Abstract:
Landscape architects often prize themselves on working with a media that is living, ever-changing: growing. Yet, with all of our talk about growth, we never practice succession. We never fully take upon ourselves the challenge of an evolving landscape.My goal for this comprehensive project was to create a process by which succession might, truthfully, be used as a means for design. Using a portion of the Ball State University Campus, I explored how background material regarding successional theory, landscape ecology, model landscape management techniques could be combined with a site's ecological and cultural history, and functional needs to produce a landscape which could change as it modified its environmental conditions. Effort was made to understand a new order of maintenance based upon natural, not human, timetables.The development of a species-specific successional plant palette (where time, notaesthetics, assumes the major role) further supported the philosophy and reality that thenatural world we live in is in constant transition. By understanding and upholding this basicprinciple, the landscape architect can begin to design for, not against, succession.
