Daniel Urban Kiley Lecture: Julie Bargmann, “Modesty”

good evening everyone thank you for joining us i am anita verispecia professor and chair of the department of landscape architecture and along with my colleagues i am very pleased to welcome you to the 2021 daniel urban kylie lecture by julie bargman before we begin a quick reminder that julie will respond to questions after she has finished her lecture but please feel free to submit your questions into the queue at any time by using the q a button at the bottom of your zoom window we're also we also have live captioning available for this event that you can enable by clicking the closed caption button at the bottom of your screen finally i want to invite you to join us tomorrow at 12 noon for a discussion with landscape historians stays away er eigen and rafaela fabiani janetto titled think like a historian imagine like a designer a conversation on landscape history and design education and on tuesday march 9th at 7 30 p.m women in design will host their international women's week keynote address featuring anania rohi founding director of the ucla luskin institute on inequality and democracy please check our website for more information on these and other events this evening's lecture honors daniel urban kiley who was a student at the gst during the mid-1930s and became one of the most respected and influential landscape architects in the world the kiley lecture was established in 1984 and has been ever since an important event in our department's public programs then kylie's important to the field is evident throughout the school the daniel kiley archive is part of the loeb library special collections the kiley exhibition fund was created by friends clients and disciples of kylie to support landscape architecture exhibits and the kylie teaching fellowship program supports faculty recruitment and development recently our library received the late aaron kiley's vast and fantastic collection of photographs of his father's work we're honored to have these enduring tributes to them kylie and the kiley family as part of the gsd it is now my great pleasure to introduce julie bartman and to celebrate her accomplishments tonight in one sense she needs no introduction julie has been one of the most influential designers and educators of her generation so i will be brief about her trajectory and accolades she studied at carnegie mellon university and continued her training at the gst receiving her mla in 1987. only three years later in 1990 she was awarded the wrong prize and in 1992 she opened her design practice third studio quickly earning recognition such as the cooper hewitt award in environmental design in 2001 and instant critical acclaim from both the professional and the general press that is julie had a meteoric rise from early on in her career but in addition to this what i have found most extraordinary in her work is the consistency of her intellectual project over the span of more than three decades i can say without fear of exaggeration that when we arrived as mla 1 students at the gsd in the fall of 1984 she was already fully formed as a designer all the influences that have shaped her work ever since had been already internalized guiding her courses and studio work two of these are especially salient in my memory first are the works and the writings of the artist robert smithson specifically his interests and documentation of industrial ruins and his definition of a dialectic in landscape those contradictory forces embedded in them that nonetheless are critical in sustaining what makes them vital the second influence in her work has been the industrial landscapes of new jersey where julie grew up were most so blight she saw poetics and design potential the sway these two held in her imagination were such that she was simply said never interested in the so-called art of landscape that is the art of hiding its artificiality to make it appear effortlessly finished and natural to the contrary her work then and to this day has been about the effort of landscape about restless sights always at work in a continual state of formation that is the result of conflict and compromise neglect and care and of the effects of different speeds of time on its systems and processes and it is these that are most visibly rendered and left bare for all of us to see in her projects not surprisingly julie did not follow a traditional path after graduation the kind of work she wanted to do required new institutional context types of clients and most of all advocacy working on derelict landscapes was almost exclusively in the realm of engineers then who were invariably charged with cleaning up with erasure julie pursued the epa city agencies politicians at mayor's institutes community leaders arguing that there are other approaches that can be nevertheless redirecting their future while embracing the past fully and without regret it would not be a complete introduction to say that at the same time julie has been very vocal about the uncritical fetish towards the post-industrial as well as the unnecessary extravagance of some recent and much publicized public parks economy of means and an unfiltered directness about the work and its representation have been enduring hallmarks of her design which brings us to tonight's topic modesty a manifesto calling for restraint when we don't know what's next julie welcome back to the gsd we are delighted to have you here okay thank you so much anita i'm uh listening to your introduction i'm of course flashing back to you know when we're students together uh they're at the gsd and and realizing that you know there was a good amount of times that you knew me better than i did so i had to run to your desk and ask you what i was doing so thank you for that thank you for this privilege um to uh to be speaking um within the realm of the the kylie lectures which are you know awesome collection of uh landscape architects so um speaking of kylie um i uh wanted to i of course have to tell a personal story and that is that at the um american academy in rome of rome in 1990 i saw these two men you know walking toward me and it was the classics professor and i couldn't believe it it was dan kylie and the professor later said to me he said it looked like you had seen god and i said i did and then at some point kylie came up to my studio that were full of rubbings of etruscan tombs like you see here which were a far cry from the pressure surprisingly or not that i had of doing measured watercolors of italian gardens yuck so so kylie said to me he goes you believe in instinct don't you and i said i was like yeah he's and i think it was a compliment not sure but then he said hey blondie never forget that hey blondie let's go have a gin and tonic and i took that as a compliment modesty in practice means using restrained design approach while maintaining unapologetically ambitious goals um effective modest methodologies do not mix well with meek opera um aspirations as i need to point it out for three day decades i have been embracing sites good bad and more often than not toxic and the toxic ones forced me to temper outrage with savvy strategies um and all along the way again as i need to mention i've channeled smithson i have never wanted to save the world i just wanted to find these trouble sites stories embedded right where they are evolving exactly as they are and knowing this uh stories allowed me to call that as a best resource to regenerate these sites site-specific approach is old hat but the modest method is rare overshadowed by the rapid fire proliferation of shallow corporate unimaginable and needlessly showy landscapes by the way this is no reflection on nelson birdwold's work at hudson yards so shame on wells fargo troubled sites especially ask us to slow down they ask us to recalibrate our speedy practices to be as patient as gardeners or even the gardens themselves growing dormant at growing and dormant at their own pace my practice dirt studio was modeled after an artist studio intentionally small enough to make collaboration inevitable we took our time we cultivated a slow design practice but with shamelessly obsessive behavior to many of you much of what i say and show this evening will be nothing new but by reframing framing ideas dirt style i hope you'll see the efforts to cultivate a humble but but hard-ass projects over time i have come to prefer the word design as a verb rather than a noun physical results of an action are secondary to the action itself for some dirt projects the only thing that matters is casting the course of action i should have been up there the working methods are precise but the formal results are provisional put another way the choreography is exact but the outcome is a calculated guess in order to address something dangerous you need an action not a plaza the initiative in new orleans addressed the ubiquitous lead in the soils by remediating it in place no hog and hall allowed in this case science and art came together to accomplish the incremental distribution of an amendment that renders the lurking lead non-toxic our action plan was to uh create a civic network of action um not a dis not a dishonest makeover the aim was nested scales of social engagement robust enough to become social infrastructure with the mandate to create healthy soils action figures from city officials to residents were given the active ingredients to rebuild the city from below the ground up [Music] [Music] what happens when a client is expecting a designed thing but instead you present them with the construction process a proposal to move dirt around on their land instead of exporting it to a community who didn't have doesn't have a voice to say no we gave them recipes to carefully carry the excavated dirt via historic railways the dirt went over to the soil factory where it was detoxed and then the clean dirt was moved to its new home the sinking ball fields on the oxbow we felt it was a simple strategy to avoid damaging consequences to the neighborhood to avoid hundreds of truckloads of dirty dirt barreling past homes we felt our proposal was imminently just and reasonable but the client evidently evidently believed it was unnecessary so we were patted on the head and shone the door seeing landscapes as a continuum affords thinking in geological time seeing a site in a deep time frame when you see landscapes as cyclical the imperative is to modestly yet emphatically amplify the existing and to add layers that breathe we were not we were not trying to save the world like many heroic remediation projects but we're in awe of the landscape of coal the hundreds of miles of invisible coal tunnels now spewing acid mine drainage that's this toxic ditch orange discharge which actually when you think about it represents the net the next cycle of the coal operations so our team in essence took the next work shift the next cycle of regeneration the passive treatment system across from the town is an ecological washing machine a machine that reworks the polluted legacy slowly but surely toward its next generation we encountered a corporate giant with an iconic landscape but also dirty dirt on his hands and of course we said we'll gladly take that dirt off your hands we resisted their corporate preference of hogging and hauling which is expensive but also fast and conveniently invisible we did our homework about the koch operations so that the approach was calibrated rejecting erasure as an option we suggested a slower and less invasive scenario you're hearing the same words over and over let the toxic byproducts remain in place to treat it with regenerative gardens the technology of remediation at that time was nascent um so it was a fantastic opportunity to despite the client's resistance put make a public display of these gardens and let science become visible they were in a sense a representation of gardening as manufacturing something that was touted by was then touted by the converted client when a client assumes that they will we will start we'll start with the tabula rasa we guide them to embrace the past always without the past it's hard to imagine the next step in the site's evolution the main character at the navy yard um centered around the historic production lines these were the railways that we liberated from beneath a veneer of two-inch veneer of asphalt yes that's judy garland um materials here um in some parts of the of the navy yard may appear kind of fat fancy pants but the new surfaces alongside the reused concrete uh chunks have settled comfortably into place together human agency always ruled the ground had been impregnated with decades century of navy labor which seeped up to the surface to make this story very actually easy to tell the new creative crew of urban outfitters now inscribe the old lines of production every day surfaces remnants and plants were put in place to see what would happen i'm sorry i can't help but look at this image and i remember a lecture by dan kiley and there was this amazing effect that was happening in in the landscape you know and uh you know a moment or an effect not designed and he just said wow he said you know i didn't design that but i'll take all the credit so again slow looking leads to finding and then to a joyous process of curation the careful process of adding and subtracting of leaving well enough alone impatience wow that come again impatient corporate design over designed over budgeted over instagrammed is blind there is value in simply casting a glance slow looking nudges the site specific to become site dependent given um given what we were handed this was about the easiest project ever um except that it required the utmost restraint we had no preconceptions going in the client was wonderfully trusting the site itself i think is a masterpiece and one could say it's already designed when the concrete was removed for planting we committed we um absolutely committed to an economy of means of of re-using all of this material um really using that by just simply arranging this so-called debris typically headed as you would know you would imagine to a landfill reworking the existing was simply a matter of revealing and rearranging re-plumbing the historic pipe pipes led to the straightforward act of turning on lost water curation means being conscious of the tipping point between the overblown and the just right scaled up curation is a beautiful exercise in time and duration editing and revealing were our tools for reworking legibility since this 300 acres of post-industrial land was so disorienting and opaque a method of addition subtraction leaving well enough ensued a manic method of searching and searching the oak woodlands were carefully managed to maintain their wild state while the more cultivated rooms were carved out of the mosaic heritage oaks were liberated and everyone is welcome here is an example of missing the tipping point in contrast team teragram led by michael van wilkenberg associates made a pact that we would work very very carefully with the extraordinary wilderness what did we see we saw a landscape of change that warranted an economy of needs or it would disappear what didn't others see a landscape that was growing according to its own logic not ours the difficult context of depopulation grows more and more humbling as you pass abandoned block after block yes in detroit how could a modest way of working contribute value in a low density neighborhood with an uncanny alignment of developer and designer it was amazing finding came first while each decision in the parks construction was grounded no fancy pants allowed and talk about site dependent design took place almost entirely on site that was an incredible luxury and joyful um and uh i happened to live temporarily in a quonset hut across the street no decisions could be made without the full attention i was really trying to pay to the neighborhood and the park site and i was mindful of the relationship between the two the entire ground plane was contingent upon finding excavation of the buried historic engine house bestowed stone to create terraces holes bashed in bygone paving became tree pits no paths no hierarchy old and new detroiters now flow from the street to meander through the urban woodland our mantra design emerges it doesn't descend this might be a very brief talk but i i just want to end um and have plenty of time for questions but i'd like to end by raising the value of a modest practice of a simple design method methodology a careful way of finding a grounded way of acting as we move forward slowly into healthier times thank you these are this is always strange this silence yay thank you so much julie always an inspiration really what extraordinary work um while the um the the questions come in i i actually have uh two questions uh uh one is you know you i think it's so uh powerful how you say that you you work with a simple methodology but that has ambitious uh aims and that that is your definition of modesty can you talk about the aims or the ambition of the work more generally because you're very clear about saying you're not here to save the world yeah um so are we talking at the level of um i mean i i imagine it's it's many things but are we talking at the level of of um certain [Music] ethic about materiality about poetics about the reception about history and how do you how would you define the ambition it's something that is very consistent um and yet i i i would love to to hear it from you yeah um i um well yes you're right on the the mark there i think i've always had i didn't usually use the word ethic um but i think you know over the years as i kind of look at the work i mean i think that's the driving force and i would i think i just put it in terms of doing right you know doing you know doing right by the landscape you know um do and doing right by the landscape more than the client you know that was first and foremost always um and also to the [Music] also to be conscious of this idea to you know almost aggressively put some things in place i'm thinking about vin dale um although that was modestly put in place but you know all together it's a pretty it's a pretty ambitious landscape um but it it all has to that then has something to do with this you know it's like the life of its own you know i mean i'm always more and more when i you know think about this issue of cycles and i appreciate you know i always cite jill dissemini with with that um developing and articulating ideas about cycles um and cyclical landscapes and cities um you know is you know really you know that's this goes to my my loving to think of everything as a verb you know and that and that i can that you know some things can be put in place and you walk away you know in the best way um but uh yeah but you know when i picked you know modesty i almost i think they told you i wanted to take it back but um but i still i still think it may make some sense you know the method but totally i just i'm not you know as you know i'm not not shy you know though um uh and i don't think i don't think the landscapes are shy but how they were put together um you know uses restraint as as a strength can you talk about toxic beauty it's a hard concept it's difficult it's what it's difficult i mean yeah you know to unless i'm not understanding it but it's difficult to hold in your head such contradiction and you know i mean as you know i put those two you know words together quite quite a time ago and it was it was really um it was exactly that to you know kind of try to put together an annoying dialectic you know um of you know of of folks folks having to folks having to um uh really struggle with it you know so and i can't remember some others i would put together but i just was i mean i i think you know whenever it was 30 years ago 25 years ago you know i i desperately wanted folks to you know look at the look at those landscapes you know as not even beautiful because right there was the whole part of there was porn there too industrial porn industrial landscape porn but as as is again this kind of like full of hard work and they're just full of hard work um they're just and they're kind of tragic tragic characters toxic ones um but but it's okay you know there's anyway yeah so and what is just out of curiosity what is the expectation of that of the river in vintondale is it going to eventually be rid of the orange yeah stuff it's basically you know it basically is is you know the washing machine is is is basically um uh um uh it's you know it's the the it creates this situation where the heavy metals drop out right because they cut and so we did that it does two things the passive treatment system the metals drop out and the the ph you know the ph um is is elevated so yeah it was so much fun that project all right i'm going to go i just saw that the questions are coming up um i'll start with our own dean sarah whiting thanks for a wonderful talk and for rescuing fancy pants it was a good job i wonder perhaps not surprisingly what you would offer as a pedagogy of modesty and to piggyback on anita's question about ambition how do you teach students to be modestly ambitious or ambitiously modest i um it's it's it's difficult because i i i it is difficult because you know you you are teaching the students to be strong you know and strong with their ideas and you know but i i and so you cultivate that but then there's a big you know kind of uh you know warning signal um and i just say you're just you're just being too heroic about that you know it's just too heroic um and don't lose you know the objectives and your aspirations but just find another way that is less heroic you know it's kind of i say as simple as that but um but i um thanks sarah i love that uh that question uh because in my teaching i i that's a big one over and over and over i'm i'm trying to you know hopefully say that and hopefully model that from mark johnson uh great thinking leads to great results can you talk about your trajectory in our new normal where health is so critical where health is oh yeah um well i don't know to be maybe a little bit dumb about it is um i've i'd like to um um i like to think that you know that's healthy landscapes are the landscapes that i've been working on you know all my life uh and i do i do think it'd be now that it's i say that might be you know kind of interesting um to um try to dial up those initiatives um i think there's a you know a lot of of you know initiatives around inclusiveness and race and you know absolutely fantastic i wonder if we could add healthy you know we're not talking about like you know landscapes at a hospital you know we're talking about you know um everything you know every as we know every landscape could use some love um i'm one yeah i'm sorry i'm i'm i'm uh i'm now going to be thinking about that question um from kate orff thank you thank you julie can you talk about your research process photography etc so much of contemporary landscape architecture is about pre-cleared sites sites that are prepped for the future how do you dig into research oh boy hi kate everybody should know that kate kate and i worked together on the turtle creek waterworks project in dallas we had the most fabulous time in that heat um research i'm horrible at research my brother is shaking his head he thinks maybe i am i i i have to say i think that um i don't know i can't think much more than i i i hope the research is a lot of it is on the ground and that it's really messy you know that it that the research itself itself isn't like a clear sight you know that it's you know right that it's that it's it just you know you're not looking you know you're not looking for the solution you're looking for all of the kind of messy stuff that you could then use you know and you're not worth you know and and um it's it's i like to think with like kate was mentioning like my photography and my really manic drawings and all this other all these other things that aren't aren't so um uh clean um that uh it helps for a pretty uh i'm not gonna say you know um nicely cacophonous you know way of applying it you know um because that what you know what you're finding is kind of cacophonous so why not have that you know like look at this mess of a landscape in front of you i mean um yeah sorry kate didn't do too well on that one but okay the next question um from asia scooter sorry if i mispronounce your name it's about trust when pressure for ambitious client exists at what point does a client say okay are many decisions made prior to getting started on a project or is it a feat on the ground evolution i would say that you know it is true what people say the the the relationship hence hopefully the the trust with your client who again if you're an artist it's your patron you know and that that and that that is all you know important in terms of their trust and and um in you um to make decisions versus them making decisions that's a real like turning point i have found with with clients you know some trust you right away like my crazy client here in detroit you know others you earn the choice it is primarily about walking them walking through walking through understanding that site right as as best as best you can um and it's either it's on the ground or it's you do whatever you have to um and i do think that we do have to the devote a lot of time to building that trust um sometimes it's hellacious some usually it's pretty joyful you know because if you are are kind of discovering the site and the project and the aspirations like together um i i have i have found that the trust is inevitable you know if if you do that if you take that time on the site and about the site and it's about the site by the way more than their program and aspirations for it i always say that if you you know you talk about the landscape more than yourself and about the client that's where you want to be right because you know that is the that is the ground you want to share okay there were actually several questions about how do you present to your client and you speak about your particular methodology your particular poetics of landscape and what is that process well i i probably said the word stories ad nauseam and i am now because that's the that's the the primary way i you know i speak with clients and with communities you know is is just talking about the the stories about the uh about the site um and then you know in in terms of a continuum and then it's possibilities right because then it's uh um if you move into you know then the the sites landscapes capacity and you kind of play with that with the client or the community um that's fantastic i never talk about my ideas or philosophy never just never you know they're embedded you know they're embedded and i do think we that everybody you know listening probably you know encounters you know having a certain voice you know right that's we're talking about with the with the client you know because i have made the mistake of talking about you know some things that would have you know a bit of an environmental or ecological you know value you know and that client didn't want to have anything to do with that you know so i just said okay you know i won't talk i won't talk about that anymore you know i'll just sneak it in the back door so okay um mary lee thirst asks how do you typically investigate the history of a site you use municipal records local historical records corporate records or other uh everything i can get my hands or is honor i should say dirt folks can get their hands on i do want to say also you know that um uh i um there was the big list that you probably couldn't like go through of all the projects but an enormous number of them have historians on the pro on the on the team um and um i have found on i think and at least a few projects if not more i've insisted with the client that is historian was on um the team uh because you know i mean i i don't know how to do all those record things you know i i just don't not good at that research um so um i get folks that are you know that are good at it um everybody probably knows this but you know the favorite thing in the world is a sandborn those things are so sexy they're like yum yum yum yum and so i'm telling you that's that's you know that's that's where you know i start i also i have to say i also like and i've learned from working with historian um one of my my favorite sources is like a a company newsletter um it just gives the most beautiful right social you know dimension um uh to the to the industry so i would say you know so there are all those other records which are super fantastic but you know i i don't i would never start a project without a sanborn um and look for a look for these other socially you know tangential tandent tangential uh documents i think they're just they're just great okay next are two related questions about the future ken smith and i'm here paraphrasing do you have observations on how your slow practice and careful understanding of sight might apply to the future of obsolete sites of consumer or urbanism such as suburban malls airports and highways and catherine steven northinson what you consider the role of the manifesto in the 21st century given its modernist history in a kind of toxic architectural practice thanks catherine oh boy um for all those kind of big infrastructural probably you know um uh sites this is a little flip but right when you were listing them i was like just let them go you know um i i think i think part of the part of the slowness and i don't mean to be flip i'm actually kind of serious um i think part of the of a thing about slowness um is actually to purposely let some things be dormant or fallow um because you know everybody you know is in a hurry to you know maybe redevelop them but there's actually no money you know to do it so i'm i always wondering about and i'm and it's on a smaller scale and and like detroit looking at the fallow land is is and again jill's looked at at this with fellow land um how to how how to have those places look intentionally dormant you know so there's this level of love but there's also this part having them be a part of that landscape i have to come up with a term toxic beauty for those um i don't know what it is um so but again i mean it's it's interesting i remember i'm like flashing back for some reason to a conversation i had with rich haig you know um about the um gas works and we were talking it was it was it was rich that made me really think about this idea of of dormancy of intentional dormancy um and fallowness yeah so manifesto oh my god i maybe i'm a little sloppy with manifesto in that i i'm always asking my students to do one because they're just so freaking wimpy i shouldn't say that but it it's true um or you know you know how all students like struggle you know with um you know articulating um what they're doing so um i have to say that there's there's nothing tremendously um intellectual um about how i use it i really use manifestos as a as a tool as a vehicle you know for um you know for for you know and you know i i do it for myself you know to myself of just like god damn it just you know say what you mean you know blurt it out you know give it a little bit of rub you know for us all to rub against um yeah for that julie um lisa thompson asks can you talk more about your client's receptivity to your ideas their reaction to your approach on the final execution of the works and ultimately the ongoing use and embrace and care for the sites as they evolve yeah well as i as i think maybe you would see in the kind of like rapid fire um a bunch of projects here you know of uh that there's a hint there of a quite a variety of of of relationships um with the with the clients um and it does relate to the other part of the question of you know quote unquote stewardship you know since they kind of are like either in well they are in charge of it or they're or they're part of of working towards um uh towards um say the community the entire community being part of that of the of the care um i think that's a no i'm not gonna go there um i don't know i'm having trouble with this one so i got a pass all right so back to um your conceptual ideas um ethan kaplan could you expand more on your last point of expressing the hard work in the landscape how do you find that work to be expressed and what what stories get told and which not so it's a curation right right right well you know you uh right it's about looking at all of that evidence you know within the landscape you i mean they're all those traces you know of the work and most of the time they've been suppressed you know right it's it's kind of as as simple as that or if you know they're out in the open they're kind of um you know uh they're considered just you know like horrible um so i mean i know i go on and on about this but you know man if you could tell a really really good story about a site and you've got all of this beautiful physical evidence you know of that hard work of that human agency i mean you you just have everything you need you know um uh it's wow it's it's it's you know like a knee to what you're saying is then you have this like fantastic process of curation i'm finding too that in my teaching i would say you know the and i think this will relate a bit that you know i it's only recently fairly recently past few years that i've made this exercise of adding subtracting and leaving alone you know part of you know part of the you know um you know design exercises you know and um trying on that kind of methodology and um i don't think it's done enough i don't think there's a consciousness you know like uh i have students do only a plan that's adding then only a plan that's subtracting and then and you know um and uh one you start out with of like curating saying what is absolutely be left alone and then it's you know then say okay now put it all together you know and calibrate it make a little sliding scale you know and and see um see what you're getting and i find that the the students um really enjoy that this is a way for them to actually do iterations you know because that'd be like you know and and be oh because that's the other thing i always do the min medium and the max give me the min medium max of subtraction you know and sometimes the students really surprise themselves i usually have to tell them to have a cocktail to do the max because we we and you think about it we all have this tendency to just do that medium now so anyway i don't know how i got there with that answer but all i can say is that it's it's pretty damn fun uh and uh speaking of fun karen janoski asks do you still build models with soil and spices i think it's karen uh yes yes actually i know and i had my this my great client it was for courtyards i was totally pulling smithson on this one um just trying it out of uh you know of dumping soil you know i made a model of the courtyard and then just started dumping soil you know and we all said you know we said stop so when we felt like it was pretty good not so funny she asked so question from chris reed hi chris could you say a little more about aesthetics and aesthetics in your work we are often asked that our landscapes do so do such important things clean air and water and soil improve health address social and racial issues but do we as designers have an obligation to develop an aesthetic agenda in parallel to all of that yes i don't usually something i don't like to i usually chris i don't usually like to use the big a word um i don't know it makes me very nervous um but i absolutely think that when you got everything else kind of working uh that this uh that this thing visual physical this is nothing new to you is resonating you know because it's got a red it's it's got to resonate on and i think the aesthetic is of right the a very particular um level of resonance you know um i just have a tendency never like not to talk about it but you know again look at that slide in front of you if that isn't friggin you know a slave to um yes we are obligated to fill the world with this you know deeply meaningful aesthetic whatever you call anything in your chest feeling and i think it would be fair to say that you do have a very strong one julie i mean i remember walking into the office in the fall and um of of the previous year and uh and seeing the the the cover of lam at a distance and thinking that's gotta be julie and and i picked it up and sure enough it was core city park and um so it i mean there is if the the modesty does not come with a very without a very strong aesthetic in your work yeah and that's that's i think the thing that everyone wants to understand um because they want to have it of course as well they want they want to get there in their own work yeah i but i i i have to say you know i um i am and maybe that's my point of not having that word in my vocabulary um i i mean i know this may sound i might sound disingenuous but it's true that it's not on my mind when i make stuff you know it it's part of the decision like little by little you know with how things are going but it's not like it's not an agenda at all if you know it we if if that makes sense does that make sense right yeah oh there was a great question here let me see if i can find it here it is pat johnson if you were an architect what do you think your practice would look like wow come on julie you probably know i'm sure you've dreamt architecture many times you uh what i'm sure you've dreamt about architecture many times hmm i guess not that's okay no i think that well the one thing i think about and i actually don't even know what the work looks like per se but i love the jersey devil going around in an rv to sites to work on them so that's what the practice would look like which i you know i could do for for landscapes also but i don't know yeah i guess i avoided it yeah you have do you have a personal garden and can you describe it this is a question from ken smith i can um it's uh i do have a backyard garden um and it's um i have to say it's um it's a mis-mesh and uh mostly about mostly about experiments um uh yeah but nothing i don't think um anything uh anything special but just like you know plants i love some i did some earth work so that works out pretty well um but i was telling anita earlier that um i just the the most gratifying thing was to get bare root um black locust that were about four feet high and by the second growing season they were like 14 feet high um so and actually below those below the it's a whole big old line of them or gaggle of them and sure enough below them is the you know is the debris uh garden you know that underneath um all this stuff from an old coal shed and everything from um you know uh previous world um you know of the um of the site is it's underneath those honey locusts so nothing special just poking watching things over time can't wait to see it maria klein asks um i love your anti-heroic approach of love and responsibility to the landscapes and their histories could you talk about your engagement with the poetics after completion must start to stay engaged with and evolve the regenerative process over the long term as you observe results and new methods emerge i i think that is a great question and you are reminding me that um uh um you're reminding me that a uh of a point that i was going to make in the lecture about this idea of kind of long-term contracts you know more i think me uh michelle devine um talks about that and i think that is because i should say dirt um uh unfortunately you know has mape our fault has taken the time not had the contract of la of kind of long term relationship with the landscape except that in two cases in urban outfitters um we worked on uh urban outfitters for about 10 years so it was really great we got to see the earlier you know phases growing um and then core city i'm continuing to you know work on um on projects there hence i can kind of take a take a look how things are going so but i i think that would be i mean i i i think that would be a great goal of our discipline now is to is is really to um uh you know secure some of these longer-term contracts so there really is more you know of this of this relationship i mean that's when we'd really actually it would be more like gardening if we did have uh these longer longer you know commitments um maybe even just intermit intermittent ones but it's tough you know that that that doesn't um those don't exist too much in the discipline i think they are i think they're starting to but i think it's how great would it be that it you know it was a given more of more of a more of a given here's a really interesting question from um maria landoni uh if you are familiar with the work of george de gaulle [Music] uh who also says that he does almost nothing how do you think his practice is similar or different than yours you know his work right yeah yeah um hmm uh he does bigger stuff um i you know maybe i don't know the work well enough and i need to you can correct me is i when i think of dakom's work i think of more additive things that say wonderful things about the sites you know in terms of how they kind of interact with it but i i don't know if i feel that there's um the same this as compared to dirt's excavation you know of um excavation of things of of of the past um i don't know what do you am i right anita or what do you think he definitely inserts you know very carefully but he does more than you do i mean the work is extraordinary um but i think that pieces are also very precious in his work they're very finished they're very [Music] very measured i don't think he uses plants as much as you do um but so it's an it's an interesting comparison it uh gives me a lot to think about actually yeah yeah easy right um do we have time for a couple more questions julie how are you doing i'm i'm i'm doing okay okay reader okay here's a question about quote unquote saving the world from ishan chen [Music] why not save the world one project or one landscape at a time in this very contaminated world isn't it part of our aspiration of being a landscape architect to be stewards of the land yeah well i mean that that's fantastic i love being called out on things um i think that um it's i'm i'm kind of obviously there talking about heroics again you know when they you say save the world you know it's this you know uh it's just this kind of heroic attitude and heroic approach um and uh as i think i was talking about before that it it absolutely i mean it's kind of one one healthy landscape at a time you know um [Music] and it can be all sorts of health i mean i i i do have to say that i um i keep looking at the core city in front of us and you know that it's you know social health here um so um absolutely save one landscape at a time but don't say it that way be more modest kathy simon asks can you talk more about your relationship to robert smithson and his interest in land art in making geometry appear in damaged landscapes yeah well you know i mean my god you know the guys you know is my hero and um it's interesting the kind of sculpture itself um it's the i you know the concepts behind it that to me is is intriguing more than in a way the thing itself um although the the of course the thing itself you know is is registering you know right these um these forces that he talks about um but i have a tendency to read and reread smithson to keep in line of of thinking you know about that dialectic you know of of um just even that is a you know it's dialect way of of working dialectic way of of of looking has has always helped so much when i'm looking at uh landscapes that are so conflicted you know and and you know you would you might normally go oh brother you know i give up it's totally conflicted and actually it's the best part you know um yeah you gobble those ones up you know uh and and it's missing guides that always guides that thinking always um yeah i can't say anymore anyway claire cass stevens asks speaking of gardens how can we strengthen the relationship between gardening and landscape architecture you'd think it it would be a strong relationship but they seem more and more to be at odds your work best straddles the line that is such a great comment it's not true yeah well it's claire hi claire former student um well first of course if you haven't read it you read julian rex worthy's overgrown you know because i can't possibly um you know uh say anything about this is as as well as as julian um but i've i've really man you know reading it um and again smithson would talk about some practices uh more like garden gardening i think it's just so much of it is talking about the kind of intimacy of of a process you know um and that uh you know i mean if if you remember claire in the studio i think i may have talked about it there i i i always talk about this one-to-one relationship i mean because the problem i had you know coming to graduate school um uh design school from art school was lacking almost that gardening kind of one-to-one relationship you know with you know with the landscape with anything you know um because design just doesn't allow it but i think in our imaginations and and more and more in practice i think we want to talk think about what it means to have these kind of one-to-one relationships um where it actually doesn't have to be gardening per se but it's you know an attitude right um because again core city park what you see there that you know you know it could be landscape architecture but it really is a garden you know um so stick with it claire if you aren't thinking one to one i'm kind of gonna come find you [Laughter] laura burnett says i've been a fan since school are you encouraged by the evolution of the support industry like landscape contractors nurseries laboratories regulatory agencies over the past 30 years i think that there's a level of um uh i think in the spirit of collaboration which is just kind of now you know a given um to include uh folks like contractors and nursery men and so on and so forth there's an incredible amount of of true collaboration which means true learning you know between one another um and that is it's incredible how much that's uh how much that has happened and i mean i think if there's any you know kind of more uh belligerent contractors out there or whatever well don't give them the work or try to educate them you know um uh but i'll tell you the hardest nut to crack is going to be anybody in office you know or in administration um supposedly things have gotten better with the epa i i stopped working upside started doing projects with the epa because it was just banging my head against a brick wall um it was just not going to go anywhere so but anita nicely remembered that i kind of attacked all these people after school and i would encourage you to do that um uh i mean i i have to say i still have an amazing crush on mayors um i think uh seeking you know work and projects or even just doing you know information demonstrations to them you know would be fantastic so um it is really kind of both difficult but really really fulfilling you know and to again it's just that's a that's about education those ones are about education um so yeah educate emily mueller the sally's uh in detroit at core city park as you were living in the community how did your connections and daily discussions influence the action of design for you um assuming it was different other than other projects where you might not have had that unusual opportunity to have lived in has that informed your subsequent approach to work and teaching since that experience yeah yeah wow yeah thanks emily hi emily um uh that was that was you know a transcendent you know experience to you know be able to kind of you know land and hang out and go across the street to the park and but always walk i mean with blanche my poodle um walk through the neighborhoods um i mean it's the sad fact is you know there are only six families um in this part of of course city um that are still there um and um [Music] you know i have to say what was difficult is i i really struggled with all the time i was struggling with the kind of aesthetic the expression of the of the park um uh and and you know again there's there i mean i i probably am talking out of turn but i i'm really wondering about the expression of these landscapes and the influence it has on on on welcoming um and i talked to the i talked to the neighbors about it this one woman i can't remember her name damn it um because you know they were you know i mean there is a very expensive bakery that you know is on the edge you know of this park um and a certain client and tell you know come there so i don't know what to say because it it was absolutely wonderful to you know have that kind of everyday experience and at the same time it caused that you know debate in my head you know um uh and i don't know it's another reason i you know we we wanted to make the decisions here so very straightforward um that you know we was kind of you know already of the place you know there was there's a lot of the sight still there you know i don't know emily that's a tough one well um we have uh a whopping 33 additional questions that we're not going to get to um i will just end by uh with peter osler's uh comment yours yours is a resonance of dissonance in the best and most profound ways thank you so much julie as always great inspiration and thank you to everyone for coming and for all of your fantastic questions i wish we had more time uh hopefully soon julie another occasion uh for you to visit us thank you everyone okay thank you so much anita thanks everybody thank you so so much i feel inspired you

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Published: Mon Mar 08 2021