| EveryVille Competition by La Biennale di Venezia - project 29 of 40 HON. MENTION |
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| Saavy |
page 1 (page 2) |
| Valentina Mele (CANADA), Ya'el Santopinto (CANADA), Amy Norris (CANADA), Shannon Wiley (CANADA) |
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| Human Lawnscapes
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| What if lawns were removed from Everyville entirely? The lawn is at the root of the exurban crisis: the obsessive culture of private land creates isolated domestic enclaves, while pesticides and spilled gasoline contaminate the water table, and water resources are exhausted to sustain non-native grasses. In the Human Lawnscapes proposal, private lawns become public terrain. Everyville citizens don seed-dropping lawntextiles and become suburban pollinators: sowing the terrain into a shifting lawnscape. Everyville becomes an ever-evolving map of the human trace: A trail of poppies through a parking lot records Mr. X's shortcut to work. Nearby a knitting circle meets, surrounded by geraniums. Citizens emerge out of the isolated indifference of suburbia with a stake in the contested terrain they inhabit: Suburban monoculture becomes a dynamic polyculture in the expanded public realm. What persists over time is the memory of each citizen-pollinator, inscribed in the overgrown lawnscape. |