Pretty Heroic – Communicating the Impact of Landscape Architecture on Public Welfare
Winning Entry
CLARB Wayne Grace Memorial Student Competition 2015

This competition was organized by CLARB – the Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards, which establishes and promotes professional licensure standards for landscape architects in the US. The challenge was based on a research report that highlights seven different ways in which landscape architecture positively impacts on public welfare. The task was to convey one or more of these aspects to the general public in a way that is creative, easy to share, clear, concise and persuasive.

My entry was a short video animation. I strived to bring the thorough research report down to a clear and straightforward gist, and convey it in a simple and playful manner through a relatable narrative. My video highlights how many things we take for granted in our everyday surroundings are in fact deliberately designed, and how the design impacts on our environment, our communities, and our lives. In the light of this, landscape architects are pretty heroic! Besides the video here shown, my submission also included a pitch where I described the rationale behind my entry, and how it can be developed further and used by CLARB to grow a more comprehensive communications campaign.

 

Lost in Place – On Place Theory and Landscape Architecture
Master’s Thesis in Landscape Architecture
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

My master’s thesis engages with the concept of place. While notions of place and placemaking are increasingly emphasized in regards to public space and urban development, place as a concept is rarely defined in a landscape architecture context. What is a place, really? On the one hand place is a commonsense everyday word with diversely connotative meanings, and on the other it is a contested concept with different interpretations across a broad range of academic disciplines and discourses. Landscape architecture theory does not have an established understanding of place, and in my thesis project I research different theories of place within related disciplines and analyze their implications for the theory and design practice of landscape architecture.

The project combines a scholarly and educational ambition. It aims to contribute to the formation of place theory within the discipline of landscape architecture, as well as to increase the understanding of place as a concept and as a phenomenon amongst academics and practitioners of the field. It draws on both academic research and personal experiences to illustrate how different theoretical understandings of place can frame and impact on the design process and its outcome in multiple ways, and even condition the professional identity of landscape architects.

You can find the project in its entirety here.

Stones in the Stream
Graduate Design Studio: Landscape Design
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

This studio challenge was to redesign the main square in the small town of Söderköping, Sweden. Today the site consists of a sloping hard square, a park kept level by retaining walls toward adjacent streets, and a canal. My redesign proposal aimed to improve pedestrian connectivity and create flexible spaces with high affordability for different uses.

Currently, the elevation changes create barriers, and the space is fragmented both physically and visually. The concept for my design references the water in the canal, and my ambition to blend the square and the park and open up the space for unimpeded movement – streams of people who metaphorically wear down the edges of hard and fixed material. Like stones being rounded by the water in the stream, I created soft elevated form typologies with flexible edges for sitting. The organic forms give the square a coherent character, while creating a porous space encouraging a range of activities.

In addition to the presentation boards, I produced a 1-minute video illustrating the design of the space. I chose to take advantage of the element of time in motion picture to show how my design could be experienced over the course of seasons and the time span of a day.

The Union Loop – Connecting Streets for People
Visionary Design Concept
SWA Summer Student Program Internship 

Studying the Los Angeles Union Station  and surrounding areas, I was struck by the lack of pedestrian connectivity and the poor amenities and experiences offered along streets that have become thoroughfares for cars more than places for people. My idea of a Union Loop to connect the neighborhoods around the station aims to establish a backbone route for street reconfiguration, artistic intervention and public program that would develop over time, and revive the streets as places in themselves.

 

 

 

 

All Inclusive – Oyster Seminar 2015 
Illustration and Graphic Design
Non-Profit Work for the Oyster Organization Committee 

As a member of the organizing committee for the Oyster Seminar – Sweden’s largest biannual landscape architecture event – I was responsible for designing the graphic profile and developing promotional material for the 2015 edition of the seminar. Based on the theme All Inclusive I was inspired to create digital illustrations that touch upon notions of access, excess and exclusion using bold and playful colors.

 

Shifting Scenes – Heightened Perspectives on Taylor Yard
Visionary Design Concept
SWA Summer Student Program Internship 

Challenged with the task to propose a transformation of Taylor Yard – a former train maintenance site adjacent to the Los Angeles River – into an iconic park, I took inspiration from the contrasting characteristics of the existing river channel. On the one hand a large-scale and function-oriented hardscape of concrete surfaces, and on the other a tranquil and intimate space inside the channel with thriving plant- and animal life, the currently inaccessible river has potential to facilitate a range of different activities.

Building on the proposition of connecting the nearby communities to the water by a grand park boulevard transecting an adjacent neighborhood park (a scheme conceived together with fellow interns Marie Salembier and Adrian Duncan Smith), my design concept aims to take advantage of both the majestic scale and the close-up intimacy of the river. By shaping the concrete channel profile into a unique vista point by the river, the overall design scheme becomes a ground for diverse river experiences and user programs where visitors can both admire the grand views from above and get their toes wet in the stream.

 

 

Wool Stories
Graduate Design Studio: Representing and Remembering Place
University of Melbourne

This experimental studio course mixed theoretical and practical approaches to issues of place – how a place can be perceived, understood, mapped and represented in various ways.

The subject of my study was an abandoned wool store located at a cul-de-sac in the industrial North Melbourne area Macaulay, adjacent to a freeway bridge and train tracks. Once part of the thriving Australian wool industry, it now lay derelict with the old brick warehouse and surrounding lot gradually withered. By surveying, mapping, photographing, listening to and visiting this site over and over throughout the semester I got to get to know it intimately. At first both the area and site scared me, but gradually it became familiar and I begun to see that it was not dead, but full of new forms of life and activity that was overwriting the old surface.

Birds, weeds and insects had made it their home, people cut across the lot from the nearby train station, kids came to skate and bike across the slab where the weeds were finding foothold in the disintegrating concrete. The fluctuations of economy, the trajectory of city development in Melbourne, the daily habits of people and the entire life cycle of animals — all could be traced in this seemingly empty space. The project was a journey that challenged many preconceived notions of mine, and highlighted the need for acute observation to find the unique features of any given place, and clues to its different stories.

My final presentation was a weave of photos, fibers, and artifacts found on site – representing the history, character and constant transformation of the wool store. My experiences and insights from this project turned out to be a major inspiration for my master’s thesis, which you can view here.

 

Weather Ahead
Undergraduate Design Studio: Public Space in the City
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

This studio challenge was to re-design a main public park in the city of Uppsala, Sweden. My design proposal centered on the elements and weather factors that impact on the park’s use throughout the shifting Swedish seasons.

The park is bisected by a river that runs on though the center of the city of Uppsala, offering opportunities for connectivity though the park and onward. It rises with rain and spring floods, and in my proposal it acts as a spine around which to distribute functions and features that engages visitors all year around, and in every weather. The design includes a summer beach, a network of weather pods that shield from the elements or frame the surroundings in new ways, and floating decks that adjust to the water level in the river.

 

Re:Branch
Graduate Design Project: Scale 1:1 
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Team
Lovisa Kjerrgren
Erik Hansén
Filip Helgsten
Henrik Ljungman
Kristin Träff

This month-long studio encouraged research by the design in a literal sense, in order to conceive a project that was both tested and realized in a scale of 1:1. Me and my team experimented hands-on with material of natural sites to test how the act of re-structuring the already existing can reinforce the perception of spatiality, motion, and sense of place in relation to particular sites. Applying this approach to two different sites on a forested ridge, we developed two parallel installations inspired by land art.

The first site was in an open space between the pillar-like trunks of tall trees. Here, elaborate experiments with pine cones and branches to highlight empty space brought us to the creation of a cube of pine branches, suspended in the air between the trunks and under the ceiling of branches.

The other site was a steep ravine where rainwater had dug a channel and swept along leaves and needles. Here we wanted to convey the feeling of motion and force through the hilly space, and did so by arranging large quantities of branches and twigs in a river-like flow, that jumps over obstacles and runs under fallen trees.

 

 

Lost & Found – Oyster Seminar 2013
Illustration and Graphic Design
Non-Profit Work for the Oyster Organization Committee

As a member of the organizing committee for the Oyster Seminar – Sweden’s largest biannual landscape architecture event – I was responsible for designing the graphic profile and developing promotional material for the seminar in 2013. The theme was Lost & Found, and I created graphics through a series of experimental iterations where found objects and cut-out images were assembled and photographed.