Floodplain Dwelling

The Dwelling Design has become another cardboard moving box, questioning and packing up the pieces of home. Between the design of a mobile dwelling on a Unimog Frame, and a landscape space cast into the floodplain, we’ve been exploring those agents that tie people and architecture to place. In the truck, a sense of place is boundless, always available out the front window. Its also protected and carried with you, a cozy bunk in the back. On site, the place is part of the very riverbed it sits on. Its exposed to the flood and the ice, robust enough to withstand the forces, but malleable enough to capture an impression of passing seasons.

All the parts of home are divided into either those that you carry on your back, the necessities for survival, and those that you return to, unlock, and let spill out into open space. For us, there would be a cistern, a cellar, a library, and a fire pit waiting in the flood plain for our return. But the design of the space left behind could incorporate all those personal nooks and collections one stashes away and comes back to, like the obscure ashtrays my Grandfather collected even though he never smoked, or the miniature spoons my Grandmother hung on the wall and never used.

The two halves of the home then start to take two approaches to a minimal existence. The truck takes its cues from survival and efficiency. The home is tailored to the mechanics of the vehicle, and to the everyday parts of living, compacted. Its design attempts to carve out every available space for storage, and then to leave spaces one can tuck them self away in. On the other hand, the site is minimal in the sense of defining space. It does not use walls or roofs, but instead it uses topography to form space. Platforms and benches for lounging, eating, and bathing, are cast into the riverbed. Flooding can flow over and around them, pooling in basins and streaming through gutters. In this minimal palette of edges and platforms, space is able to grow.

 One pulls up with all their belongings in tow, opens up the watertight cells that keep their books or spoons, and inhabits the open space that becomes home.

Harvest Scales

From the scale of a single grain of wheat, and the way it propagates, to the scale of the human body, and the extent of it’s arm swing, to the scale of the machine, and the horsepower that pulls it, animal or manufactured. With each increasing scale, the swathe widens, and so too does the extent of the field. During Harvest, where time is a constant and limiting factor, the space that can be reaped is defined by the speed of the reaper. Collectively, a grid of farm fields creates a pattern of not only space, but of the imprint of time. 

Sources:

Barlow, Ronald Stokes. 300 Years of Farm Implements and Machinery. Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 2003.

Deere & Company. John Deere Agriculture. 2011. http://www.deere.com/en_US/ag/online_brochures/combines/combines_brochures.html (accessed March 8, 2011).

MacEwan, Grant. Power for Prairie Plows. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Western Producer Book Service, 1971.

Seeligman, Genetta. BitterSweet. Springfield-Greene County Library District. Spring 1974. <http://thelibrary.springfield.missouri.org/lochist/periodicals/bittersweet/sp74toc.htm> (accessed March 7, 2011).

Todd, S. Edwards. The American Wheat Culturist. New York, New York: Taintor Brothers & Co., 1868.

Thing: Cardboard Moving Box

My mother dropped a stack in the hall outside my room. It landed with an unremarkable thump. She carried in two boxes and assembled them on the floor in front of me. A papery dust wafted out as she folded the flaps, and tipped the hollow side up. She pressed open the top flaps along the crease, and uncapped a marker with her teeth. On one box, she wrote, “Lindsey’s Room” and on the other, “Lindsey’s for Storage”. She resealed the marker, and left a black garbage bag, explaining with sympathetic eyes, “This is for anything not worth keeping”. That was a precarious idea. Might there really be something not worth keeping? Every old stuffed animal, scrap of paper, or shard of broken toy was a part of my childish world, real or make-belief. When it retired from the realm of useful things, it found a new purpose in the hands of my imagination.

I pruned my belongings of anything I could part with: things that were replaceable, objects more valuable in memory than in substance, and things I was embarrassed of. Now I had to sort through the ‘keepers’. We were moving over seas for two years, and bringing only what we needed. We would leave the rest in storage until we returned. I began with the bookshelf. I needed my favorite nighttime stories: Grandma and the Pirates, The Snow Queen, and my collection of Roald Dhal and Robert Munsch. These would come with me. I wanted my sticker collection and book of Cat’s Cradle. These would be stored with my schoolbooks, neither wanted nor needed, but obligated to keep. I continued in this manner, weighing needs against wants, sifting through dolls, marionettes, pencils, puzzles, and other oddities. Each thing was carefully considered for how lonely it might be, abandoned in a warehouse, or for how lonely I might be without it. The boxes eagerly welcomed the objects, filling up far too fast. My Mother tackled the wardrobe, filtering out clothes that were too small, too big, or too itchy to wear.

The room was emptying as I rearranged the contents of the box, trying to squeeze out any extra space. Inside, everything looked shabby against the fresh cardboard. My things were foreign, just objects, stacked with the efficiency of a seven-year-old. My hands felt dirty, covered in a thin film shed from the box. Only a bed, bookshelves, and a little desk remained. They would all disappear when the moving truck arrived in the morning. Mom sealed the boxes with packing tape, and took the garbage bag down to the curb. I sat on the floor, my world shrunken from around me.

It would be several weeks before we saw the boxes again. They took the slow voyage by ship while we packed our suitcases and flew. For weeks we camped out in a furnished apartment, on loan. When we heard the ship was fast approaching, we moved. I slept in an empty room, in an empty house, on an overgrown lot. I got to know every ripple in the ceiling and every snag on the carpet. The whole house was ripe with potential, awaiting the sound of moving vans turning up the drive.

It was clear the boxes had taken the brunt. They were no longer new, but marked up, dented, and wilted from sea air. The movers carried them in, one after the next, stacking them in the living room. Excitement erupted in all of us as our handpicked world unfolded in an alien place. I found my box amongst the heap. Like all the others, it was branded with the mover’s stamp, and in finer print, the words, “Lindsey’s Room” were scrawled in the corner. I heaved open the flaps and let out a musty scent of home. My things lay there, untouched, against the weary cardboard. They looked brand new.

After the boxes had been lovingly unpacked and dismantled, we began to build. We built fortresses with watchtowers, hideouts quilted with pillaged blankets, and rocket ships embellished with triggers and controls. Those spared of our playful destruction, were stowed away for the trip back. Then I would be faced again with the tiresome task of re-evaluating my material world.

With every move my collection got smaller, my boxes more expertly packed. I tested ways of classifying possessions: by room, by association, purpose, material, or fragility. The cardboard box became a ritual in my life, a de-tox of sorts. Its rigid dimensions are a constantly nagging discipline. Every possession has been scrutinized for its ability to be packed into an 18” by 18” by 22” cube. Anything larger must be exceptionally sturdy, or easily dispensable.

Those boxes that are still intact, that have not been dismembered of flaps and sides, are folded flat. They’re stacked under the bed, collecting dust, awaiting another move. The cardboard box continues to keep my world small, and renders it mobile.

Place: Out the Window

Outside the window, there is an aging picture of a motley place. I’ve watched it passing, from the back seat of the car.

I’ve always felt safer behind the driver. So I took the left back window. Dad was in the driver’s seat. Mom played navigator from the passenger side, though she couldn’t read a map while moving. My brother sat in the right side back. And the dog, patrolling both windows, sat roughly in the middle. There was a battle over album choice. It was often resolved with the radio, until we’d lost the signal. Mom would call the time, even if we could have squeezed out another kilometer, before caving to Blue Rodeo. From then on, Mom glued herself to the volume control. My brother plunged into his Game Boy, resurfacing only for rest stops.

Outside the window, the road was lined in trees. Saplings were planted and relentlessly spaced in suburban fashion. They careened past the window with such forceful rhythm, I’d cover my eyes for fear of hitting them. Eventually they’d grow dense to form a wall. And behind them, another, then another, until they walked up the sides of the valley, and withered when hill turned to mountain. When dusk fell over the highway, Mom turned off the music and we’d sit in silence, watching for eyes in the trees. The dog, who had been enjoying the album, whined and pawed at my knee. The darkness made her anxious, as it did all of us. We knew too well that at dusk, the deer were unpredictable. By daylight, they stayed clear of the highway. They hid behind the trees, until the trees had burned to white, and you could see through them for miles.

Beyond the blackened pavement, and before the still burning flames, the valley was draped in a wiry coat of stumps. I wrapped a scarf around my nose and mouth, filtering out the putrid odor. Smoke had stifled the valley, and rangers led packs of summer travelers to safety. The trees looked as though they could crumble to ash, then blow away in a gust, and leave the landscape barren.

Where trees were few, one could be spotted from far. With its roots planted deep to withstand wind and drought, the tree stood proud. Like all objects erect along those prairie roads, the tree first appeared in miniature. It grew until it filled the window, and passed in an instant. It dwindled to a fleck in the rear view mirror. The car was getting hot. There was no shade to be found, and the road was unlikely to curve away from the sun. The dog was panting over my knee. I rolled down the window and we both let our heads hang out. The smell of warm canola wafted in from a yellow field. A yellow house stood in the middle. It must have been freshly painted, for it showed no signs of weather.

Each field passed by the window like a painting, in yellow, gold, brown, then green.

Green thickened into mounds that rolled along a gravel road. From the peak of a knoll, I could see the lane winding ahead. It sauntered over and around hills, curving to greet each quiet house. This place smelled like peat moss and Wriggley’s gum. Combined with the scent of new car, it makes me nauseous even now. But the dank air eventually gave way to rain, and I rolled up my window. Droplets clung to the glass, tumbling down towards the corner. As they picked up speed, they’d collide and merge into slower beads. They’d roll until they reached the edge and were swallowed by the frame. I could watch this slow race for hours, set against an emerald backdrop. This place was quaint.

Where lush green was torn open, there were sheets of solid limestone. Our van zipped across an abandoned seabed, void of plant life, and worn smooth from wind and rain. The rock was cracked in coral-like patterns, and the rain streamed through its crevasses. The plain reached out and sheared the coast, where it disappeared into a crash of waves. We turned up the music, and pressed on in the rain.

As the air turned cold, the raindrops turned to sleet, then snow. We were high above sea level. Some prehistoric force had sliced the rock, and heaved it up into the clouds. Then someone else had carved a road, so that we might dapple in sublimity, from the safety of our SUV. The road clung tight to shear faces, and our truck unwillingly followed. We were top heavy with gear, leaning on every bend. Even the dog sat still, for fear of throwing us off balance.

Out the right window, the cliff pressed its jagged face against the glass. A net hung between us, catching falling rock. To the left, the plateau dropped into a frozen stream. The ice was whittled by the same wind that cut the valley. It was splintered over uneven rock, and the shards were blanketed in snow.

The snow falls heavier in the prairies. It swirls around the car and cloaks our view. Dad is steering toward the shoulder, and we follow the rumble strip through whiteness. Mom is gripping the dashboard, and my Brother has tucked his cell phone into his pocket. The dog is sleeping in the middle seat. She shows no interest in the snow, or the sound of the pavement. Her eyes are droopy. Her hair is grey.

Time: Two Minutes of Choreographed Dance

His Mother kicked the soccer ball back to center field and scooped up the boy. Hurrying through the side door, she clenched her teeth as the hinge squealed. She tiptoed across the room. Even muffled in his Mother’s shoulder, the boy’s wailing competed with the music. His Mother side stepped into the kitchen, and sat him next to the sink. She wiped the grass stains from his shin as he whimpered pathetically. A girl was dancing in the room. She didn’t flinch. He watched her drift across the floor, one foot following the other in conversation: s l o w - s l o w - quick quick - s l o w - s l o w - quick quick, until she was ten long paces to the wall. She reached out with her fingertips, and brushed the wall, throwing herself back towards the center of the room.

She cherished that empty room. For an hour, until the others arrived, it was hers. With her bare toes, she’d sweep up the dust, and watch it hover in a stream of afternoon sun. She’d stretch out every movement, bouncing lightly from wall to wall, sweeping the entire floor. Pock marked from party banners and sign-up lists, there was no judgment in those walls. The music echoed from their corners, and reverberated in the floor.

Entirely consumed, the dancing girl took no notice of the watchful boy. Just a few measures into the piece, she had succumbed to the driving beat. She couldn’t read music, and she had no understanding of musical theory. She could not play an instrument. She blamed her double-jointed thumbs for her clumsiness at the piano, or her little finger for its weakness on the guitar.

But her feet knew the sound of a drum.

 They heard it at the half beat, and at double time. They diligently followed, in counts of eight. In one measure, they walked four paces to the right, until the knee re-nagged, wrenched the hips backwards, threw the torso off tilt, and peeled up the last standing foot until it was gripping desperately with its toes. There the body hovered at the end of the measure, until the next rushed in, and caught her falling torso on the first count. It would start again. You could say it was time experienced purely in the moment. But it passed so quickly, the moment was indecipherable. With every rehearsal, the moments fused into a chain.

She’d have an hour to rehearse a two-minute piece, precisely two minutes according to competition rules. There, even a strand of hair that floated out of the curtains, and into the judges view, would start the clock. But there were no such rules here. There were no stage lights exposing her vulnerability. And there was a different kind of quietness, a casual quietness. In these two minutes, she felt like she could escape. She hid away everything that weighed on her. But emotion seeped out. Joy quivered in the extremities of her fingers and toes. Sadness dripped from the weight of her limbs. Anger sharpened movement. The pressures of the day were not forgotten, but recycled. Surely every fumble, and likely any breakthrough, was brought on by an upsurge of emotion.

While the drama of her teenage life fed the dance, choreography burrowed its way into muscle memory. Time and space were malleable, choreography their sculptor. She could unwind a single pirouette to rotate one joint at a time, starting at the toe, and working its way up in a snake-like motion, bringing time to a halt. Or she could pin her foot, whip her head around sharply, and the body would follow unnoticed. She could stretch out the arc of a back bend, folding each vertebra over an invisible pocket of air. Then she’d collapse over, curl inwards, and hold the air in tight. Choreography pushed and pulled those two minutes, as if they were made of clay. She left every moment behind, knowing it disappeared the instant it occurred. And she reveled in unpredictability, colliding with each approaching step.

In these two minutes, she knew how it felt for time to pass. She understood it as a substance, one to be used up. The time before was meditative. She spent it calming her thoughts. After, her thoughts were blurred, her mind swollen with adrenaline. The pulse throbbing in her wrists deafened her. She paced across the room, waiting for it to come into focus. The little boy’s cleats scurried out the side door, and a cool draft carried in the sound of children on the field.

When she left the studio some hours later, she was satisfied with a well-spent Friday evening. She started to walk, one foot seamlessly following the other. She paid no attention to the time it took for an arm to swing front to back, or a foot to shift heel to toe. Time tucked itself away behind her, and followed her unnoticed.

On Place Names

Imagine the prairies, painted in a vibrant palette of names. Every name is an adjective that describes the place for what is really there, or what it actually is. It’s a hill, a waterhole, or a warning. It's an element in the landscape that deserves our attention. And the hundreds of names converge into a collective memory that is fast disappearing. In this painting, the landscape begins to resemble a sort of constellation. The names weave an image of a larger, more complex place.

Today, these names have been long forgotten from a cultural conscience. We’ve blanketed the vast reaches of prairie land under a single, homogeneous naming system. Under the survey, every 160 acres, or quarter-section, is given an equal weight. The landscape is no longer understood for its collection of natural elements, but instead for its ability to be smoothed into a constant purpose. We now value the landscape for acres, for section after section of unfaltering land that can be harvested with increasing efficiency. Protrusions and disruptions, though they unconsciously captivate our impression of a place, no longer define it.

Consider that names hold more than sentimental or ritual value. They form a deep collective understanding of the landscape. And by cloaking these names in a generic grid, we’ve made a profound inversion to our perception of the place.