SyllabusThe California Delta has a complicated past and a precarious future. The land in the region is sinking, and the water is rising. Widespread flooding is a constant hazard, and its potential casualties include productive farmland, endangered plant and animal species, tens of thousands of houses, and the water supply for the southern half of the state. The Delta’s landscape can be read as a parable: its difficult circumstances are the unexpected consequences of land use decisions that all assumed, one way or another, a fixed boundary between land and water. This studio will ask what might happen if that assumption were let go. We’ll look at the physical possibilities that emerge if we reconsider the water’s edge. We’ll examine what those new conditions mean for land uses like flood control, habitat restoration, recreation, environmental remediation, agriculture, and housing. We’ll speculate about their implications for the Delta’s ownership, administration, economic viability, and political organization. Our goal will be to imagine a landscape that’s layered, complex, and sustainable enough to accommodate the diverse needs it has come to serve. The situation in the Delta is urgent, and the stakes are high. Hurricane Katrina and this winter’s storms have raised public awareness about the region, and the state government is working toward a new vision for the landscape. The stakes are high in our studio, too: the events of the moment give us a real chance at advocacy. We can’t dictate what will happen in the Delta, but we can have a clear voice in the public discussion of its future. The studio has been based on two premises. The first is that the invention, amplification, and unexpected consequences of that edge have made the Delta what it is: the levees that separate the rivers from the islands have also defined and shaped landforms, programs, and constituencies.Studio structureThe studio’s work has been cumulative, and so I thought it would be helpful to let you know how the term was organized. The students spent the first part of the term documenting existing conditions in the landscape. Then, they developed strategies for individual sites around the region. Finally, they examined ways in which those strategies might have implications at a larger scale. The goal of Exercise 1 was to develop an understanding of the relationship between land and water in the Delta. The students were asked to document conditions that exist now and to represent the forces for change. They worked in groups to study four different areas around the region. In Exercise 2, the studio looked at eleven sites across the Delta. Each represented a different condition, and each was subject to change for different reasons. Each member of the studio studied one site. Each student was asked to begin with an analysis of the site’s status quo and the likely future; to make a critique of that scenario; and to investigate ways in which redesigning the boundary between land and water could suggest a range of new possibilities. Exercise 3 was conceived to consider how ideas developed for a specific place might play out at the scale of the larger landscape. Each student was asked to identify the essential characteristics of the proposal he or she had made in Exercise 2; to identify other possible locations where similar strategies might be deployed; and to test the earlier proposal with respect to the new, comparable situations. Students were asked to examine these alternative locations at the scales of the body, the site, and the region. They were also asked to revise their proposals from Exercise 2 based on what they learned from the new sites. |