Black Locust has long been a part of northeastern US forestry, but its status as an invasive species precludes it from complete integration into the built environment. Uncommon among trees, it bears the characteristics of both fast growth and high density. Its fast growth makes it somewhat of a forest bully: it outgrows neighboring trees and then slows down to block their access to the sun. But its density and rot resistance make it ideal for landscape and exterior applications. That fact, coupled with a need to aggressively harvest it, still has not increased the presence of Black Locust in our built environment. Among its robust, often contradictory, properties, one rests quietly in plain site: a fluorescent brilliance under UV exposure. The cellular and chemical structures responsible for this phenomenon are unknown, and there is no clear evolutionary advantage attributed to it. Lime Light is an objet d’art and architectural experience. It is a space for pondering, where the Black Locust is providing answers to questions that have not yet been asked. Lime Light is both an architectural experience and an educational tool. It is an immersive, nocturnal analogy to the New England Autumn tradition of observing leaves changing […]
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A hundred years ago, in the summer of 2016, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released several findings from an inquiry into money laundering and tax evasion practices attached to market speculation and luxury residential sales in Manhattan. The report found that over 50% of real estate sales above 3 million dollars were to limited liability corporations whose controlling interests were individuals listed on international criminal databases for organized crime and political corruption, among other illicit activities. Spurred by the FBI’s condemnatory exposé, lawmakers enacted several pieces of legislation requiring more transparency in luxury real estate sales, effectively limiting particularly egregious forms of laundering and speculation. Simultaneously, and using similar shadow tactics, the agency initiated a covert operation to seize properties in connection to the criminal investigations - properties only identified in classified sections of the report. What follows is a selection of anecdotes surrounding the visibly bizarre transformations of a set of park-side towers in Midtown Manhattan during the 21st century. Of particular significance is the account of whistle blower JP Kennedy’s 2058 discovery of the FBI’s covert seizing of a large portion of Manhattan’s most valuable property. Other stories account for the transition of this seized property into […]
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Massachusetts has many natural gifts; varying microclimates and ecoregions that support and entertain all of us who call it home. To the vast community of scholars centered in Cambridge, specifically Radcliffe Fellows whose tenure is intense yet brief, there is little opportunity to engage and reflect on these gifts. Forested Gifts is an installation that not only shares these environmental systems with our community but also provides a venue for visiting fellows to eat, drink and exchange ideas. The design’s site response is directly tied to the trees edging the courtyard flushing out this parameter condition and converting the open plaza into a dense bosque of diverse sapling trees. Inside this bosque, elevated planters transform the excavation restrictions into an opportunity that showcase the elevation changes and microclimates across the state. the trees within form a sectional gradient of ecologies across the state represent. Each planter hosts a tree and selective plantings that thrive in its analogous ecology. highest planter hosts a Pinus strobus (white pine) ecology and the lowest planter hosts a Fraxinus nigra (black ash) ecology. At the center,we removed a single tree to produce a void so that residents can enjoy evening campfires. The conversion […]
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