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Q and A with Liat Margolis, author Living Systems
Published in 2007 as a compendium of green design techniques and resources Living Systems: Innovative Materials and Technologies for Landscape Architecture has become part of the new intellectual capital that is emerging from the landscape architecture/landscape urbanism field.
Earlier this year, Danielle Choi, one of our regular contributors was able to sit down with author, Liat Margolis and speak with her about the origins of this book, these new inroads for the discipline of landscape architecture and landscape urbanism as well as upcoming future projects for Liat.
- Kaarin Patterson, Editor
Topophilia:
Describe your research process writing the book – in the introduction, you write about formulating the terms and then issuing a sort of RFP. Did your list of terms change as you received submissions?
Liat Margolis:
They did change. It was an interesting process because when we met the publisher, we met him with Niall [Kirkwood] in the Materials Collection, and it was actually Niall who proposed that Birkhäuser do a landscape materials book. It occurred to me that, based on all of the materials we had been studying, and all of the different theoretical works in the field that talk about landscape as something in flux that is a dynamic medium, and with all of my background in the collection of these individual pieces and categorization systems, I didn’t want to do this book that was like, here’s a material, here’s another material, here’s plastic, here’s wood here’s metal. Rather, we wanted to talk about how these systems interact.
So Alex and I got together and thought about these categorizations as if it was a life cycle of a landscape, so we started thinking, well, how do you grow a landscape? And what kinds of topics are affiliated with growth? Then we started thinking, well how do we think about things like skin? Skin and bones? An epidermis is not only an external layer, but it also allows for all of these different exchanges that allow hair to grow out of it, it breathes, it heals, it perspires, it regulates temperature, all of this kind of stuff.
We started thinking about all of these analogies to biology, to the human body, to the life cycle of a landscape, issues of maintenance. So, from how do you assist plants to grow? How do you deal with the different elements like water? How do you harness energy?
Our categories were always based in that kind of realm. With these topics we started categorizing. I think it would be interesting to send you the original list versus the final list. The transformation from that original list to what’s in the book is not totally different, but it did change.
With this kind of organization we were able to solicit work. We sent it to almost 100 firms worldwide – design firms, engineering firms; small, large, faculty – all sorts. Everyone we could think of. Out of the 100, we probably got about 60.
TP:
That’s a huge response rate!
LM:
It was! We already had a publisher, and the Birkhäuser name helped a lot. We had a really good thesis that people were interested in. We said that this is our outline; do you have any work that corresponds to it or even take it further? We welcomed modification of the outline and of the terminology. We began with a terminology that we thought was relevant and fascinating, but we modified it based on the pieces we received, so it changed according to that.
We went through a lot of transformation of terminology. Specifically, we divided “Translate” and “Volatile” into two – they were originally both together under “Sensory,” but we decided that, like the body, we have all of these different functions of sensing things, and that these were things that were somewhat intangible, they did not have a material, per se, like monitoring systems. It evolved into splitting things because we started dealing with more phenomenological atmospheric things and that became the more poetic aspect.
TP:
These are just so much more evocative than “Sensory,” I think.
LM:
I love “Volatile” – it’s one of my favorite topics.
TP:
Yeah, it’s scientific, but also phenomenological, emotional
LM:
Some of these could be in “Volatile” – in fact, I think we mention that in the intro that a lot of these projects could actually be in several chapters. Especially in “Translate,” I think there’s a lot of overlap – how do you take a system, some sort of a force that is invisible, and how do you turn it into a visual or kinesthetic experience?
TP:
I was wondering about that when looking through the “Translate” section. With so many new materials being used, or with traditional materials being used in new or innovative ways, is there a greater responsibility to have, if not a didactic landscape, to show how the landscape is working in a way that may not have been as popular in the past 150 years of landscape architecture?
LM:
That’s definitely something that’s on the rise. There’s an interest in the technology of landscape with environmental issues, but also with a rise in all sorts of innovative construction methods. What Niall talks about – the history of post-industrial sites – there’s this interest in showing all of those layers of past use, how the landscape has not only been transformed, but is transform-ing.
A good example of that is this landscape, in Sydney, where there are some actions that we talk about as digestive actions that were done on a more macro scale – like remediation of soil, moving things off site, etc. But then there’s the continual, the constant cleaning of the water, and that’s going on, on a continual basis. So there are two scales of showing that kind of remediation – the remnants of what happened before, but then the constant cleaning.
So, I think you’re right, there’s definitely a rising interest. In fact, the only project we criticized is this project, Cultuurpark Westergasfabriek by Gustafson Porter – the work is SO meticulously done, that in a way, there isn’t anything left over that shows you that it was like THIS – we don’t even show the shots of what it looked like before. I mean, it was horrible looking –there wasn’t any sign of it, whatsoever.
TP:
It’s so crisp!
LM:
They’ve almost done it too well! This is what we say: The success is the seamlessness of the park’s surfaces may be a lost opportunity to register this layering that could continue to educate people about the site’s industrial legacy, one that does not only remain in the historic buildings, but also within the site’s horizons.
I think there is this kind of educational/didactic aspect of things defines what people are looking for today as experience, whereas in the past, it was more like interpretive signage that would say “Da Da Da” that would use words. I think designers today are aspiring to take that paragraph and turn it into a visual and spatial experience.
TP:
You mentioned a couple of times in the introduction the relationship of your work to pedagogy, and maybe creating a new set of terminology that could be used in teaching. I think, certainly speaking from my own experience as a student, landscape architecture pedagogy particularly in core seems to be interested in specific concepts in the abstract and there’s a difficult in letting an interesting material or process drive design. Do you have any thoughts on how your work might change design pedagogy or studio culture?
LM:
I think that I’m using the Materials Collection to start exercising my own pedagogical ideas without using existing curricula. Most professors there have their set ways and they’re hard to change, so one of the ways that we’re doing it is through independent studies. Two of the four researchers are doing independent studies. . . An architecture student, Sophia, is doing an acoustics independent study, and Sara, a landscape architecture student is doing weathering. And both are sort of similar in that they’re trying to engage both research and experimentation and thinking simultaneously about case studies and creating your own work out of it. Both Sophia and Sara will make some sort of installation. The acoustical one lends itself more to an experience, and the weathering one may be more about an installation outdoors on the terraces and looking at how materials weather over the years, and documenting that.
So, the point is that I think engaging material studies at the GSD through actual projects is a lot more engaging than just learning about it separately in a theoretical way and never having this link between the theoretical studies and studios. Rarely are there studios that are focused specifically on materiality.
TP:
There’s an architecture options studio this semester – Sheila Kennedy’s –
LM:
There are TONS in architecture – there’s an acoustics one, Toshiko [Mori] always does these seminars with textiles, Farshid always deals with ornamentation and how the ornamentation becomes functional. . So architecture is more engaged. . . So Sheila, for example, is focusing exclusively on tensile structures and photovoltaics, and that’s the main purpose of the studio. And yet it hasn’t made that leap into landscape. I think there are a lot of possibilities – you have these technology courses, but none of these technology people are designers. You never have Bob France teaching a studio because he’s not a designer. And you don’t have this kind of rigorous investigation of what’s going on technologically speaking in landscape, in environmental studies, in engineering, in public health – there are SO many resources around here, but nobody talking concretely.
I just read an article in Harper’s about REACH, which are the new environmental regulations in Europe. They’re going to affect the whole world because the EU economy is forcing a lot of companies in the U.S. to rethink and redesign chemicals and not use all sorts of chemicals, which is a chain reaction that ends up in all of the products that we end up using.
TP:
Because non EU companies either have to make two products — one for domestic use and another for export that meets EU standards.
LM:
And we have no awareness of that as designers, we have no way to intervene in that process of creating materials. . .So think I think there’s a tremendous potential for the department at large to become a lot more educated and informed and literally bring in these people who are developing technologies into the mix. Sponsoring studios, allowing for people to develop actual prototypes, any of that. It would be more like a Media Lab type of model.
I think the new Dean, Mohsen Mohstavi has a very huge emphasis on environmental issues, so hopefully that will become something that we could push.
LM:
I think Niall is trying to engage a lot of technology classes, and I think he’s really transformed the department quite a bit in offering a variety of things. I think what’s missing in a huge way, not just at the GSD, but at the landscape architecture field at large is the convergence of technology into a design experience. Because we’re not engineers. Just to say that you’re designing a stormwater retention basin is not a design. That is what we were trying to collect here – all of these concepts of technologies? Let’s look at some excellent design that is also engaging those technologies.
It’s almost like taking Adrian Geuze and Martha Schwartz and fusing them into Bob France and Richard Forman. One singular person.
TP:
That would be amazing. And terrifying.
LM: So that’s the idea. How do we cultivate this new breed of our generation? Our generation is not going to have a backlash against environmentalism, a backlash against design as an artistic or cultural expression. It’s going to completely hybridize those two, so that environmental issues and technology are going to be come a natural thing for us.
TP:
So you and Alexander have been on this crazy lecture and book tour?
LM:
Our tour bus is outside!
TP:
How has your work been received differently by graduate students, undergrads, practitioners, educators, etc.?
LM:
I have to say, we’ve been so lucky. It’s been received incredibly well worldwide, partly because the publisher is great so the circulation is tremendous. We've found the book at the Pompidou Centre, MoMA, you name it. It’s all over! We’re almost sold out of the first edition. I think it was a very timely book because there aren’t any books like this on the market that are addressing these issues of technology and materiality in landscape architecture at all. And there aren’t any that compile a cross section of contemporary work through that lens. There are lots of monographs out there of all sorts of firms that are amazing – there’s a new West 8 one, Peter Latz, Gustafson came out a couple of years ago. And there are books that are contemporary surveys of work, but they don’t have a critical topic associated with them.
TP:
It’s almost as if those books, even though they’re about landscape architects are not geared toward designers. I really appreciated how much this book is so much more meaningful to designers – you really get so much more out of the projects.
LM:
Thanks!
TP:
I tried to get a copy from the GSD library and all 4 copies were gone and people are flipping through saying, “Oh I had never seen this project” or even if they had, they had no idea how it worked. Most publications are very much a surface treatment of projects.
LM:
We definitely wanted to do all of the projects as a kind of slice through – a cross section looking at the underneath layers. I think students are finding it really helpful, faculty as well. It’s been on a number of required reading lists at various schools.
TP:
For what kinds of classes?
LM:
Both studio and technology classes. We went to UPenn and had an incredible reception there. Our introduction was by Anita Berrizbeitia and we were like “Oh my god, we love you!” And Anu Mathur, you know the author of Mississippi Floods: Designing a Shifting Landscape and I was telling both of those ladies – actually, your two books specifically (Inside Outside and Mississippi Floods) were both reference guides for how to do our book. Inside Outside tries to come up with unprecedented categories and a new language. And Mississippi Floods tries to deal with the idea of landscape in flux, and how do you use different representation methods to discuss it. And that was one of the ideas behind the book – to start collecting how people are beginning to illustrate the topics that they’re actually trying to address, whether it’s through diagramming or an animation over time. We thought at one point to attach a CD with animations, but not a lot of people are doing it yet. But that was one of the thoughts –how do you start discussing some of the concepts through representation. So UPenn was a really great reception. We’re going to OSU, and we’ve been invited to UVA, UT Austin, Toronto, Israel, a whole bunch of lectures. So yeah, I can’t complain – it’s been so great!
TP:
So do you have any other research projects coming down the line?
LM:
There are a few projects right now, but they’re not fully cooked. I’m actually trying to do a few projects that are actually design projects outside of Hargreaves. The projects that I’m working on at Hargreaves are at such a large scale, so I’m teaming up with friends to do really small scale projects, so that’s not really related, but it’s sort of my own personal focus right now, to work on design.
I’m sure some things will come through, but nothing right now in terms of new research.
I might try to get going is a trip to Israel, which is where I’m from. I’m trying to look at technologies in Israel, of which there are plenty – it’s like innovation central over there – for green technology, whether it’s water/solar/etc. Both mechanical and passive. And there are a number of institutes there and they have a lot of innovation there and a lot of technology, but none of it ever gets translated into design, or good design.
Israel is a desert climate with a huge demand on resources, specifically water, and I wanted to look at landscape to collect water, even just runoff, to sustain irrigation and if there’s a way to reuse that water. The other aspect was looking at zones in-between Israeli and Arab villages as a way to bridge social-political problems, so this was the idealistic aspect of it. I don’t know, I know a lot of people there now, so maybe I could somehow develop a studio/research project where I could take technologies and sort of an entrepreneurial aspect and a zone along a border engaging maybe even local community, and students within landscape and/or architecture departments to engage in coming up with solutions. If I could do that in the next 10 years, that would be awesome.
TP:
The functional use of those borders is so much more interesting than parks that don’t really do anything, that just stand for something.
LM:
I think there’s a lot of potential – Beardsley and Christian are starting to get into it with their research into favelas. I actually spoke to Christian about it a few months ago because I received a grant to go to Rio and look at favela reconstruction. All of those projects are done by architects – one architect and a team of engineers – and he’s brilliant, but they’re all very architectural, and all of their solutions for erosion or water or anything of that sort are walls. I told him that there’s a HUGE potential here- you’re in a jungle! Use plants to do some of your reinforcement and dealing with floods and water circulation and cleaning and any kind of that stuff. I don’t think people are so aware of it in many parts of the world. I don’t think a lot of people understand the idea of landscape as anything other than creating shade or making space beautiful or things of that nature. Along those lines, I think there’s room to cultivate that kind of investigation.
So we’ll see. That’s on my mind.
Abby Feldman, Alex, and I were kind of a trio at the GSD, and we’ve talked about the idea of developing the fiber-optic marsh as a real product. That’s kind of an ongoing topic of discussion. And the sponge – two and a half years ago, we did a project through the GSD for the Rotterdam Biennale that was curated by Adrian Geuze and the topic was “THE FLOOD.” It was basically saying, sea levels are rising, flood is imminent, what do we do with it? What does a country like Holland, which is all under sea level and is right now relying on a system of dikes, what do you do when there’s another foot and the dikes can’t continue to be built up and up and up. How do you live in water, with water, so on?
We came up with sort of a dreamy solution that is fantasy, but maybe has a sliver of practicality in it. We wanted to use super-absorbent polymers to absorb huge volumes of water instantaneously.
TP:
That’s the stuff that gets used in meat packaging, right?
LM:
Exactly, or like hygienic pads; it’s also now being used for toxic spills and in surgery for absorbing blood. What it does is absorb in a very rapid way 400 times its own weight in liquids. We designed these fantastic structures that were pink sponges everywhere. We were giving Holland a topography that they don’t have. They LOVED it, LOVED it – it made it into the newspaper in Holland. I actually think there’s a huge potential for it, to develop it, because that is a huge issue that we will have to deal with all over the world. In the U.S., in Bangladesh, something like 400 people dead in this cyclone, and they get hit every other year.
I just need the space, the appointment, and the funding. The funding I can get, I think – I know a lot of people now.
TP:
It’s always good to have lots of friends in high places.
LM:
Who are interested in doing good. There’s just a lot of potential, and going through academia is a good way to do it.
TP:
I’m all excited now to go back to studio!
LM:
It’s so awesome, I know! I love it! I miss school! I’m really glad to still have the affiliation there – the most intellectually stimulating day of my week is when I’m at the GSD.
Projects at the office just move SO slowly. I mean, you’re working like mad, producing drawings and more drawings and models, but until you see something happen, it’s like. . .
I don’t know how it is at other offices, but there isn’t much of an intellectual dialogue on a day-to-day basis. That’s why I’m thinking that if I have my own firm, or once I do, it’ll have to have a kind of hybrid research and work
TP:
Like the AMO/OMA model.
LM:
Exactly. I mean, Rem is an exceptional person, he’s number one, but you can see the guy is constantly engaged in new thinking and breaking ground, and then it shows in the architecture. Every single building that he’s done breaks new territory, and I don’t think he would have achieved that if there wasn’t all of that thinking behind it – I don’t think it’s just pretty.
TP:
Is there anything else you’d want to be posted on a landscape architecture blog with a moderate amount of online traffic?
LM:
I think that about covers it – thanks so much.
TP:
Thank you!
images: Atelier Dreitsel and Margolis/Robinson