ABSTRACT
Design that listens to as well as looks at nature requires a form of slow design. Nature speaks in code, signs and signals. Industrial zones are a common urban design feature, the sculpting of spaces devoted solely to human activity. Nature is brutal but also forgiving. Sometimes it’s rain, sun, heat, rain — all at the right time and all in the right order. Perhaps the most valuable outcome was the understanding that collaborating with nature requires the ability to take time. Time to understand a specific site in various conditions, under a range of influences and over the cycle of complete seasons. Even proceeding with caution to shift the ecology of a small patch of land has huge risks of cascading unintended effects and inherent failures. At the heart of the two pasture projects were scarred, abandoned or damaged landscapes in urban industrial zones. They were plastered over with concrete and warehouses, hydropower lines and gas pipelines.
