For the Forest, See the Trees
University of British Columbia
School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
Architecture
Design Studio Thesis
Thesis: Ada Sakowicz
Advisor: Leslie Van Duzer
Committee: Fionn Byrne, with Beryl Allen, Verena Griess
LINK: UBC Open Collections
Description:
This thesis explores how architecture, as a material practice and a mode of representation, can be designed to reconstruct public relations with the forests of British Columbia, with the more than human forest residents, and with larger forces of Canadian identity deeply entwined with constructed ideas of the forest.
The project mobilizes research into current and past forestry practices in BC through four sites that make up a proposed circuit through a typical cutblock. An architectural intervention is designed to gain from the multiple forms that trees take across their complete material existence at each site. Ultimately, the project recognizes failures in current forestry practices. However, instead of unilateral rejection of this industry, the work understands that embodying an ethically contentious issue through architecture is a powerful negotiation tool. Physically and conceptually, architecture changes the way we see the world.
Image Credits, Ada Sakowicz.