2011 - The Regional Landscape: An Architect's foray into regionalism and landscape
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Lecture given at the Graduate Program in Critical Regionalism and Historic Preservation at UNM. Visit our website www.archinia.com to see more of Firm Principal Rachel Preston Prinz' presentations or like us at https://www.facebook.com/ArchiniaDesign
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2011 - The Regional Landscape: An Architect's foray into regionalism and landscape
- 1. The Regional Landscape An architectural designer’s foray into archaeology and historic landscapes… Or… Beating one’s head upon the National Register University of New Mexico Nov 10, 2011
- 10. Types of CULTURAL Landscape Historic Designed Landscape – laid out by a design professional according to specific design principles. Historic Vernacular Landscape – evolves through the actions of the people who shaped the land. Historic Sites – a landscape significant in its relation to a specific person or event. Ethnographic Landscapes – contains a variety of natural and cultural resources which can be defined as heritage resources.
Editor's Notes
- I’m an architectural designer with a passion for the old. I love to mix old and new ideas and make places that feel like home wherever they are. This is one of my favorite architectural places in Mexico. You can tell its from there. That it has a Moorish influence. That its Modern. You might not can tell that its designed with passive solar techniques and raised flood-protective and defense techniques used by generations of native americans for thousands of years before the Spanish ever dreamed about any new world.This is the work we love to do.
- When I was asked to come present to you guys a few weeks back, I was really excited to share what I knew of vernacular architecture with you. Last week, when Professor Crowe sent me his syllabus and I noted that this week you were supposed to talk about landscapes, I worried for a second that I wouldn’t be able to fill that void. Then I realized the my work is so intertwined with landscapes, and specifically vernacular landscapes, that I should be recognizing that, and I could probably offer some real insight into what’s going on in the world of vernacular landscapes today.For me, my foray into vernacular architecture and landscapes started in college, when I was taking classes from designers who were fundamentally phenomenologists (those who study patterns and placemaking) and structuralists(those that study not the history but the relationships through history). They helped me to see the world broken down into bite-sized pieces. Then, it really started coming together with my thesis, which I did on the architect Andrea Palladio.In it, I basically rummaged through everything ever written about him in English, French, Italian, and even some German… and then I used Vitruvius and on-site investigation to… well, to basically reverse-engineer a set of guidelines for the design of a Palladian Villa.
- Villas have some pretty distinct characteristics, namy of which Palladio discussed in his Quattro Libri, but there were many things he didn’t describe, too.His villas face a major waterway or road, they are centrally located on the property. They are elevated above the ground plane to get access to cleaner winds for ventilation and escape from the rising damp. Those wings are for services. The buildings across the street there at the bottom are for housing the servants. The rooms on the east were for the kitchen staff since they got up earliest. In the house itself, the western rooms were used for dining, and there was an incredibly detailed heirarchy of space which was emphasized by murals depicting the gods and goddesses of each direction.Fields were planted according to water needs and proximity to irrigation canals. The gravel walks around the building itself served not only as a pedestrian right of way and to protect the building from rising damp but also to throw sunlight up and into the loggias or covered walks at the side wings. The ramps in the front were used not only for a sense of entry but also as a floor for threshing grains.
- These are just a few of the ideas discovered in the underlying patterns.The work was well-received and I decided I was going to go to UVA and get my PhD by further developing the guidelines into a sort of Palladian cookbook. That seemed like a pretty rad idea, because if we did it once, we could reverse engineer anyone’s design rules. So, I moved to Charlottesville so I could work for a year and get some “real experience” in a “real firm” to bring to the table when I was a ph.dI got a job with a historic preservation firm there and developed a particular expertise in historic train stations. I had a great time learning how train station designs changed over time – through cultural and class transitions – by working on a bunch of historic train stations. What was offered to coloreds and whites and how colors and styles reflected cultural adaptations from the “motherlands” of many people…
- I got good at these because while I was finishing my thesis , I took a summer to work for the Historic American Building Survey documenting the buildings at the Alpine Tunnel Historic Site in Pitkin Colorado. The stone structures were built in 1881 by Italian Stonemasons who used a drystack method of masonry. They were exquisite. The only problem was… as you can see and as the archaeologists in this class probably got all excited about – more than half of the building was IN THE GROUND because of extensive freeze-thaw cycles at 13,000+ feet. So we had to use a combination of landscape study and archaeological investigation to determine where we should be looking for the drawing details. Train depots have very specific needs, and those at elevation even more so. They needed to start the trains up inside the engine house – so there needed to be ventilation, be able to service them – requiring turntables inside and out, and also keep people warm who might be stuck – requiring a hotel, saloon, and other niceties. Every detail from the inner and outer turntables, the 4% max grade, and even food storage functions being placed in the ground… to all paths being placed on the south side of the building where the sun would help thaw them was considered.The buildings were tucked into the edge of the land itself to add further heat and cold protection, as well as to shed some of the howling winds at that altitude.If its any indication, we hiked 2+ miles to the site for more than a month because our jeeps could not get past the feet of snow that remained in June.
- So I pretty much had train station design handled, and figured since it was getting to be time to end my sabbatical and head over to UVA, I should start meeting some of the Ph.D students. The problem was… I could not understand them. I don’t know what all languages they were speaking or if they spoke in mathematical formulas, but none of them made any sense to me. I would catch about every third or fifth word and the rest was unintelligible. I was in the WRONG place to be doing what I was doing, at least for right then in my life.So, panicking, I rationalized that I loved my job more than the potential to have a world-class degree from the leading institution in Palladian studies IN THE WORLD and I kept working.
- Over time, and through working with several specialty firms, I got to learn everything I ever wanted to know about the design of train stations, schools, churches and other sacred spaces, mega-high end European influenced residential architecture…And then I got involved with archaeology and I added in archaeological sites, petroglyphs, archaeo-astronomy, older and older forms of churches, temples that predated churches, stone circles that predated temples…What intrigued me most was that many of the same “vernacular rules” of design and integration of building with landscape applied to every category we could study. Even petroglyphs are aligned to the sun... And can tell time themselves, often in the same way buildings do.
- I got the chance to head out on my own and started Archinia, which we set up as an architectural and archaeological cooperative. We started doing more and more historic preservation work and using that to develop studies in pattern languages of different places and architectural events in history. Moving backwards and forwards in time, we started applying the lessons we were learning about old vernacular design and using them to create new modern works.
- Today I’ll be focusing on our work in Historic Cultural Landscapes, which are special places that reveal aspects of a country’s origins and development through their form and features and the ways in which they were used. These places reveal much about the relationship between man and his natural world. There are several types of cultural landscapes: Historic Designed Landscapes – which were laid out by a design professional according to specific design principles. Examples include parks, schools, and estates.Historic Vernacular Landscape – which evolves through the actions of the people who shaped the land. Examples includes rural villages, agricultural landscapes, and industrial complexes.Historic Sites –a landscape significant in its relation to a specific person or event. Battlefield and homes of famous people make up the majority of this category.Ethnographic Landscapes – contains a variety of natural and cultural resources which can be defined as heritage resources. Examples include religious sites, massive geological structures, and settlements. Most historic sites have at least one of these components which is integral to assessing it’s significance. It is the interconnected system of land, air, water, vegetation, and wildlife resources which helps us to define the particular nature and relevance of the historic landscape.
- From our very first projects as a firm, we started working with the vernacular and regional building and landscape models to make our work shine. One of the biggest projects we have ever been awarded we did this past year, and it was a mind-blower. We were asked to put 6 sites in 6 states on the National Register of Historic Places to establish “cornerstone” segments of the Old Spanish Trail network. That work involved over 100 volunteers, SHPOS, and THPOs. We worked with BLM, Forest Service, and NPS offices. We had historians, archaeologists, mappers, GIS specialists… it was an incredible effort. It’s a cross between historic ethnographic and vernacular landscapes.The first thing we figured out was that the trail had been there before the Spanish EVER got there. In fact, most cross-country trails in the west started as footpaths for communication between tribes. It’s mind-boggling to think that what we thought we knew, the people we thought were “innovators discovering the west” were actually following the paths of dark-skinned innovators who REALLY discovered and settled the west.Can you imagine what it must have been like to run into someone from the next tribe’s section of the trail and ask, “Which way to the end of the world and may I please pass through to get there?”
- This small fact belied one truth that we could never get past - the Old Spanish Trail doesn’t exist. Which isn’t entirely true, but its mostly true. The Old Spanish Trail was a tribal network, that was eventually used by small muletrains of Spanish-speaking peoples, that carried either blankets and rugs (made in sweatshops in New Mexico), or people, as well as other legal things AND contraband… to California, for which they traded horses and livestock. The merchants could go the legitimate route from Abiquiu, or the sneaky route through Taos, where they could have a shag and some Taos Lightning before their long journey, and maybe pick up some travel niceties they didn’t necessarily want the taxation reps in Abiquiu to mark down on their manifestos.And they rode, up to 22 miles per day, through lands so rough and so wild that they might go 50 miles without water or pasture for the horses. They were often followed and scrutinized by the local native populations, their horses and livestock stolen to feed an entire village for a winter.
- Each of the once-a-year trips was slightly different, as passes froze, rivers flooded, mudholes washed out, crossings eroded, or the trail stopped dead as it faced cliffs up to a thousand feet tall…So, 150 years later, how could we tell what was intact trail section and what wasn’t?The answer is, we couldn’t. Time is not kind when a path is beloved. That one path grows from a footpath to a wagon path to a car path to a highway, and little by little, or sometimes in great explosions, the old is erased in favor of the new.
- But we did have places that were written about by some of the travelers - extremely challenging places where the old ones had passed down legends about deaths, droughts, incredible passes, and feats of pure machismo on the quest for the coast. And because these places were so rough and their descriptions so specific, we were able to start looking for actual trail remnants, because these were the places that were still untouched, in favor of the easier path the longer way around, without those pesky indians stealing horses along the way…And we started to evaluate the importance of the LANDSCAPE in telling the story of the TRULY wild west. We’d find a trace, or series of traces, and we’d look around to see what, if any, of what existed then remained today. Sometimes sprawl had wiped out the place of it all. Other times, it was mining, or highway development, or a sewage treatment plant, windmills, or encroaching grasslands which resulted from overgrazing.The landscapes closed in on us, and then expanded again. How on earth could we draw a boundary around this?
- Add to that that the people we were working with had their own set of needs –we could help or hurt their cause. Save it from the tree farm, the water treatment plant, the solar farm, the cattlemen who were benefitting themselves at the cost of the American public’s natural resources. Save this, not that… that’s not real. Oh, don’t listen to HIM…We had to start thinking about how to protect an important cultural and landscape element like this pillar in NM, which was sacred to nearby tribes as well as travelers, but not on property we had control over.And it came down to reading the national register’s types of property types again, and then merging that with various agency viewshed models and new accountings of how to deal with both cultural and historic landscapes, and telling the story of the ALL the people who used the landscape within the specific nomination.That tack actually gave us more solid ground to stand on. This was the way culture used the landscape for thousands of years, and we are using it the same way today. We’ve just blown the rough bits out of the way and added fuel-power.
- After we got the Old Spanish Trail project wrapped, we got the town of taos acequia restoration plan, and we employed our same rationale we used on the trails to figure out just what mattered on the acequias. What was protectable? What was damaged? What required some work and what required major construction? What was worth saving? What was worth losing? Were we seeing all we could see through the eyes of all the different types of people affected?
- Then we went back to the Palladian Villa project we’d started with, and used that concept to reverse-engineer a set of guidelines so that future work on the acequias would conform to the original guidelines that had been lost over time.We had planting lists and design styles, minimum widths and described conditions for everything from turns to berms. We integrated the newest research from the Corps of Engineers and even hydrology professors and merged that with verbal cultural traditions that had been entirely lost…The mayordomos started passing the word and before I knew it, the ideas were being shared all over the state. We’ve got lectures to give, articles to write and projects coming in. It’s amazing. Integrating old and new like this. In whole new ways. And really, when you come down to it its all about how open and not willing to stand your ground you are. If you approach it like there’s room for everyone’s voice, like that one choice will make the difference between a good project and a great project, and you allow room for humility and listening… people, even staid people like the mayordomos, will realize that you can be part of the solution to their problem.
- When you figure out that walking paths AND irrigation ditches always follow the south-facing side of the hill so they thaw more quickly… When you see architecture that aligns with the rise and fall of the moon and constellations as if they hold some magical association with the culture that used it… When you watch the sun fall in a straight line ahead of you and knew that in this month you were heading southwest by so many degrees – straight for where you are heading just by following the sun…When you can bask in a warm, deep window on a cold winter day…You can’t help but wonder… what all there is to rediscover…Rediscovery is what we, as vernacular specialists, do. Applying it is the gift we give. We make the world more sustainable by building spaces that allow nature to work as it already does. Only for us, it works for us, rather than the majority of designers whose buildings work “despite their environment.”
- Then, we got the project that would tie all of it together.A movement in Russia.Inspired by a book.A young Siberian woman living on the edge of civilizationTells her successful merchant-turned-lover of another way of living. In concert with nature.He writes it down. Everyone reads it. AND…Millions of Russians started leaving the cities.They wanted their own way of being one with the world. They wanted to get back to nature, and get sustainable in ways that they never dreamed possible. We got the call. How do we reverse-engineer a set of guidelines for getting back to the land? What’s that look like? And how do we integrate the specific instructions that the girl (called Anastasia) gave in the 10 books into design?Before any one place gained all the attention, it started happening everywhere. Australia, Japan, Canada, the US… the books started being translated and suddenly vernacular criteria from all around were needed. And that’s becoming a book and series of workshops. It’s incredible to work like this.
- These last three projects – the Russian job, the Old Spanish trail, and the town of Taos work on the acequias (and historic redocumentation, which I left out here) - were happening simultaneously, so I was boring my archaeologist friends on the long drives through the west with tales of what I was learning along the way and how I could apply the lessons forward to the design I was doing today.I shared with them my belief in that architecture once responded to its environment because it had to - it hunkered down out of the wind or it sat high to avoid the damp, used trees to control and even create breezes, used shade and indoor/outdoor spaces to offer ventilation, or used the sun and thermal mass to passively heat and cool the interior spaces - and that by choosing to start there, rather than designing things that belonged no-where as many modern architects do, we could start to get towards REALLY green design and not just “greener” or, “let’s change as little as possible but make it sound better” design.Which led to my talk at the ASNM meeting last year. Which led to my TED talk.My TED talk is going online this next week so I won’t bore you with too much of it. You can get to it from the TEDxABQ portal or the archinia website.
- I will say that I talked about how we could use very old ideas from NM’s archaeological heritage to make very modern design that was informed by but in no way old at heart…like this pithouse in Mesa Verde at the top left, and its modern counterpart in Japan at the bottom right.
- Or, moving forward in NM’s archaeological time, this adobe structure in El Rito at the top left is of our place and an older time, but why can’t we marry that with ideas like those used in Africa , below and the right, to make something entirely new? We have access to the ideas. What’s to stop us from using them to make our ideas better?
- Or, these old courtyards… we used those once the Spanish introduced haciendas.
- They weren’t the only ones using them, either… from English courtyard villages on the top left to the Alahambra in Spain below…why not embrace the modern too like in this courtyard highrise in Korea?AND we can add even greener details, like rain catchment and aquaponics… to make it greener still.Towards a TRUE sustainability. How can we justify anything else?If all that was old was perfect, we wouldn’t have old decrepit buildings falling down all over America. We know that we need to make them work better because if they worked for the modern sensibility they wouldn’t be abandoned. And we know that the materials and workmanship of buildings prior to 1900 are nearly IMPOSSIBLE to replicate today. We have the materials, and the know-how, to save parts of buildings, to save buildings, to save sites, to save communities, to save culture, even. ..Ultimately for me, it comes down to what is real sustainability. Sustainablilitydoesn’t mean wasting precious resources, even and especially if they are old ones.
- So, just to when your appetite for what it takes to make a project that is this vernacularly-oriented happen, I thought I’d share our process with you really quickly.First there is…Reconaissance. Which you’ll learn about more next week (I think) but a brief overview of the process includes:WAY too much time blowing the scale off dusty books, photographs, and libraries in which the archives of the place are often hidden from view... A second job as your own private secretary to coordinate all the people, places, and things you must achieve while on the ground.HUNDREDS of hours of on-the-ground observation, spreadsheets, maps, gps equipment, bottles and bottles of water and often, some really bad food. Lots of photographs, and sketching if you have time, but usually you won’t. Lots and lots of time spent with peers and challengers discussing pros and cons and the difference between criteria/guidelines /assumptions, and the impact of technological shifts on design.So, you really have to like research, and being in the field too. And you have to have decent design skills in conveying ideas. Then, it just takes time to write it all down for the verbal learners, put it into diagrams for the visual ones, and then share ideas and finesse the result until everyone feels their voice has been heard.