The Landscape Makers exhibition was a maker-driven art + design event featuring the work of Fuller Design Fellow David Buckley Borden and his collaborative team of Studio Fellows. The landscape-inspired work explored cultural narratives of PNW forests through interior installation, design objects, and interdisciplinary environmental-communication. The exhibition featured refined design-research work created by Borden and a team of artists, designers, and select graduate students enrolled in the Master of Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Oregon.

The public exhibition was also a snapshot of an ongoing creative project, Lookout Landscape, a multi-site interdisciplinary creative project with the Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes, the Center for Art Research, the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, and the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word. The Lookout Landscape project is an emerging collaborative, community-driven endeavor led by David Buckley Borden and Colin Ives, as CFAR Affiliate facilitators. The project uses an environmental lens to highlight the maker-culture within the state of Oregon by including the process and input from a variety of creative individuals, ranging from forestry research scientists to indigenous land stewards from both local and regional communities.

Recycled aluminum hazardous-material signs, primed wood siding, wood glue, and sheet metal screws, 2021-2022. Collaborators: David Buckley Borden, Seth Eddy, Nancy Silvers, and Ian Vierck.

This series of large-format mixed-media barn quilt designs are inspired by regional Pacific Northwest narratives in response to the 2020 wildfire season, which was noted as one of the most extensive seasons on record. The 44-inch square quilt-block patterns are created from recycled hazardous material signs to communicate community memorial, testament, critique, respect, and celebration of wildfires as an ecological phenomenon. While telling the story of the 2020 fire season, the work addresses larger issues of climate change, human impact, industry, personal experience, community activism, and the future of wildfire response in the PNW forests.

Some quilt designs, such as Monkey Wrench and Burnt Bear Paw (left and right) are reinterpreted traditional folk patterns that continue to resonate with contemporary environmental narratives. Other designs were created anew in response to local community chronicles. These neo-folk pieces, with titles such as Wind Event, Back-40 Block Aid, and Chevron Fossus Mortis, push the folk tradition into new narrative territory as humanity reckons with novel ecological challenges brought on by climate change.

One-inch plywood, aluminum haz-mat signs, bullseye primer, and assorted hardware, 60” x 60”, 2021-2022. Collaborators: David Buckley Borden and Nancy Silvers.

Shared personal knowledge and familial storytelling is the creative crux of folk design tradition, including quilt-pattern making. The Make Your Own Haz-Mat Quilt piece built off this tradition of voice and creative empowerment to function as a low-tech interactive work that invited gallery guests to create their own designs by manipulating a grid of sixteen independent flip placards. Each flip placard included 15 haz-mat sign options, giving users 240 permutations to play with in the creation of their own personal environmental statement.

Full-scale prototype of modular landscape installation element, nominal 4” x 6” timbers, structural screws, primer, acrylic paint, aspirin, and band aids, 7’ x 14’ x 18’, 2022. Collaborators: David Buckley Borden, Nancy Silvers, and Ian Vierck.

Tree Guard No. 01 is a provocative pop-dipped reinterpretation of the urban steel tree guard. The modular prototype is inspired by timber-framed barn-building and high-visibility destruction/construction barriers. This dramatic tree guard is intended to capture human attention, land stewards’ imagination, and the value of the potential tree within it. Although the tree guard is displayed in a gallery setting without the central tree, the prototype is being further developed as a series of public landscape installations on contested land under threat of development in Eugene, OR. The Tree Guard No. 01 was created in the spirit of Jack K. Byer’s mantra, “Protect to Study; Study to Protect.”

Vernacular mixed-media panels, wood, marine-grade polymer canvas, and assorted hardware, 44” x 44” each, 2021. Collaborators: William Bonner, David Buckley Borden, Kennedy Rauh, and Ian Vierck.

Every landscape has an association with a material culture. How can a material, be it from nature or the human hand, influence the cultural identity of a people, their sense of place, and their land-use practice?

Buffalo Plaid or Buffalo Check is a plaid pattern created by large blocks formed by the intersection of two different color fabrics, typically red and black. The tartan-inspired plaid (the Gaelic for pladjer) pattern was introduced to North America by Jock McCluskey, a descendant of Rob Roy, who traded the heavy Scottish blankets with Native Americans and other European trappers. The iconic pattern is now synonymous with both the timber industry and outdoor recreation in Oregon forests.

The four iconic “Buffalo Plaid” inspired patterns (two-inch, one-inch, glitch, and bespoke) were handwoven with marine-grade fabric by Kennedy Rauh. The fabric patterns were then framed with wood CNC-cut panels. The graphic icons within the panels are representations of North America’s classic ecological engineers, the bison and beaver.

Beyond Scaled-Models for Buffalo Plaid Panels. Lookout Landscape Studio Fellows, Overlook Field School alums, MLA graduate students, and Landscape Makers (left to right); William Bonner, Hannah Chapin, Kennedy Rauh, and Ian Vierck.

Woodshed installation, cheap lumber, split firewood, haz-mat signs, primer, acrylic paint, and assorted hardware, 44” x 48” x 64”, 2022. Collaborators: David Buckley Borden, Hannah Chapin, Kennedy Rauh, Nancy Silvers, and Ian Vierck.

The Carbon Storage Woodshed is a modest reminder that wood (both dead and alive) plays a proactive role in the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide. The shed is also a pointed prompt that calls on the timber industry to play a landscape stewardship role in carbon sequestration of the Pacific Northwest forest ecosystem.

PNW Forest Flag display, marine-grade canvas, paracord, cedar poles, and antique logging tools (river pike, pike and hook, and bark spud), dimensions variable, 2021-2022. Collaborators: David Buckley Borden, Hannah Chapin, Michael Demaggio, and Ian Vierck.

This series of large-format 3’ x 5’ flags captures a few principle interests (wildfire ecology, wildlife habitat, and science in society) at the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest in Blue River, Oregon. The PNW Forest Flags are an extension of a series of collaborative fabric works by Boston-based artist Michael Demaggio and David Buckley Borden. This particular vexillography series began during Borden’s Overlook Field School Artist Residency in the summer of 2021. The ongoing collaborative environmental flag project continued with additional creative contributions from Hannah Chapin, Nancy Silvers, and Ian Vierck.

Yellow pine wood, blue tarp, marine-grade polymer canvas, brooder lamp, 40-watt bulb, paint, vinyl, and assorted hardware 46” x 46”, 2021. Collaborators: William Bonner, David Buckley Borden, Pat Falco, Kennedy Rauh, Nancy Silvers, and Ian Vierck.

Light box designs were used to explore local environmental issues, rural and urban. These prototype studies also tested material-interplay between wood, fabric, graphics, color, and lighting.

Many thanks to Tom Coates for his guidance and assistance with our CNC robot collaborators on the series.

Wood, marine-grade fabric, brooder lamps, paint, and assorted hardware, 46” x 46”, 2021. Collaborators: William Bonner, David Buckley Borden, Pat Falco, Kennedy Rauh, and Nancy Silvers, 2021-2022.

Vernacular architecture installation, wood, marine-grade canvas, hardware, and miscellaneous forestry, safety, and firefighting tools, 4’ x 3' x 5’, 2022. Collaborators: William Bonner, David Buckley Borden, Hannah Chapin, Michael Geffel, Kennedy Rauh, Nancy Silvers, and Ian Vierck.

The Community Wildfire Tool Shed was an experimental re-interpretation of a backcountry USFS storage shed. The shed presents both traditional tools and speculative design solutions for community firefighting, both past and future. The modular paneled structure was a creative exploration working toward the design and fabrication of a full-scale lookout tower for the Lookout Landscape project with the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest et al.

Interior architecture installation, CNC-cut wood panels, marine-grade fabric, upcycled wind gauges, recycled hazardous-material signs, vintage fire warden phone, paint, assorted hardware, and media players with projectors, 11’ x 11.5’ x 11.5’, 2022. Collaborators: William Bonner, David Buckley Borden, Hannah Chapin, Kennedy Rauh, Nancy Silvers, and Ian Vierck.

Hybrid landscape “architecture” merging iconic design elements of a backcountry open-door outhouse and vintage PNW wildfire lookout tower. This full-scale prototype was a design opportunity to explore modular structure construction, narrative-driven panel design, kinetic instrumentation, and the material culture and operation of a typical USFS lookout tower. The interactive structure was functional, complete with standard waterless plumbing (Jerry’s five-gallon bucket), fire marshal phone, USGS maps, two iconic lookout tower shutters in the event of inclement weather and other lookout “creature comfort” ephemera.

The Loo with a View, a fun (however practical) structural study draws heavily on William Bonner’s Air Shed thesis project with David Buckley Borden, Dr. Fred Swanson, and others at the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest.

Special thanks to Tom Gottelier of Designers on Holiday for sharing their architectural expertise with the team.

The Landscape Makers team members are grateful to Fuller Director, Liska Chan, and Fuller Lab Director Michael Geffel for championing this collaborative project. David Buckley Borden’s Fuller Design Fellowship, the collaborative interdisciplinary work, and resulting exhibition was generously supported by the Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes.

About the Fuller Center 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 FIPL 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.