Landscape Architecture Magazine

Close-up view of a movable climate station.

From the November 2014 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.

Reid Fellenbaum, Student Affiliate ASLA

It’s 2080, a world deep in the throes of a changing climate where a landscape’s fertility is analyzed by mammoth structures that roam the Great Plains. It may seem like a scene from a sci-fi novel, but it is actually the basis for Reid Fellenbaum’s “Meridian of Fertility,” winner of the 2014 ASLA Student Award of Excellence in Analysis and Planning, which examines historical practices, climate models, projected precipitation, temperature, and current soil quality of the Great Plains region and suggests that the “Meridian of Fertility,” a geographical dividing line between prairie lands to the west and areas suitable for agricultural practices to the east, is steadily moving eastward. The project proposes a series of shelterbelts to slow this migration, as well as a return to dry-farming practices (a no-irrigation method that relies on the conservation of soil moisture) informed by structures called climate stations that use “hyperlocal climate predictions” to determine the best site for farmers to plant their crops. We talked with Fellenbaum about his project, and how he sees it as a focus on resiliency in a changing world.

What attracted you to the focus of the “Meridian of Fertility?”

I guess I’ve always had a deep appreciation for agriculture. My ancestors settled in the so-called breadbasket of the colonies, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, so this is where I was born and raised, on a small farmette. I grew up listening to my grandfather’s stories about land, about weather, about instruments and the machines used for cultivation. And then I was educated in landscape architecture and geography at Penn State, which provided me a new lens to study these interesting stories. At the University of Michigan, I was in the Atlas of the Heartland research group with my wonderful thesis adviser, Rania Ghosn, of Design Earth. The group was investigating the geography of the U.S. heartland in order to construct a spatial knowledge of the histories, the mythologies, the constituents, and the ecosystems of the region, and my research was really focusing on the western fringe of this in the Great Plains. So when I could tie it into agriculture, of course I ended up doing that. It’s funny how you start out with one idea and it can really spiral off once you start digging into research. That was the beginning bud, I think.

How did this project develop?

It started with an interest in the shelterbelt project, this grand establishment of about 19,000 miles of trees in rows across the Great Plains. This was something that I had studied a little in China. There’s a big effort to plant trees to hold back the deserts there, and I found out during that research, which preceded this project, that they actually learned it from the United States, and that this was something that [President Franklin] Roosevelt had started. So the project was born out of this interest in the shelterbelt, which spiraled into water ecologies, and eventual study of the 100th meridian and “Meridian of Fertility.”

The tensile structural design of the climate stations allows for them to be easily moved.

How did you come up with the idea and design for the climate stations?

I’ve always been interested in tensile structures, which is really the system used for these climate stations. For a while I was calling them “Climate Chapels,” which I like even more now, because I was trying to symbolize the perception of fertility and this idea that weather, to farmers, is almost a type of religion. Like the way my grandfather would watch the Weather Channel to determine how and when he was going to plant his crops. So the form of those stations, of those chapels, was inspired by a cathedral space. Of course in my project they were harnessing utilities for localized climate prediction. It’s a utility that’s collecting localized climate data, which was one of the central concepts of the project. Right now our weather data is mostly collected in low resolution over broad regions, but there’s a lot of research and development that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other institutes are doing to increase this resolution. My project speculates that in another 50 years, our weather and climate data collection will be refined enough to allow the accurate forecasting of minute topographic variations, or “hyperlocal” landscape conditions. The design of this “climate chapel” was inspired by the cutting-edge instruments of the Department of Energy’s Climate Research Facility in the Southern Great Plains. I envisioned this space to not only collect the data but also provide an interpretation of it to a farmer who might get curious about what to plant next season.

The exaggerated microtopographic section model represents a two-mile area in Kansas with shelterbelt plantings and a climate station.

So the chapels are mobile; how does that work?

The idea for the “Meridian of Fertility” was loosely based off the 100th meridian, which is the approximate division between the semiarid West and the humid East. I see this line dividing between where agriculture can be assured, where it can be practiced, and where it cannot. But the line is going to be consistently updated every year based on new data collected and data analysis. It’s slowly moving east—there are a lot of models that show that that’s what’s happening, the rain, the precipitation line, is moving east. And so every year these chapels, which help define that infrastructural line, will have to move back. The design of the tensile structure makes it easy to take down and move to its new position.

What were some of the challenges with this project?

My original intention was to research and develop the project across different scales and time, researching from the ecoregion down to the subtle microtopography, and creating some regional infrastructure while providing a design for a chapel or something that’s very small. I felt this was essential to what I was trying to accomplish, but looking back I was terribly naive, thinking that I could achieve all of this by my thesis deadline. I see the project as almost like a first phase of inquiry. I hope to continue the research in the future.

How has this project translated into the real world?

It hasn’t translated at all that I know. I think what it has done is it’s opened up a lot of questions that I’m interested in finding the answers to. The project was a speculative project from the beginning. I know a lot of planning projects are meant to be implemented soon and might have phases, but the start date for the project was 2080, so I was projecting far into the future. I think the project is opening up a lot of questions, questions about resiliency and what that means to my profession, and how a challenge like climate change can be translated into a real-world project, and how that can be tackled by a landscape architect. I don’t know if I know that answer. My project, I think, is a step in the right direction—speculating about the future.

Is this a far-reaching project because it deals with climate change?

I think so, and climate change is just one of the underlying themes of the project. Climate change is just not a problem that’s easily addressed. And I did struggle with that. I don’t see this as a solution to climate change, but it’s a way of maybe thinking about a landscape and how a landscape can be resilient over time and over different challenges.

The layers of wire mesh represent the significantly reduced aquifer levels owing to 60 years of unrelenting irrigation.

Credit: Reid Fellenbaum, Student Affiliate ASLA