RISE: A GUIDE TO BOUNDARY RESISTANCE

Abstract

The format of the guidebook carries potential for landscape architecture as a practice of inclusion, participation and social engagement. Here, the guidebook is a medium for a native American coastal community to challenge the boundary lines placed onto its island by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Biloxi Chitimacha Choctaw tribe on the Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, forced to leave their island for a land-locked parcel farther north because of sea level rise, will eventually lose their island to state property as this mark rises with the sea in the next fifty years. In response, the project uses the guidebook to suggest acts of community resistance against this water mark, obscuring and blurring the boundary so that the tribe will maintain ownership of their land and have a reason to return after they leave. Through conscious choice of representation style and sensitivity to the process of design, the project provoked questions of community, resistance, and “design for the other.” Here, the role of landscape architecture is critical of the boundaries placed onto land, and the uses of the guidebook can help to embrace community engagement and agency.

Keywords

Boundary / Community / Participation / Agency / Identity

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2017 Higher Education Press