Title: "Carbon Mirror"
This project examines the contradictions between landscape architecture’s ecological ethos (whether professionally - or culturally imposed) and the invasive, extractive, and carbon-intensive construction practices used to realize climate-mitigating projects.
According to the Global Status Report 2017, published by the United Nations Environmental Programme and the International Energy Agency, building and construction account for 40% of the global, yearly carbon dioxide emissions.
To explore what a low-carbon landscape aesthetic might look like, this critique pushes the current conversation past accounting for emission reductions and toward a cultural shift. If landscapes are a reflection of our culture, what do the current methods of landscape construction say about our values? Furthermore, is what we see in the reflection enough to inspire a re-evaluation/re-making/re-thinking/re-designing? Can landscape architecture develop a new aesthetic and cultural value system in which decarbonization becomes a fundamental landscape-making practice rather than an environmental performance objective?
