VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC: Laurel McSherry, Terry Surjan, Rob Holmes
Alexandria, VA USA |
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Our work, a field guide to the landscapes of Gateway, provides tangible connections to pre-existing, ongoing, and emerging site conditions. Three types of connections – marks – are suggested to guide the revival of local and regional landscape knowledge: seamarks, landmarks, and ciphers. Located 1000 feet apart along cardinal directions, a field of sixty-two seamarks guide wanderers and inform observers of the locations and heights of future landform modifications. Varying in shape, size, and height, seamarks guide the creation of a midden – a near-continuous landform traveling the width of the site from the Gateway Marina to Mill Basin. Formed incrementally over a span of 11 years from local channel dredge, the midden serves as index (vertical) of the former Irish Channel bathymetry, datum both within and outside the site, and surrogate for the experience of an otherwise inaccessible landscape. The landmark field situates Gateway's' constructed landscape within the context of other national parks and monuments under the care of the Department of the Interior. The proposed series of stamp issues serves as cipher for the reading of Gateway's local and regional landscapes.
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Laurel McSherry, a native Highlands, New Jersey, is an Associate Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Landscape Architecture at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center of Virginia Tech. A graduate of Rutgers University and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, she is the recipient of the 1999 Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture from the American Academy in Rome. In 2005, McSherry and architect Terry Surjan were among five finalist teams in the Flight 93 National Memorial Design Competition. Presently, she is at work on a book indexing the landscapes of New Jersey's Raritan River.
Terry Surjan, a native of Joliet, Illinois, is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg. A graduate of Columbia University, Surjan's research and teaching focus on Computer-Numerically-Controlled (CNC) component design as well as 3-D modeling and animation. Currently, he is part of a VT team working on a "House for the Future" for the Department of Energy. Prior to joining the faculty at Virginia Tech, Surjan taught CNC and animation technologies at Arizona State University, the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Woodbury University and the University of California in Los Angeles.
Rob Holmes, a second-year graduate student in the landscape architecture program at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center of Virginia Tech, is a native of Philadelphia and Lancaster, South Carolina, and holds an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Covenant College.
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