David Buckley Borden was invited to join the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Oregon’s School of Architecture and Environment for a two-year Visiting Professor appointment in the fall of 2020. In addition to teaching studio and environmental communication course work through the lens of his creative practice, David is spearheading a new design-ecology initiative between the Landscape Architecture Department and HJ Andrews Experimental Forest (HJA) with support from the Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes (FIPL).

At present, this initiative includes course work at UO, a wildfire-themed design program at the Overlook Field School with the FIPL, and lectures at Oregon State University, University of Oregon, Spring Creek Project, and HJ Andrews. Additional lectures, exhibitions, and an upcoming series of FIPL-funded landscape installations are in development for in variety of publicly accessible venues across Oregon.

David is indebted to HJA’s Fred Swanson, Lina DiGregorio, and Michael Nelson, UO’s Landscape Architecture Department’s Roxi Thoren, and the Fuller Initiative’s Michael Geffel and Liska Chan for this unique opportunity. To facilitate this extraordinary interdisciplinary collaboration, David has been appointed the first Designer-in-Residence in the history of the HJ Andrews LTER program and the inaugural Design Fellow at the Full Initiative for Productive Landscapes.

About the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest

The HJ Andrews Experimental Forest is located in Oregon, in the Cascade Mountains. The entire 15,800-acre (6400-ha) site is the watershed, or drainage basin, of Lookout Creek. The landscape is steep, with hills and deep valleys. Elevation ranges from 1,350 to 5,340 feet (410 to 1,630 meters). Cold and fast running streams flow through the many valleys of the forest. Most of the landscape is covered in dense forest. Huge, iconic Pacific Northwest old-growth conifer forests grow here with cedar, hemlock, and moss-draped ancient Douglas fir trees. Some of these trees grow as high as 250 feet (75 meters), and many of them are 300, 500, a few even 700 years old.

The Andrews Forest is a center for forest and stream ecosystem research in the Pacific Northwest. We collaborate with dozens of university and federal scientists, students, and managers to support ecosystem science, education, natural resource management, and the arts and humanities. The program has its roots in the establishment of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in 1948 by the US Forest Service. At that time, the forest was a mix of old-growth and mature forest. Beginning in the 1950s, several small watersheds were manipulated (for example, logged or not logged) to lay a foundation for research on how the ecosystem works, how plants regrow in the forest, how nutrients move through the system, and how the forest and streams interact. Learn more on our History page.

The Andrews Forest became a charter member of the National Science Foundation's Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program in 1980, and long-term measurement programs continued on experimental sites and watersheds with a focus on questions about climate, streamflow, water quality, vegetation succession, biogeochemical cycling, and effects of forest management. The research is ongoing, and continues to reveal surprising and important information.

The Andrews Forest is administered cooperatively by the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station (USFS Research), Oregon State University (OSU), and the Willamette National Forest. Funding for baseline research comes from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Pacific Northwest Research Station, Oregon State University, and other sources. The Andrews Forest is one of 25 major ecosystem research sites funded through NSF's Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program and one of 81 USDA Experimental Forests.

About the Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes

The Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes (FIPL) is an internationally recognized center for research-based design and design as research, focused on the role of place in cultural sustainability, and grounded in the arts and humanities. Guided by a team of scholars, students use fieldwork and art methods to investigate the ongoing stewardship of landscapes and culture.

The Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes has four primary goals:

1. Reclaim second nature – the productive landscape – as a central inquiry within the discipline of landscape architecture.

2. Centralize praxis and material experimentation within the landscape curriculum.

3. Connect University of Oregon students to globally significant places, practices, research, and pedagogies.

4. Enhance the arts and humanities as modes of inquiry within the curriculum.

The FIPL holds a series of events over the academic year, in both Oregon and Pennsylvania, connecting students to critical ideas in landscape architecture through art inquiry, fieldwork, collaboration, and learning from experts in the field. The events are structured by an annual theme within the framework of productive landscapes. The FIPL runs three annual signature events: a summer field school that is an immersive, intense experience for a small group of students, initiated by a lecture open to the public, and a preparatory spring seminar open to any University student. The annual events alternate between different physical settings, learning modes, class size, and inquiry media to provide a wide range of opportunities for learning. The FIPL leverages the signature events as the basis of landscape architectural research, forging connections between collaborators, and resulting in the dissemination of arts- and humanities-based landscape architecture research through publications, design competitions, and exhibitions.