Curious Mapping: Material Flows
Where do our landscape materials come from? A call to action to find out!
We’ve been exploring* this question recently, and at the ASLA conference last month in Minneapolis, we presented our initial research in a panel session.
To answer this question, and to find out how materials magically arrive on site, we took to mapping the materials of our first built project, Dolly’s Park, back to their source. This prompted a deep dive into the provenance of the park materials, which we documented in this “sourcemap” . The sourcemap traces the journey of each material, and the people and places who were instrumental in making them a vital part of the park.
The mapping process had many co-benefits for evaluating the impact of our design decisions and material specifications. We’re bringing the sourcemap tool to the fore in our design process because we believe understanding material origins is a path to both conservation and decarbonization, as well as a way to embed a more sustainable material narrative into our projects. A sourcemap foregrounds that every sourcepoint is a landscape, even if it’s a quarry or a facility. If we value the landscapes we receive from as much as we value the landscapes we design and build, shouldn’t our sourcepoints be an integral part of our design narratives?
We argue that once designers see what's under the procurement hood, we will be able to make better informed decisions when we select materials. So now we’re envisioning an improved opensource mapping tool for designers to share projects, material sources, and to learn from each other. As designers, we have agency to shape industry practice with our decisions, so we think mapping technology can help us discover what’s behind our specs, at the source. Mapping can help us stay curious and design smarter!
*Our exploration arose from reading Jane Hutton’s book, Reciprocal Landscapes, which tells a narrative of five materials used in the building of NYC public spaces to reveal the ecological and sociopolitical impact of each material extraction. We highly recommend it!