For various reasons (vacations, other projects, et cetera), I have failed to direct readers of this blog to the interview with Kate Orff (of SCAPE) that FASLANYC posted about a month ago.  The interview touches on, among other things, SCAPE’s “Oyster-tecture” project for the Rising Currents exhibition, strategies for expanding the engagement of (landscape) architects into new terrains (which is, of course, a continual object of interest for mammoth), and a project for a “super toxic zone” in Mississippi which sounds fascinating.  An excerpt related to the need for those strategies for expansion:

Another big problem is there is a dearth in the ability to create a compelling narrative about the environment. One of the things that drives me completely bonkers is that I passed these tests that show I know how to drain water to catch basins and make ADA guardrails but I’m not asked to engage with things that are really dangerous like “can I dump hazardous waste in this pit and just cover it with clay”? I think that we have to be much more radical, coming at it not as landscape architects but as the cultural custodians of the environment. It drives me to a furious state that there are massive toxins in the environment, but they are at a different scale and we’re not even in the room.  It is totally frustrating. I would say the same thing with the pattern of development. That is the trouble with being in the box, with providing design services for the capital project, working within the market economy; we are limited in our ability to address policy and the way that land is organized. We are definitely caught in this constrained, powerless way of operating.

If you share our interest in thinking about alternative engagement strategies and practice models, you’ll probably also enjoy the series that FASLANYC is writing on public agencies and landscape architecture, which begins here.