In the last semester, I entered Martha Schwartz's studio which focused on shifting the global warming trend by rethinking the process of sequestration. Though important the topic was, only seven students selected this studio. The first part of the studio was about study and research on literatures, reports and data. Martha invited specialists from lots of domains to give lectures to us, including ecologists, scientists, and managers of Harvard Forest, except designers. It forced us to give up the usual workflow but concentrated on work out together a series of research papers about the topics.

 

After the research and writing section, we started to think about the issue of design. We used the Greater Boston Region as the site, and set the time to 2060. The logic of Sequestropolis was simple but full of idealism: in 2060 we will get rid of private vehicles but use self-driving cars as share transportation tool. In the benefit of accurate drive and share cars, we don't need wide roads and a large area of parking spaces. Instead, those spaces could be transformed into "sequestrate zones", by planting trees that are well-performing in terms of sequestration and can live well in the city in 2060.

 

This studio also forced to shift the current status of Landscape Architecture as a profession being excluded from the decision-making group. We wanted to quantify the influence of landscape to the city by including the data of total increase area of sequestrate zones, the numbers of trees we are going to plant, and even the quantity of CO2 we can capture by planting those trees. By showing people number, landscape designer acquire the power as architects and engineers have. 

 

For the final site design, I chose the greenway park on the top of the Big Dig, and imagined it to be the new waterfront of Boston in 2060, based on the estimation of sea level rise. According to the data, the harbor area of the city will be entirely inundated underwater in the next 50 years, and the greenway park will become the new waterfront. Thus, the park needs to be transformed into a vital landscape infrastructure to project the city and people, and also serve as the new harbor to keep the logistics industry of the city.