Embracing Ephemera and Change
By Michael Blier, FASLA, RLA, Hon BSA, Founding Principal at Landworks Studio, Inc.
The Theater Group Retreat project began in 1993 after a prominent New York City experimental theater company purchased a wooded 45 acre, lakeside parcel in western Maine. The parcel included approximately 10 acres of a central clearing flanked by fifteen rental cottages, which became the focus of our work. The entire property was to be reimagined as a summertime artist residence for a loose collective of actors, dancers, writers, and associated families and friends. The overriding imperative of the client was to 'restore' ecological equilibrium of the hillside while establishing a resilient landscape for learning. The 10 acre opening had been suffering from extensive clearing and over-use, which resulted in significant erosion negatively impacting the lake below, hot and dry ground plane due to deforestation, soil compaction, and shrinking habitat. The landscape architect was hired to help restore the ecological and cultural integrity of the grounds, though ultimately, the project evolved into so much more. The Theater Group Retreat is the culmination of a series of extensive on-site experimentation and interventions that are as much about ecological processes as they are joyful expressions of human dynamics. These experimentations continue to this day. The opportunity to continually sculpt the forest, monitor the basin's ecological functioning, and enjoy the site's increasingly nuanced qualities has provided deep insights into ecological succession, species movement, and microclimate. These lessons learned over the past twenty-seven years have been invaluable to all those involved and the greater community who have worked diligently to maintain and preserve this specular resource.
The trajectory and dynamic of this work/research can be understood as having three primary iterations described below.
The Early Years (1993-2006): Storm Water Mitigation and Revegetation Framework Plan
The site proper, a ten-acre opening within a dense white pine forest, slopes toward the lake and is flanked to the east, west, and south by fifteen cabins. Ecologically, the restoration effort targeted two primary issues: soil compaction due to previous site disturbance and diminishing water quality of the lake due to erosion and stormwater runoff. The client's expressed desire for the project was to address these issues, increase the diversity of plant communities and wildlife habitat within the framework plan area, and create improved pedestrian and vehicular circulation, including meaningful gathering spaces and performance areas.
The framework plan developed by the team proposed strategies for the re-vegetation of forest canopy, the introduction of understory layering for habitat creation, stormwater runoff containment, improved circulation, including the elimination of vehicular roads, and the insertion of experiential landscape moments.
The strategy for restoring the property was to establish a carefully synchronized system of forest bands that provide a variety of spatial and programmatic conditions. The framework plan comprises two primary groves of trees, a network of paths for people and vehicles, earth forms that control and direct stormwater, and small geometric plantings of grasses, blueberries, and other native flora. The tree groves and paths are the elements that structure movement on the site. Various formations of earthwork at various scales emerge across the site and catch stormwater, mitigating site erosion conditions and creating highly localized ecological hot spots.
The only deliverables ever made for this project were a simple grading and planting plan, site model, and cross-sections.
It was after 8 -10 years of the original planting and earthwork efforts that palpable and under-anticipated, symbiotic relationships between the components of the proposed design and the material of the existing site began to emerge. These interactions challenged the perceived image or the question of 'fixity' within the original design intention and served to lead the project in a more dynamic, active, and resilient direction than imagined at the start of the Framework planning exercises established years before. These observations informed subsequent interventions on the site.
Next Generation (2006-2015): Elaborating Upon Emergent Microclimates Heretofore Unimaginable and Establishing Long Term Maintenance Regimes
Modified hydraulic conditions of the hillside, created by the strategic insertion of a series of earth forms redirecting stormwater, a lowered ground plane temperature resulting from enhanced shade created by maturing new tree plantings, and the continued growth of the existing parent Pine forest, radically transformed the nature of ecological conditions across the site at the highly local scale.
Over a decade, new micro-climates emerged across the site and in various ways, revealing robust scenarios comprised of complex interrelationships between parent plant communities and those plant materials brought to the site as part of the objectives of the Framework Plan. Consequently, the strength of these relationships has served to enhance bio-diversity and broaden the scope of program of habitat far beyond that which was initially imagined. These new landscape 'discoveries' also established a new landscape canvas for the residents, client, and team to tinker with and maintain. Each year when the artist return, we start to see different opportunities to manipulate nature in small ways, always with the utmost respect for the strength of the surrounding forest, the impacts of seasonal changes and successional realities. As the site evolves and the forest thickens, the habitat becomes increasingly important as we witness nature regain ownership of the site. Deer now bed in the meandering pathways under the grove canopy taking advantage of the natural protection and insulation the dense network of trees provides.
What was once a moribund and denuded old field has now taken on a life of its own, seemingly approaching the objective of 'equilibrium' first expressed by the Theater Group leadership all those years previous.
The Third Iteration (2015-present): Engagement and Tweaking of Successional Tendencies
The Theater Group Retreat project represents an ongoing and authentic negotiation between the specificity of place, ecological performativity, and cultural interactions, all in real-time. The aspirations of the project are to both restore and reinvent. The project mandates an acknowledgment of the importance of place, underscored by an intimate understanding of situational realities and the role and responsibilities of human activity therein. With spatial sophistication and clarity, a deep connection to the material qualities of soil and plants, and an understanding and incorporation of the processes of ecological succession, the project has transformed the site from a derelict forest opening into a series of overlapping productive and resilient processes all working in unison. The site's specific conditions and location transformed the original design intent and challenged the clarity of spatial configurations described in the site plan. We find this the most provocative and useful reading and meaningful lesson learned. The flexibility of the design process as it relates to and confronts time, seasonal change and weatherization of a particular place; all of those dynamic qualities that are unique to the media of landscape is what this work seeks to catalyze and which distinguishes this project from designed landscapes frozen in time and figure or others that privilege view over the messiness of physical engagement of ecological performance.
The next interventions await as Summer is coming.
Part Proscriptive, Part Observational, Part Improvisational, just add time (in years).
The mission of the work on this hillside began as a restoration and remediation project. The impetus was twofold: to protect the lake from the deleterious impacts of soil runoff due to up-gradient activities and establish an equilibrium between restored and enhanced ecological performativity and new cultural program of the Theater Group.
Once the issues related to erosion were mitigated, the focus shifted to thickening the vegetative layers of the site to foster greater flora and fauna diversity, all with an eye toward eventually 'filling in' the void. The strategy for doing so relied upon carefully reading evolving dialogues between various plant communities, assessing the needs of each, a constant tweaking in various ways to provide those needs or to shift or redirect through physical interventions of earthmoving, pruning, planting and transplanting.
The question, then, has become one of legibility and knowing when and what of the original design expression to reinforce and when to let go and allow the parent forest to reclaim what once belonged to it. As a group, we all feel that 'letting go' would ultimately be the right thing to have happen. Until then, a few primary elements of the design, including 'The Line' and the Curvilinear Path, provide datums against which change and time can be registered. The views through the site from grove to grove are gradually being elided by the inevitable advance of the surrounding White Pine forest. As the years go by, the forest insertions blur and blend—old field restoration achieved under many watchful eyes.
