Lookout Landscape

Monday, March 28, 2022

Fire lookouts and the people who operated them once served as guardians of the forests throughout the Pacific Northwest. Methods of wildfire management have shifted to high-tech solutions and many lookout towers have been torn down or re-purposed. As fires grow in intensity and frequency due to climate
change, the commitment from solitary individuals on distant peaks has shifted to the urgent need for collective action. The proposed Lookout Landscape project is intended to answer the call for collective action with an inclusive collaborative response that spans multiple disciplines, sites, and communities.

The Lookout Landscape project aims to leverage the lookout tower as an architectural metaphor and reframe the iconic structure to both survey and reflect the critical relationships between forests and society past, present, and future. This multi-layered project is designed around a pair of landscape installations, interior gallery exhibition, and event series culminating in a multi-dimensional program and publication featuring alternative land-based practices in the ongoing climate crisis. Ultimately, Lookout Landscape will prompt folks to evaluate individual and collective responsibility for human-caused environmental changes.

David Buckley Borden, an Andrews Forest Designer-In-Residence, is a lead principal of the Lookout Landscape project, along with the University of Oregon's Center for Art Research's Colin Ives. The multi-year project can trace it’s roots to Borden’s Spring Creek residency at the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest during the spring of 2019. David is an interdisciplinary designer, artist, and cultural producer working at the intersection art, design, and ecology. Informed by research and community engagement, David promotes a shared environmental awareness and heightened cultural value of ecology.

A recent exhibition at the University of Oregon previews work towards the Lookout Landscape project can be viewed at https://www.davidbuckleyborden.com/landscape-makers

Lookout Landscape is supported by the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Oregon, Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes, Center for Art Research, Ford Family Foundation,  and the Andrews Forest program.