Tuesday, April 24, 2007
The Arboretum's Design and Purpose
I propose to research the design of the arboretum in a few specific respects. I want to explore the relationship between the purposes the arb was designed for vs. how it is actually used. How do the original design and any renovations reflect the purpose that the designers had in mind for the arboretum? Which is considered more important/which is a bigger attractor: the naturalism or the designed nature of the arb? What does the arb say about designed environments, their effectiveness and their purposes? Did the designers want to accentuate aesthetics, education, ease of use, conservation, all of the above? I want to discuss the design ecology of the arb as well. What sorts of ecological problems were and still are present and are there natural solutions to these problems? How artificial is the human intervention in maintaining the arb?
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2 comments:
You, Vic, Hipler, and Carlos all seem to be looking at the arboretum as a space in terms of its physicality in one way or another, so there might be some potential for collaboration there.
We've been told by Arboretum staff more than once that the area was an ecologically devastated area prior to the Arboretum's establishment. Maybe one avenue would be to investigate how the area would have evolved over the last 50 years or so without so rigid and structured a human rehabilitation.
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