting around 8pm, I started to work on putting together different layers of information together and some quick graphic test, finally went back home at 2am and did my presentation of the board at 8am


The site description board definitely need more work and it is good learn some really good stuff from Gareth, John and Silvia Benedito. John suggested we memorize our 250 words abstract (which I have to keep editing and updating through the whole semester), start our presentation with who I am and what my thesis is about, where is my site, and we have do this in a fast way to let people who have never seen our project or know nothing about our topic and site start understanding what you are doing quickly. As Paola said, the way you present your thesis, the thesis representation method should all related to the thesis topic. I remember when Andrew talked about his project ‘staging ground’, he said he was not satisfied with how he ended up his thesis presentation- ‘I end my presentation on one of this rendering, which didn't wrap up everything’.

Then Silvia suggested us to write down 5 questions and ask ourselves, which I found really useful. I wrote review of Paola’s thesis from last year. At the beginning of her thesis preparation, it was just about how to deal with a landscape in which everything already happened in terms of planning, development and building; then a set of five questions, which she brought up at the beginning of her thesis presentation, define more precisely what she was trying to say: 
When the function is obsolete, what does it becomes to be?
When space is forbidden, what does it becomes to be?
When a designed artifact interacts with the system, what does it becomes to be?
When a map line touches the land, what does it becomes to be?
When an anthropogenic landscape is seen by an other point of view, what does it becomes to be?

Finally, with the process of her thesis presentation goes, seems all these complexity was simplified into one simple question: how to cross the boundaries?


One more thing about my site description board is that, after my presentation, I realize I only talked about half of the characteristic of the beauty of my site. The site 'BEARING THE TENSION BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH': 'While the UXO buried ground creates a life-threatening picture; in certain areas, the scars on surface are transforming from a symbol of death into one of life: bomb-craters have been made to yield an alternative harvest, in an ingenious replacement of the rice fields they otherwise disrupt. For example, some craters are made into fishponds, which become good sources of protein. ' My site description should be represented in a way showing 'the tension between life and death': with this board showing the 'death' and another one showing the beauty of those craters, the merging self-healing process of the war-disturbed landscape. 


It is quite easy to be attracted by all sorts of data I found during the research process, have to keep in mind which piece I have to show and which piece shouldn’t to help amplifying my topic and argument - ways we touch the ground.

Courtesy of Bomb Harvest

High-altitude photographic mosaics, photo by H. Westing and E. W. Pfeiffer

photo by H. Westing and E. W. Pfeiffer





One thing I am struggling about recently is to find good pieces of readings than can help frame or inform my argument. As Paola told me, her disciplinary position was informed by some readings she did in recent years in philosophy and anthropology fields. One of the book inspired her most is : "We Have Never Been Modern", by Bruno Latour, French sociologist and anthropologist. Bruno framed the definition of 'hybrid' that Paola has used as reference in the thesis.  In his opinion, hybrid is the system, which constitutes the real world. He relates the failure of modernism with the modernist dichotomy between the system and the abstract models humans used to understand, and represent it. I can tell from Paola’s thesis how important this piece of reading help to frame her argument and her final design. I need some key words or key sentences help me to purify my argument and reminds me what I want to do the most all the time.


One more thing worth mention is our thesis prep trip to Sackler Museum today. When you look at a painting you are asked to focus; you are trying to discover the decisions made by the artist. It is at that moment, you feel you are talking with the artist and certain connections are created between you two. 


The best part of this museum trip is, I see ‘things make connections in different ways’.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Lu! progress looks great! exciting stuff. it is funny you talk about reclaiming land in Netherlands.

    I look forward to more posts!

    ReplyDelete