Wildfire
The Last Lookout on Dunn Peak: Fire Spotting in Idaho’s St. Joe National Forest
Drawing it up from the ashes
Designs for Malden by WSU student landscape architects
As the small Eastern Washington town of Malden builds back from a devastating 2020 wildfire, Washington State University landscape architecture students visited and helped with re-envisioning the town and its public spaces.
After talking with residents, the students looked to the future of the town while honoring its past. Their ideas, which you can see below, include a conceptual design for a new town square, a fire monument, updates to Malden’s park, and more.
Click on each image to view each PDF presentation
After the Maui fires: Joe Cardoza and Dalton Fukagawa
After the Maui fires: Valerye Huff Zimmerman
After the Maui Fires: Tim Richards
Permanence
The ancient Roman architect Vitruvius conceived of three primary virtues for structures: beauty, utility, and firmitas, a term that can be translated as permanence. Naturally, buildings can’t be crafted to last through time immemorial. What is permanence if even stone monuments wear away into sand?
Moreover, as Washington State University architecture professor Ayad Rahmani asks in this issue’s essay, maybe the longevity of structures should be questioned. Rahmani writes about Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic view of buildings and their inevitable decay, and that we should perhaps consider their “measured return to the earth.”
We don’t really expect our buildings to last forever, but we rely … » More …
A burning issue
Video: Slow Burn
A silent slow burn consumes thousands of acres of Washington State every year and the tribal lands are no exception to this burn. This burn isn’t caused by a wildfire and doesn’t produce any visible smoke. It’s the encroachment of invasive species as they slowly consume native and beneficial vegetation.
Tribes in the Pacific Northwest rely heavily upon natural resources for income generation and sustaining a way of life. There are significant wildlife, agriculture, and rangeland impacts to the Tribal lands.
(The video below was produced by Nathan Moses-Gonzales, M3 Consulting Group.)
Read about Native prescribed fire practices.