Operations in a Wounded Landscape
Operations in a Wounded Landscape
This project traces the destructive event of the First World War in the landscape of the Forest of Verdun (France). It attempts to re-think the built memorial by treating the landscape, with all its deformations, debris and vegetation, as a contemporary witness of the past.
The proposal responds to this landscape brutally shaped by humanity with a minimal invasive architecture that adapts to the deformed conditions instead of levelling them out and thereby fostering collaboration with other species to find possibilities of living on a damaged planet.
The objective is to get an insight into the complex entanglement of politics, culture and nature rather than telling a history of human exceptionalism.
Preliminary research for the project was informed by an archeologist, a geographer as well as biological studies of the area. A seminar held at the French National Forestry Office ONF with further discussions informed the process and scope of the project alongside with reading of environmental theorists like Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing.