Lilian, for her scholarship, partnered with BuildOn, a non-profit organization dedicated to addressing the international education crisis by ensuring that children living in poverty can attend school. In 2017 she traveled to Nepal, living in a village to be among the families for whom the project would support. She fundraised for materials to help build a school with gender-equal classrooms so literacy, health and community are acknowledged as fundamental human rights.
The following is a direct excerpt from Lilian’s fundraising page, five months after returning from Nepal. It was her first time she could capture her experience in words.
My Response to Adam
Adam: Hey, welcome back! How was your trip?
Me: (after a pause, in a whisper) I think my heart is a little bigger.
Those were the only words I had. They rang so true. Yet I didn’t quite know what they meant. For 5 months since returning from Nepal, I haven’t known what else to say. So I’ve just continued to think, to try to figure it out by reflecting and observing, and to keep considering what I am doing, and more importantly, how I am doing it.
Ram Ram. Danyabad. Sugur ba.
We spent one day prior to arriving at the village learning the basics of Taru.
Hi. How are you? Thank you. Yes. No. Numbers. Good morning. Good night.
And then, our trek leaders gave us our Taru names. Mine is Laksmi. In that instant, I felt myself the furthest from home and the most immersed in the experience. Then something seemed to click in all of us because we started leaning on this new language to help us transition from courteous guests visiting to wanting to become friends with our fellow villagers.
We wanted to learn how to thread sentiments together with Taru words. Good job! That was fun. Your (home or son or daughter or …) is beautiful. I admire you.Can you please show me how (again!)? I don’t feel good. Or, I feel better.Let’s go together. I really love your Masala Milk Tea. It’s so different.
I realized that you can build a relationship by practicing less than 10 phrases. I think we often forget how simple it can be and, frankly, to listen attentively to what is being said, and how, and then repeat to make sure we understood.
Pack Less. Leave Room.
I intentionally traveled with only one backpack – a personal experiment in lightness and self-reliance, but also to respect that I would be traveling to a place where I would really learn what it is like to live within your means, and even then, barely so. Our host families live this way, most with three generations under the same roof, yet there was plenty of room for my nine trek mates and me.
In our tiny abode, my partner Michaela and I huddled with our family, on the floor, around the fire, every night to make dinner, warm up, explain our lives through the pictures on our phones, and understand the precious story of love (grandma is a widow), loss (Santi left her family to be with Gris) and hope (the painted dark circles around Uron, their newborn, “so his eyesight would be good when he grew up”). Our family time reminded me to cherish density again, that intimacy is created rather quickly when you want it, and to focus on the white of people’s eyes more, preferably by candlelight. Really, you don’t need things, what you need is desire.
Grit.
Our mission to build a school with gender-equal classrooms to enable literacy and opportunity was a merely a string of words. But these came to life every day when, before 8am, the villagers had already arrived on site to work. Our daily morning ritual was a group circle where everyone so moved would be invited to share their thoughts. Our trek leaders were translators only to clarify with words what we could see and feel expressed in gesture. Nothing is lost in translation when what you mean is that you are humbled and ever so grateful to be right there, and then, with each other. And that the work you are doing will outlive each and every one of us.
Our Nepali community is physically half the size of any one of us but they easily have twice the grit. We used the same picks, shovels, hoses and gloves. But they are so much more effective because they work with a steadfastness worth admiring. The ladies, especially, wore beautiful fabrics and attire that exuded an elegant grace in spite of the sweat in their faces.
Pretty soon, the foundations we were digging were deeper than we were tall. At the end of this phase, we could all look out and see how each of the footings tied to a grade beam, thereby outlining the symbolic foundation of what we were all working on – the promise of access to opportunity. It didn’t escape me that our Nepali friends were actually educating us about a really critical synergy: knowledge + purpose. We can know a lot of things but it’s how we apply ourselves that matters. They have mastered the hardest skill – living with intention, now they can round it out with the rest – information. We, on the other hand, have some learning to do.
Today, I re-read my original aspiration, each of your amazing responses and the updates along the way. Thank you is such an understatement, as you made this humbling experience in vulnerability and community possible. It’s a gift that, in this world of increasing temporal moments, this experience is still revealing itself and my heart is continuing to grow. And for that, I am so grateful.
Click here to learn more about Lilian’s experience with BuildOn.
WRNS Studio — growing at an average of 20% annually — has named six senior associates and twelve associates to expand leadership across offices in San Francisco, Seattle, Honolulu, and New York. The new leaders help WRNS Studio stay nimble, creative, and design-forward amidst rapid growth.
“These architects and interior designers bring a diversity of interests and talents focused on research, craft, technology, equity, community, delivery, and innovative building systems.” says partner Kyle Elliott. “This plurality brings great value to our studio culture and our ability to deliver transformative projects for our clients.” The firm leadership, under sixteen partners, will now be significantly strengthened by nine senior associates and thirty-two associates.
Scott Gillespie, Jason Halaby, Edwin Halim (top row), Ed Kim, John McGill, and Rochelle Nagata-Wu (bottom row) have been named senior associates. Scott Gillespie is currently delivering a new campus for a global technology company in Silicon Valley, on track to become the largest mass timber project built to date in the U.S. Jason Halaby leads the firm’s innovative use of Virtual Reality and Building Information Modeling, implementing firm-wide training and standards. Edwin Halim, with numerous interior design projects for Google, Airbnb, and Facebook, is currently working to achieve the Living Building Challenge Materials Petal for WRNS Studio’s Seattle office. Ed Kim recently delivered one of a handful of university recreation centers targeting LEED Platinum in a building type that typically consumes large amounts of energy and water. John McGill, based in New York, is leading projects for Princeton University, a global technology company, and numerous private developers. Rochelle Nagata-Wu, who leads the firm’s Honolulu office, is delivering projects for the Hawaii Department of Education and the Rehab Hospital of the Pacific.
The twelve new associates include Goetz Frank, Prairna Gupta Garg, Stewart Green, Alexander Key (top row), Demetra Manolas, Parvaneh Mohaddes, Jahae Park, Kelly Shaw (middle row), Susanne Susheelan, Abdel Qader Tarabien, Christian Vollmuth, and Wesley Wong (bottom row). “These new associates advance our ideals of beauty, sustainability, and a positive contribution to the public realm through everyday practice,” says partner and director of human resources, Melinda Rosenberg. “We look to them and see the future of WRNS.”
WRNS Studio has twice been named Top Firm in the U.S. in Architect magazine’s annual ranking of firms across design, sustainability, and business. Notable projects include the Sonoma Academy Durgin Guild and Commons, honored with a 2018 AIA Committee on the Environment (COTE) Award.
Spanish moss festoon aged oak, cresting into a deep vignette of antebellum grandeur. This is the one point perspective of Oak Alley from the Great River Road — a panorama seared into our cultural subconscious due to cameos in films such as Interview with the Vampire and Primary Colors. Yet the architectural diversity in the lower Mississippi River Delta is staggering. A variety of influences, from the Native Americans who first inhabited the South to the Spanish, French, and British colonists to early and contemporary Americans — mark the architectural landscape with buildings that reflect and respond in various ways to their climate and historical impetus.
Setting out from New Orleans, I aspired to trace the mighty Mississippi, exploring public architecture in a region often overlooked for its design sensibility. Ascending north along local roads in Louisiana and Arkansas, I used Memphis, in West Tennessee, as a turning point to make my return trip south along the Blue Highway in Mississippi.
Few structures break the green canopy of the low-lying marshlands outside greater New Orleans other than the occasional highway overpass or smokestack. Until Baton Rouge that is. Occupying the first precipice north of the Mississippi Delta, Baton Rouge’s prominence as the capitol of Louisiana is reinforced by the clustering of the state’s petrochemical industry. As refineries filtered into the region in the 1930s government functions outgrew the Old Capitol Building. A significant investment in a new capital building during the Great Depression was shepherded by Populist governor Huey Long. The new Capitol, completed in 1932, would forgo the dome and wing mimicker for a distinguished art deco tower design by Weiss, Dreyfous and Seiferth, notable for other public buildings in Louisiana. Rising 450 ft, the tallest of any state capitol, the tower is topped in an octagonal cupola and beacon design dominated by large windows and a wraparound observation deck. For the morbidity inclined, Huey Long, then serving a US Senator was shot in the capitol and is laid to rest in the formal gardens.
Leaving ‘Long’s Monument’ in my rearview, I entered an ecoregion defined by public intervention. The west bank of the Mississippi River in central Louisiana has historically been an ever changing landscape of floodplains, oxbows, and false rivers. With the pervasiveness of steamboat teeming the lower Mississippi in the 19th century, efforts to regulate alluvial channel patterns were initiated. I traversed an extensive system of locks, spillways, and low-sill structures managed by the US Army Corp of Engineers. Most astonishing was the road itself for drawing focus to the consistent risk of water inundation for Louisiana Highway 15 is laid out over a ten-foot levee, isolating brackish riverscapes from fertile fields.
As topography rises, the monotony of the Mississippi plains transforms to a hardwood coniferous forest. Capitalizing on this threshold, the city of Pine Bluff became an economic hub for forestry in the late 19th century and boomed again during the Second World War. By the mid 60’s, a civic center was needed to house all municipal functions and to provide a much needed stimulus for downtown development. Turning to acclaimed modernist and Arkansas native son, Edward Durell Stone laid out the three structure campus on a raised podium. The Civic Center enlists a formal colonnade and cast concrete panels, characteristics Stone advanced with the US Embassy in New Delhi and the Uptown campus of SUNY Albany. The deep overhangs, shielding users from high temperatures and humidity, are reminiscent of plantation verandas. Formal in presentation, the Civic Center breaks the traditional symmetrical layout with an askew communications tower. Much of the Civic Center is original but worn as Pine Bluff fell on hard times in the latter half of the 20th century.
Farther up the road it widens, merging into highways as you narrow in on Memphis, the largest city on the Mississippi. Long a logistical hub on the river, freight lines and interstates now crisscross the city, yet open green space still persists. A lengthy redevelopment of Shelby Farms spearheaded by master planners James Corner Field Operation, saw the penal farm transform into a recreation destination – complete with a bison herd. Designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects, a series of single story pavilions settle into the landscape. Each, its own study of elevation and pitch, share a simple material palette of mostly aluminum grating and cypress planking that form a crisp identity without feeling rustic. While within the city limits, Shelby Farms’ feels too agrarian to be considered an urban park as open fields and expansive lake front obstruct any semblance of city life.
Control over the river is still an ongoing concern. My planned stops along the road from Memphis to Vicksburg were thwarted due to higher than normal river levels, a repercussion of unseasonable heavy rainfall in the Midwest associated with climate change. Taking refuge on the bluffs of Vicksburg, the socioeconomic legacy of slavery was evident as wealth was and is concentrated on higher ground in contrast to improvised low-lying farmland. This underscores the town’s reliance on the river, as wealthy land owners utilized the river for fertilization, irrigation, and shipping. Tasked with improving navigation and instituting flood control after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the Mississippi Valley Commission took residence in a Romanesque structure that was formerly a post office and customs house in Vicksburg. The imposing red brick building was designed in 1894 by William Freret to include round windows with radiating voussoirs and elaborate high-reliefs depicting chimera—endowing the Commission with instant prestige.
Rounding out my journey, I made my way back to New Orleans. Managing to go toll-less for the first 1000 miles, I opted to pay to take the Pontchartrain Causeway. Few introductions to a city have such majesty as the Causeway. Bisecting Lake Pontchartrain, the Causeway is the longest continuous bridge over water in the world. Halfway through the 23 mile span and you will feel enveloped by a great inland sea. Then all of a sudden New Orleans appears like a mirage sprouting from a great sea.
Pressures on our waste management infrastructure have forced industries across sectors to address conventional sourcing and disposal within their supply chains. As an alternative, the circular economy emphasizes a closed loop approach that encourages sustainable consumption and production patterns. From an environmental awareness standpoint the impact is high—the economic output unlocked from this shift is even higher.
Circular City Week, a citywide festival for circular economy related topics, offered events and activities for the first time this past March. The festival highlighted the ways in which circular practices such as reducing, reusing, and recycling are transforming urban industries all over New York City. WRNSer’s fanned out across the city to learn how we as architects and citizens can design to support these innovative initiatives.
Panelists at ‘Achieving Circular Material Loops with Gypsum Wall Board’ at the Center for Architecture
Reduce
Few products are more ubiquitous in construction than drywall, which makes up to 20% of all construction waste and has toxic effects when it degrades in a landfill (hydrogen sulfide is produced by sulfate-reducing bacteria under anaerobic conditions). A panel discussion, held at the Center for Architecture, explored ways to increase gypsum recycling and diversion to landfills. Gypsum can be recycled infinitely, but currently only 5% of gypsum is diverted due to constraints on labor, the need for storage, and economies of scale needed to sustain the recycling. This broken loop is particularly damaging as mining and coal plant residues form the base material for gypsum. Addressing this issue from multiple angles will reduce our reliance on a detrimental linear cycle of extraction, manufacturing, and disposal.
Materials for the Arts
Reuse
Material reinterpretation is increasingly a theme represented in art as sustainability grips the national discussion. From its warehouse in Queens, Materials for the Arts encourages the upcycling of materials and diverting surplus product by fostering relationships with end users in arts, culture and education communities, invoking the phrase that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. A complimentary exhibition at the Vanderbilt Republic poised the question: what is the future of circularity? The immersive mixed media installation challenged our understanding of consumerism and offered an optimistic challenge to innovators of any age. Sustainability can be celebrated through the arts by finding interdisciplinary companionship between industries.
Sims Municipal Recycling
Recycle
A pair of recycling facilities along Brooklyn’s industrial waterfront offers contrasting tales of material recycling yet the same call to action. Sims Municipal Recycling, in Sunset Park, sorts tons of metal, glass, and plastic from New York City’s curbside recycling program through rail and marine transfer links. Processing the largest volume in North America, the facility itself is a standout on the waterfront. Designed by Selldorf Architects, Sims features an education wing and elevated observation deck hosting schoolchildren weekly. The only operable Wind Turbine in the city marks the facility’s location and articulates its sustainable message.
Cooper Recycling Facility
Sorting only construction and demolition waste, the privately owned Cooper Recycling facility recycles 95% of incoming materials from its site off of Newtown Creek. Cooper Recycling is a member of US Green Building Council and the only facility in New York that is certified by the Recycling Certification Institute, which is an added bonus for project teams looking to achieve sustainability ratings and certifications. However despite the creekside location and adjacent rail line, the facility is fed by truck transport.
Both facilities touted their ability to sort for material, size, and even color through a series of automated processes but emphasized the changes in global trade that were curtailing their efforts. Of note, China’s decreased interest in paper and low-quality plastics has caused a spike in material headed to landfill. Both Sims and Cooper articulated a need to find a domestic audience that would utilize their products.
It was critical to get visitors thinking about what they’d seen and experienced, as the stakes were high for Alaska in 1974 and supportive voices needed to be heard. The construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline project — an 800-mile oil pipeline and road connecting the north slope of the Brooks Range at the Beaufort Sea (Arctic Ocean) to the Port of Valdez in southeast Alaska — was commencing and would bisect and make accessible what was then one of the largest road-less, untouched tracts of wilderness existing anywhere on earth. Native American groups in Alaska, mindful of the horrific experiences of Native Americans in the “lower 48” and determined not to see it repeated, had fortunately attained at least some political power in Alaska and worked hard to protect their ancestral lands and their communities. As well, the environmental movement was going strong and conservation organizations – adamantly opposed to the pipeline – sought concessions to make up for their stinging pipeline defeat. Shockingly, and in an atypically bi-partisan fashion, something amazing came out of all this.
If the creation of National Parks was America’s best idea, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) was a close second. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed into law one of the most sweeping conservation acts in our country’s history, designating certain public lands in Alaska as units of the National Park, National Wildlife Refuge, Wild and Scenic Rivers, National Wilderness Preservation, and National Forest Systems, resulting in a once-in-a-generation expansion of all of these systems. The consequences of this act were profound on many levels. For the then Mt. McKinley National Park, the change was so much more than in name only. Renamed ‘Denali National Park and Preserve,’ the Park expanded from 2 million to 6 million acres (a million acres is roughly 40 miles square). Many other new areas received various levels of protection, including other new and expanded National Parks. Also notable was the establishment of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve.
Gates of the Arctic is the northernmost National Park in the U.S. (the entirety of the Park lies north of the Arctic Circle) and the second largest at over 8.4 million acres, slightly larger in area than Maryland. The Park consists primarily of portions of the Brooks Range, the planet’s northernmost, contiguous mountain range. Most of the Park is protected in the area demarked as the ‘Gates of the Arctic Wilderness,’ which covers over 7.2 million acres (no roads, no pathways, and no trails other than those established by caribou). This area adjoins the Noatak Wilderness Area and together, they form the largest contiguous wilderness area in the United States. The Western Arctic caribou herd and other herds, collectively totaling over 500,000 animals, move through the Gates of the Arctic during their yearly migrations. I had been fortunate to get a bird’s eye view of the Park’s eastern boundary, flying over the Brooks Range while travelling back and forth from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay (after my first season in Denali, I went on to work on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline project as an environmental quality control engineer, monitoring the contractors’ adherence to environmental constraints established as conditions of its construction – yet another story).
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“There is just one hope of repulsing the tyrannical ambition of civilization to conquer every niche on the whole earth. That hope is the organization of spirited people who will fight for the freedom of the wilderness.
In a civilization which requires most lives to be passed amid inordinate dissonance, pressure and intrusion, the chance of retiring now and then to the quietude and privacy of sylvan haunts becomes for some people a psychic necessity.
The preservation of a few samples of undeveloped territory is one of the most clamant issues before us today. Just a few more years of hesitation and the only trace of that wilderness which has exerted such a fundamental influence in molding American character will lie in the musty pages of pioneer books …To avoid this catastrophe demands immediate action.”
Robert (Bob) Marshall Co-founder, The Wilderness Society
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There exists a significant body of literature in support of the protection of our National Parks and our remaining wilderness areas written with great eloquence. Consequently, I won’t attempt to describe the critical importance of preserving a place where the water in its streams and lakes is fresh and drinkable, where no animal or plant species is threatened or endangered, where one can step lightly on a square foot of ground and have some reason to believe that yours may be the first human footsteps there, where you can get lost and maybe, not be found. Even if one never has an opportunity to visit such a place, the knowledge that it exists can be refreshing to the spirit and can provide for hope and optimism when bogged down by the constant demands and responsibilities of one’s daily life. These places do still exist and as evidenced by Denali and Gates of the Arctic National Parks, they exist in more than our imaginations alone.
Unfortunately, it’s no secret that our nation’s parks, preserves, refuges, and wilderness areas are under constant siege, whether from overuse, neglect, lack of resources, the desire of some to “unlock” and open to potentially destructive uses and now of course, population pressures and attendant climate change. As isolated as Alaska is and as severe as its climate can be, the wilderness still invites unwanted attention. Construction of a new road through the Gates of the Arctic is now being contemplated by the State of Alaska, proposed to link the Dalton Highway (the pipeline service road constructed in 1974) with the Ambler Mining District to its west. To the east of the Gates, Sarah Palin’s call to “drill baby, drill” — a philosophy wholeheartedly adopted by our current administration — represents a recent, direct, and specific threat to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the nation’s largest wildlife refuge at close to 20 million acres. And that’s just arctic Alaska. There are many more areas at risk throughout our country (perfect example – recent action regarding the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah) and of course, in our own back yards.
Fortunately, as architects and designers, we are practitioners of a craft that through our daily actions, serves to lessen our collective environmental impact. By extension, the choices we make and the actions we take help protect our remaining wilderness by reducing pressure to consume what remains of our natural resources – most of which always seem to reside in or adjacent to these very fragile, very precious places. It’s important for us to always know that our efforts to create sustainable environments have a direct impact on their future, so when in the midst of a struggle on a sustainability-related issue with a colleague, client, or contractor, take heart, as the struggle is more than worth it.
Even more fortunate, none of us here in the Bay Area have to go far to experience and even more directly support protection of our wild places. Thanks to an act by Richard Nixon, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) was established in 1972. Anchored by the Presidio and the open spaces flanking the Golden Gate Bridge, the GGNRA, at over 80,000 acres, is one of the largest urban National Parks on the planet. Even as the most visited of the National Parks (15,000,000 visitors per year as opposed to less than 10,000 at the Gates of the Arctic), its breadth and diversity allow for multiple uses and a variety of experiences, even including the opportunity for solitude and a touch of wilderness in the midst of our densely populated urban landscape. With support from other privately-funded organizations like the Presidio Trust and The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, it is also one of the best-managed, best funded units of the National Park System. We are profoundly lucky to have such an asset adjacent to where many of us live and all of us work.
We should all be in awe that a society so enamored with its manifest destiny and bent on expressing to the world its exceptionalism could have mustered enough collective wisdom to preserve such places as National Parks and wilderness areas for future generations. Quite a miracle. But even in the rarified air of our exceptionally progressive circles, there seems only a weak connection between sustainability and the conservation movement as we in this country used to know it. As architects, we’re well versed around the technologies, metrics, and goals around creating sustainable buildings and environments, but the connection between that knowledge and its relationship to the preservation of what remains of the natural world feels a bit less clear, less immediate. Recent experiences have reminded me that the need to strengthen this connection is indeed immediate; our few remaining wild places are as fragile as ever, are all under assault, and require our collective, constant attention and action in order that they remain protected.
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“I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving”
Edward Abbey
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Epilogue
This past August my wife Ellen and I headed north to the Gates, our first time back to Alaska in over 25 years. With five other travelers and two guides, we shared a one-and-a-half hour bush plane flight from Fairbanks to the “town” of Bettles (2010 population = 12) and then another one-and-a-half hour bush plane ride further north to our base camp site at Folly Lake (via a 60-year old De Havilland Otter, outfitted with floats). It was one of the most spectacular flights we’ve ever taken to one of the most spectacular sites we’ve ever visited. After dropping us off, the pilot taxied around the lake to gain position, took off, and disappeared into an adjacent valley. Finally, we were in a place with absolutely no evidence of or proximity to any human activity.
After a week at base camp and a float plane pick-up delayed due to weather, we were all safely transported back to Bettles, where we – after spending the night in our sleeping bags on the floor of the open aircraft hangar – were able to get a flight back to Fairbanks. It was a memorable week, with challenges presented and challenges met, all successfully and with good humor. In spite of early winter conditions, with daily snowfall, strong winds, and below freezing temperatures, we were all prepared and all felt overwhelmingly fortunate to stay in such a unique and amazing place. It was the consummate wilderness experience.
Ellen and I then headed south to Denali National Park for a few days, where she also, coincidentally, has deep ties (yet another story for another time). Again, we were fortunate to experience the Alaskan wilderness in a rare fashion, albeit with a considerably less challenging conditions than in the Gates of the Arctic! We were both happy and relieved to see that in spite of some haphazard development at the Park’s entry and the creation of a couple of new, managed trails by the Park Service, Denali remains as it was when we’d each first encountered it – a wilderness that for the most part is unspoiled and untrammeled. We were also fortunate to rekindle some old friendships and acquaintances, a few over four decades old. A true homecoming and another set of profound experiences. Our plans to return to Alaska are already taking form.
If you’d like to know more, here’s just a small selection of available resources you may find compelling:
https://www.facebook.com/AltUSNationalParkService/ Link to the ‘Alt National Park’ Facebook site. This organization’s standing up for the National Park Service where – because of the current administration – Park Service employees cannot.
http://www.parksconservancy.org Link to the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, our very local and very successful adjunct to the Golden Gate National Park. A consistent source of good news on the conservation (and restoration) front.
http://wilderness.org/ There are many, many great conservation-focused organizations out there and active, but here’s a link to the premier conservation organization focused primarily on wilderness preservation.
https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Lands/Places-to-Visit/Gray-Lodge-WA Link to the Gray Lodge State Wildlife Area. If you can’t get to arctic Alaska, get to Gray Lodge this winter — if you’re lucky, you might be fortunate enough to see or hear the Sandhill Cranes.
Note: The annotated photographs throughout this post and Part One comprise of a few digitized copies of 40+ year-old slides (so please, excuse the quality). Some of the best photographs were graciously ‘loaned’ to me by Kenny Bahr, a semi-professional photographer and one of the members of our Gates of the Arctic party. If you’re at all compelled to share any of these in any form, please refrain from sharing Kenny’s, as they represent a good portion of his livelihood (you can, of course, contact him to purchase: kennybahr@ofmlive.net).
Folly Lake, Brooks Range, Gates of the Arctic. Photo courtesy of Kenny Bahr
First Snow, looking north, Brooks Range, Gates of the Arctic. Photo courtesy of Kenny Bahr
Caribou bulls, Gates of the Arctic. Photo courtesy of Kenny Bahr
Caribou bulls on the run, Gates of the Arctic. Photo courtesy of Kenny Bahr
Caribou bulls, Gates of the Arctic. Photo courtesy of Kenny Bahr
Arctic tundra, Gates of the Arctic
Arctic light, Brooks Range, Gates of the Arctic
Base camp, Brooks Range, Gates of the Arctic
Heading out for the day, Brooks Range, Gates of the Arctic
Brooks Range, Gates of the Arctic
“Today, history represents neither an oppressive past that modernism tried to discard nor a retrograde mind-set against unbridled progress. Instead, at a time when there is too much information and not enough attention — when a general collective amnesia perpetuates a state of eternal presentness — understanding the channels through which history moves and is shaped by architecture is more important than ever.” –Chicago Biennial
Last fall I spent three days in Chicago, taking in the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Make New History was the theme and participants — 140 architects and artists from around the globe — contributed a range of exhibits, from dioramas to live performances, to explore how history can be invoked to inform new ideas and forms in architecture. The Biennial was held in the Chicago Cultural Center (a grand former library built in 1897 and host to the world’s largest Tiffany stained-glass dome), with associated events throughout the city, and it took place from September, 2017 through January, 2018.
“Vertical City,” 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial: Make New History
Of the many thought-provoking exibits, I was most taken with “Vertical City,” a contemporary take on the 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower Competition. With the charge by the Tribune’s publisher Colonel Robert R. McCormick to make “the most beautiful and distinctive office building in the world,” the original competition attracted entries from over 260 architects, including Walter Gropius, Adolf Loos, and Eliel Saarinen (who took second). The wildly contrasting ideas influenced generations of architects to come. Resurrected in 1980 by Stanley Tigerman under the guise of “Late Entries,” the Tribune Tower competition (it was actually an invited submittal for a publication) once again attracted some of architecture’s biggest thinkers — Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando, Bernard Tschumi, and Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.
If the 1922 competition made evident a pivot point in architecture toward modernism, and the “Late Entries,” of 1980 turned largely on postmodernist metaphor, fun and sarcasm, how might we understand the “Vertical City” of 2017?
The architects practicing today revealed delightfully varied ideas, represented as scaled models that reimagine the landmark tower. The Cultural Center’s Yates Hall, a large expanse of a room with floor to ceiling windows that pull the city into the space, was given over to the exhibition, fusing the experience with meta. Wandering amid the towers, I felt myself inside a diorama of alternative histories of a building and of a city in which I could, in real time, hear the taxis honking below and feel the glare of the sun moving across the glaze of adjacent buildings.
Of the 16 entries, I found myself sparked by the ones that directly addressed core drivers of the innovation economy: work / life integration, community, connection to the public realm, and non-hierarchy.
Big Bang Tower by Ensamble Studio (far right) and Biennial Project by Kéré Architecture (second from right)
Big Bang Tower: A Column of Columns for the Chicago Tribune by Ensamble Studio
Noting that “an office can be a cubicle and also an open co-working area, a cafe, a lounge, a lab, a multipurpose room, virtual substance in the cloud, a room in your house, and much more,” Ensamble Studio imagined “A Column of Columns” tied together with horizontal structures that vary their positions, heights and areas to frame the city and connect interior spaces. With cores pulled to the sides and located within the envelope (atypical in a traditional high rise) and the asymmetric columns resolving both vertical structure and infrastructure, the floor plates are open to receive a diverse and evolving program. The structure is one in which knowledge workers, who expect work / life integration, might just as easily take in a film as write a creative brief.
“In alignment with current trends, the design forecasts that people will value a balanced work and life ratio while retaining real and meaningful connections with each other and with the places that they live.” Inspired by the Tower of Babel metaphor of a community working together in shared aspiration, Kéré Architecture’s proposal anticipates a mix of housing, workplace, commerce, and recreation in one building. To free up the interior for a variety of amenities and opportunities to connect with community, the cores are pulled outward. Segmented blocks with central voids allow for more private functions, like housing, to be consolidated and located higher up, with more communal activities happening on the ground floor to support integration with the public realm. The proposal offers a microcosm of a neighborhood or a city, a one-stop live/work shop in a tower of the future.
“If the primary source of derivation for modern architecture is classicism, what would an architecture that is derived from a non-Western historical tradition be?” With its design inspired by ancient Chinese architecture’s central organizing concept of the pavilion, and with pavilions stacked vertically to form a pagoda, this proposal offers a structure freed from hierarchical organization, with spaces defined in relation to one another. “The spaces of this new vertical city are attuned to the nature of the knowledge economy and the contemporary media environment where performance dominates, flexibility sets value, and well-being is the ultimate cause. Pavilions frame theaters, meeting zones, restful landscapes, and hedonistic gardens: the true productive spaces for today’s media workers. This is architecture with a language not rooted in Western thought and with a history outside of the narratives of modernism.”
This was the model to which I returned, walking around it, staring into its corners, wanting to step inside and make myself at home.
Does the “Vertical City” — this third festival of ideas centered on iconic American skyscraper — offer a touchpoint, some indication of where urban architecture is going in response to changes in how we work to propel the innovation economy? If so, I’d take note of the Ensamble, Kéré, and Serie entries.
WRNS defines its work as being about beauty, sustainability, and the public realm. What do these concepts mean to you?
Daniel Johnson: In my opinion, architecture is useless without people, and for me, architecture that extends its experience to the public realm is probably one of the most exciting potential offerings of architecture. Buildings that are primarily private almost seem like giant rocks in a stream redirecting the flow of water, whereas publicly infused architecture is more akin to bridge, and I would prefer to build bridges versus dams. Metaphors aside, some of my favorite works of architecture have incredible public experiences – the modern entry plaza to the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid by Jean Nouvel had a profound impact on my understanding of the power of architecture and the public realm. Not only did the architecture create an interesting relationship to the historical building it was attached to but the way Nouvel created drama from the sky to the plaza was a magical experience that opened my eyes to how architecture not only shelters and defines space, but creates phenomenal connections between earth and sky. When you mix in a flowing stream of people into an experience like architectural value becomes truly evident.
Emily Jones: Beauty, to me, is a moment (usually fleeting) that is prompted by an experience of place. As an observer and a designer, I seek to both experience and create beauty; however, I have found that, in attempting to create beauty through architecture, it is essential to acknowledge and utilize the beauty found in nature. Therefore, for me, architectural beauty is a deliberate and skillful composition of natural elements of beauty translated through design that, when successful, evokes a visceral experience of place. Consequently, for me, beauty and sustainability are inextricably linked as sustainable design strives to preserve what, to me, is an essential element of beautiful design – nature.
Ben Mickus: While all buildings occupy a space necessarily, it is the interaction of a building with the surrounding space that transforms into place. This is what excites me about architecture: a building and the space around it fusing into something more than any of the constituent parts, and becoming a piece of the ever-changing public realm. While the public realm as an abstract concept is fluid, dynamic and buzzing with energy, it is architecture in the public realm that somehow channels that energy, allowing it to be experienced through the creation of views, moments, sequences, tactile interactions, and relations to context. We create a unique experience of a place.
What do you think makes a good leader?
Dan Sakai: I have a toddler who likes to lead me around. Her inclinations rarely coincide with the rest of the family’s, but she enjoys a song called Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes – you may know it – which provides a useful mnemonic for leadership in grown-up organizations.
Head: Clear thinking leads to insight and level headed decisions.
Shoulders: Sharing the load inspires and builds team cohesion.
Knees and toes: Dynamism requires nimble responses and flexibility to address changing markets and individual project and team needs.
The verse repeats and the children touch the different body parts as they sing along. Then there is a bridge including:
Eyes: Vision requires a long view and hawk-eyes for shortcomings and opportunities.
Ears and Mouth: A strong communicator is both articulate and a good listener.
Nose: Integrity is crucial; when something fails the smell test, action is taken.
I am not suggesting adults need to be able to touch their toes, but leadership touchstones are central to effective, inspirational organizations. Getting my daughter pointed in the right direction is another matter.
What drew you to WRNS when you first came? What made you want to stay?
Daniel Johnson: It sounds obvious, but the work is what drew me to WRNS. There was a clear point of view – architecture that was tuned to its context, composed thoughtfully, and used materials in ways that were modern and sophisticated. Additionally I was very impressed and intrigued by the fact that WRNS grew the practice through a terrible recession, and some great work came out of that period of time, which to me signaled that this was a company that knew how to run a successful business, a trait I was very interested in learning. What makes me stay is all of the above but with an added layer, the staff and leadership is incredible. I feel like I can be myself here, and I am surrounded by a bunch of really smart, creative, interesting and idiosyncratic people who have given so much to my professional and personal life. As much as they are my colleagues they are (for better or worse) becoming my family.
Lily Weeks: The work at WRNS is what drew me first. I wanted to be a part of the growing interior design practice in an architecture firm, after all, my education is in architecture and my experience in interior design – it was a great fit for me. What made me stay was the studio environment that I can only describe as a rigorous creative hive with some of the most talented people you will meet, what else could I ask for?
What are you excited about in architecture right now?
Hattie Stroud: The way in which social responsibility is becoming an important part of practice is really great. I’m a big fan of offices like MASS Design Group that really champion the ways design can be beautiful but also smart, sustainable, and supportive of its community. This isn’t about community process dictating a design – it’s about architecture that is responsive to its context.
Where do you see WRNS in the next five years? How do you want to see us grow?
Ben Mickus: As WRNS grows, the design profile of the firm–as defined by the caliber of projects we pursue–should grow with it. The diversity of projects in the office has been so strong since the inception of WRNS, and I hope it will continue to be a defining strength, as we deepen our experience across so many practice areas.
What are your inspirations outside of architecture?
Dan Sakai: Autonomous vehicles are super-exciting. As economies of scale incentivise ride-sharing over personal vehicle ownership, tremendous amounts of land currently used to store empty cars may become available in places we care about: along our streets, on the ground immediately surrounding many destinations, and in robust structures in high land-value areas. Extensive use of ride-shared autonomous vehicles may actually align incentives for congestion pricing, change commute patterns and public transit paradigms and radically shift development and planning patterns (for better or worse). There is a lot at stake for urban communities and the environment.
Lily Weeks: Art & fashion. Every morning I walk to work, 30 minutes downhill – I walk past the merchandise displays of Prada, Valentino, Dior & Britex Fabrics. These brief but constant glimpses of human centered design, textiles, and pattern play give me my first creative jump start to the day. In moments of creative daze I have taken a short respite to SFMOMA, just a few blocks from the office, to visit a favorite piece, wander a new exhibit or sit & reflect on a balcony.
Lightweight, Green, Efficient
Residing somewhere between stucco and French limestone there’s Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete (GFRC), a building material typically associated with suburban office parks, less with distinguished architectural design. Yet, working with GFRC on several projects in recent years has helped us innovate, using common panelized materials while still addressing issues of scale, texture, rhythm, and even transparency and solar exposure. Produced with far less concrete than cast-in-place, or even pre-cast panels, GFRC is lightweight, cost-effective, and green.
UCSF Mission Hall Global Health Sciences Building
This 266,000 square foot project was initially a design competition requiring an early team commitment of Architects, Engineering Consultants, Contractor and sub-contractors to collaborate from day one to evolve the highest value solution, which was then delivered as a Guaranteed Maximum Price offering to the client. Working together, our team adopted construction strategies and committed to particular forms, materials, and fabrication techniques, inventing the production process alongside the design. Thanks to the early involvement of the builders and manufacturers, technological exploration and innovation became integral to the design vision.
Wanting to avoid a static or gridlocked aesthetic, we adopted a shifting-panel strategy likened to industrial metal mesh. Mission Hall’s skin required a variety of aperture densities and relationships, but it couldn’t be too complex given budget constraints and the need to limit panel types. Given our overall budget goals, we knew we would need large, repeating panel shapes and that the lightness of GFRC would be the most practical way to get there.
Past experience at smaller scales had shown that a material as prosaic as GFRC could be transformed into a cost-effective yet poetic signature feature; however, we had not yet found a way to dematerialize its basic wall-like nature. At UCSF, we wanted to re-invent GFRC as a trabeated wall assembly (column and lintel), not as a masonry wall with punched openings. Our partners, Walters & Wolf, helped us achieve this with a window-box truss system incorporating metal spandrel panels, allowing us to imply a much more open mesh framework than a strictly budget-driven panel wall would have allowed.
Panelization requirements led to a long truss (32” x 30 ft), which accommodated all four curtain wall versions, and streamlined both fabrication and erection. Built off-site, these panels amounted to significant savings for the client. The solution creates interest along the facades while still allowing for flexible and myriad programmatic options within. Because the South and West sides of the building experience stronger sunlight, we tightened the apertures to reduce heat gain, while the North side opened up more to admit diffused light and provide views toward Downtown San Francisco.
How We Got There
Specific patterns, textures, and materials were sampled, developed, and tested in mock-up form to nurture and test our ideas both before and during the production process. Darker Precast Concrete at the building base level along with typical off-white GFRC wall material mockups are shown above.
GFRC pilasters were presented in smooth and wash-board-shadow, and the proportions of specific wall fragments and adjacent window voids were adjusted for solar exposure, spatial and technical reasons, as well as façade-making.
Well ahead of production, we were making careful studies of texture and scale, guided by practical input from the designated panel manufacturers, to confirm we had it right prior to mock-up and production. The resulting panels vary between smooth and wash-board texture to provide shadow, scale, and variability. The light color of the GRFC also provides a contrast to the darker concrete at the base level. The GRFC appears as though it is a framework floating above the darker glass and metal elements underneath, creating the building’s outer “mesh” expression.
Working within parameters of efficient glass size, pushing limits of texture and relief, we arrived at a highly animated open-weave expression, completely free of panelized punched-wall expression with a limited amount of actual panel variation. Compositionally, every effort was made to view simple things in complex ways, to produce more visual interest through proportion, offsets of panels, mirror-reversals local adjacencies, and interrelationship of basic elements. Our tools were limited, but by careful composition, the solution rejects the grid-locked and static pitfalls typical of GFRC panel walls.
Where We’re Coming From
A core tenet of our approach is to tease the poetry out of the practical: to find ways to make an office building (or even a parking garage) beautiful and simple; elegant and functional; practical yet fresh, while improving our everyday experiences. Even the most seemingly mundane materials can be reinterpreted and optimized to provide an articulate and coherent architectural expression. We see something like GFRC not so much as a “budget material” but as the lighter side of concrete.
“In architecture, with knowledge and content generated through many modes of production, there has always been a dichotomy between talking and drawing. Raul is one of the most beautiful drawers I’ve ever known, bringing the poetry that is at the center of an authentic architecture, the sensibility that is the DNA of our firm. I’ve personally loved our collaboration, of not many words but of many drawings.” – Bryan Shiles
We recently sat down with Raul to talk about life at WRNS.
You were one of WRNS Studio’s first employees, joining us in 2005. What brought you here?
I’d been working with Bryan Shiles and Sam Nunes for a few years at our former firm, and we had a symbiotic relationship, so joining them here felt like a natural step. Aesthetically we were speaking the same language, and that continued at WRNS, which immediately had a very real, authentic studio vibe. My good friend Brian Milman had come over too and I thought—I want to be working with these people.
When we started, we had a strong start-up culture. We had to hook up computers and printers ourselves. The plotter room had no lights so we used a flashlight to make sure the right drawing was plotting. There were eight to ten of us and we were always meeting as a studio, making meals together. We were super focused on just getting through the first year or two. Very rapidly we started growing, moving around from office to office. Every project was getting better than the previous one. In the blink of an eye, ten years went by.
WRNS has grown exponentially, jumping from 75 employees in 2015 to 150 projected by the end of 2016. How do we keep our soul?
Our studio’s hands-on vibe and focus on craft has everything to do with our people. We like to work with people who work hard but have fun. A couple of years ago, when we started hiring intensely, John Ruffo came up with the idea of creating a hiring committee. He picked four leaders with very different perspectives to invest in recruiting and hiring the right staff who fit into our studio culture and meet our high standards for talent. As a result we have a low turnover rate, and we’re surrounded by people we enjoy working with—architects, designers and creatives we admire and respect.
What are some of the biggest opportunities and challenges the studio faces right now?
Architecture has been diverted, necessarily I’m sure, by more complicated paradigms—programs are more complex, regulations are more strict, budgets have increasingly precise targets—and there’s no way around that, but as a design firm we take beauty as the overarching principle that adds significant value to the equation. Fortunately, our clients share this philosophy.
So the challenge comes with every new project in that we strive to make a better building—a more beautiful one—than what came before. What we’ve learned on past projects informs future ones. Of course, there’s great opportunity in trying to outperform ourselves.
How do you define beauty?
The concept of beauty is so subjective; what is pleasant to me might not be to you, and vice versa. And of course, the concept of beauty changes with time. But for me, beauty brings pleasure to the senses. While most often related to sight, beauty in architecture has a strong (and very personal) spatial dimension; we are conscious of our bodies in relationship to different scales or different environments, and we experience emotions while inhabiting or moving through these spaces.
Who or what were your early influences?
I think the first building that moved me was a country club on the outskirts of Mexico City by the Polish architect, Vladimir Kaspé, a refugee living in Mexico. I must have been ten years old and I walked into this outrageous lobby with a grand, circular stair inside a glass pavilion. That place struck me, and I’ve always remembered it. When I began practicing, I was quite taken by the work of Kalach, Broid, and Norten, who were challenging the strictures of critical regionalism and the “emotional architecture” that followed the works of Barragán. That was why I approached Enrique to ask if I could work for him. He didn’t have any positions open but I said, “just let me learn, don’t worry about paying me,” and that conversation turned into my first real studio job.
How has being from Mexico City informed your work?
Design is everywhere in Mexico—textiles, ceramics, paintings, even food. We see it, we breathe it. Design feels intrinsic to our culture, part of our DNA.Our culture is a blend of pre-colonial cultures, and the mix of baroque and Moorish influences of the Spanish conquerors. Therefore our arts are infused with mysticism, expressive forms and colors. As a counterpoint, I found with enormous interest an almost opposite aesthetic approach in the U.S., one that is more rational, structured, organized and pragmatic. So in my work I try to balance sensibility with rationale. My approach, as a designer, is that rationale frames the basis of design and then I let my emotions and feelings drive my hand.
How did you learn what being a designer meant?
Understanding processes, foreseeing problems and workload, organizing a team, managing client requests and budget issues—I think these are all things that can be learned through training or experience. But design per se…it may be something you come wired with and hone through discipline.
We say that form is the byproduct of thought, but there’s a certain magic that happens through one’s sensibilities. You might craft a great story and yet not make a beautiful object, and on the other side you make a great object with no underpinning thought at all, which can be problematic, so there’s this perfect balance that must be struck between rationale and feeling.
What are your inspirations outside of architecture?
I find a lot of interest in graphic design. I enjoy the proportion, balance and depth of two-dimensional compositions. I also learn a lot from object design—the different ways that things can be put together, the physics of materials, the elegance of forms, the mechanics of assemblies, etc. This is an old topic in architecture, but I also enjoy the correlation between music and architecture. Both represent spatial phenomena—volume, depth, rhythm, harmony—and music can elicit the same kind of emotions that catalyze an idea or result from appreciating a space in a certain way.
What is it you really want to do on projects?
I want to make sure that the project responds responsibly to its context, that it is well situated in its city or place, that it ties seamlessly with the local culture, and that it will age properly. When we look back to our designs in five or ten years and find the quintessential concepts are still there, and that people are enjoying what we made, then we can measure the impact of our design—and that’s the most rewarding achievement.
wil·der·ness noun /ˈwildərnəs/
(1) a tract or region uncultivated and uninhabited by human beings (2) an area essentially undisturbed by human activity together with its naturally developed life community
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I’ll be retiring as an active partner of WRNS at the end of this year and as I prepare for this change, I’ve been thinking more and more about wilderness (yup…that’s right, wilderness) – my history with it, what defines it, where it still exists, how much remains, and how our profession, so focused on building and transforming the environment, can serve to protect it. So, this feels like a good time to record – through personal experience and a couple of stories – some thoughts on the subject (accompanied by a few photos, of course).
If by reading this you get to thinking about wilderness, great. If by reading it you’re inspired to take more direct action, even better. The country needs a new conservation movement, and you are all more qualified than most to join it. At the least, I hope the following is informative and mildly entertaining…
I grew up in Downey, California – a blue-collar town smack in the middle of Los Angeles’ post-WW II sprawl, where I had little exposure to wilderness. As I got older, occasional trips to the Southern California desert and even more occasionally, trips to Yosemite, introduced me to the concept of “uncultivated regions.” Both the desert and Yosemite, at least those areas I was able to access, were fairly well-trodden and actively managed – not real wilderness by any current definition – but I tried my best to venture out to their edges whenever possible. While hiking, discovering places where there was little or no evidence of human habitation became a passion.
My interest in wilderness grew after entering Berkeley in the 70’s. It was a great time to study architecture, as the environmental movement was in full swing. Architects were re-discovering links between long-term ecological thinking (which evolved into sustainable design) and the act of conservation, and their work was beginning to reflect it (think ‘Sea Ranch’). Being at Berkeley, we were also assaulted by a new wave of dire predictions focused on the unsustainability of our modern civilization: unchecked population growth, pollution, nuclear proliferation, the squandering of natural resources, and the horrors of war (Vietnam in particular, which was finally just ending) all pointed to the end of our species and the planet as we knew it. As architecture students, we became convinced that employing the power of sustainable design and enacting sound environmental public policy could save the earth. It was heady times.
My architecture professors at Berkeley were inspiring, but didn’t come close to influencing me to the extent a couple other professors did. The first was Daniel Luten. A chemist turned environmentalist, he was one of our country’s foremost authorities on wilderness and the importance of its preservation. I remember him best for proposing half-jokingly, half-longingly, the creation of a National Migratory Buffalo Pathway – a 200-mile wide swath of land stretching from the Canadian border to the Texas panhandle — where the once-great American Bison herds could be reinstated and then left to migrate freely along their ancestral pathways. Wow. The second was Starker Leopold. Son of Aldo Leopold (author of The Sand County Almanac and one of the great voices of the American conservation movement), Starker Leopold was a professor of Forestry and Zoology, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a special advisor to the National Park Service. His class in wildlife biology, more than any class I’d ever taken, changed the course of my studies and to a large extent, my outlook on life.
I can trace this change to a class field trip. On a cold, overcast winter day, Professor Leopold led us on a trip into the Sacramento Valley and up to the Gray Lodge State Wildlife Refuge, about a two-hour drive northeast from San Francisco. A 9,100-acre reserve flanking the Sutter Buttes, Gray Lodge protects a riparian and wetlands ecosystem that once encompassed the entirety of California’s Central Valley and now serves as a critical stop for migratory birds travelling the Pacific Flyway. While growing up I’d seen an occasional v-shaped skein of migrating waterfowl fly through the Southern California skies, but never anything like I experienced at Gray Lodge. Imagine over a million migratory waterfowl (ducks, geese, swans) flying in and out of the refuge area in groups of all sizes, at every elevation, to and from every direction. It was chaotic and powerful. I was a bit overwhelmed, fumbling with my camera, trying to capture some images of meaning, when I heard the call of a flight of birds completely new and unfamiliar to me. Sandhill Cranes. A very old species with fossil records dating back over 10,000,000 years, the cranes were flying high over the refuge, well above the cacophony below. Listening to that ghostly call — a sound that hit me in my spine — connected me with the stretch of time and the concept of wilderness like nothing I’d ever experienced. Luckily, I was standing right next to Professor Leopold and quickly asked him where those birds were coming from. He looked at me and smiled, “The sandhills? Why, they’re flying south from their breeding grounds in the arctic…they’re coming from Alaska.”
Grey Lodge State Wildlife Refuge, Sacramento Valley
From then on I had one important goal in mind – to get to Alaska and to the greatest extent possible, experience what our country must have looked like before colonists obliterated it and more importantly, to see the wilderness those cranes had come from. I continued my studies in architecture, but modified my curriculum to earn a Minor in Wildlife Biology. I read every book on Alaska, the arctic, and the subject of wilderness I could find. I applied for a job as a National Park Service seasonal ‘Ranger/Naturalist’ in Mt. McKinley National Park (now “Denali National Park and Preserve”), got the job, accelerated my graduation so I wouldn’t miss any part of my first season in Denali, and in May 1974, I took off in my 1964 Ford Econoline Van (“The White Iron”) and headed north.
It was a 3,000 + mile trip, and a good portion of the drive took place on the mostly unpaved Alcan Highway. I quickly became immersed in the lore and history of Alaska and the Park, and worked hard to offer that knowledge to the visitors who’d travelled from so far away to visit it. Midway into the season, I was able to transfer to the Park’s concessioner as a Naturalist/Guide, helping me to earn a bit more money to support upcoming grad school. As well, the job was free of many of the political constraints that came with Federal employment: the small group of Naturalist/Guides had greater flexibility regarding what we could share with the Park’s visitors. We were all young, idealistic, committed, completely immune to differing points-of-view (that is, a little naive and self-righteous) and even as relative newcomers, we were fiercely protective of Alaska, its wilderness, and the Park that we were growing to love beyond all description.
View to terminus of Muldrow Glacier, Alaska Range, Denali National Park
I recall a couple of days during that first season as if they happened last week. 99% of the visitors to Denali experience the Park only from the seat of a bus (which from the Park’s perspective and its sustainability, is a blessing). The Park’s only road, with just the first 15 miles paved and the remainder gravel, stretches 90 miles from its entry at the state highway, past Wonder Lake to the end of the road at the Kantishna, once a gold-mining encampment but now home to a couple of notable wilderness lodges. The typical day trip is about eight hours, travelling sixty miles into the Park before turning around and heading back. As a Naturalist/Guide, it was my job to take a daily group of 40 visitors on these day long journeys, help them spot wildlife and points of interest, and enlighten them on the Park’s geology, natural history, cultural history, wildlife, biology, etc. The first of those two days was a disaster. My group had all travelled a long way and gotten up at 4:00 am for this journey but unfortunately, saw virtually nothing during the eight-hour trip but the rear end of a wet moose. I couldn’t help but feel responsible for their extreme disappointment. It rained all day, and low fog obscured even the lower peaks of the north expanse of the Alaska Range. They had no chance to see even a glimpse of Denali. As well, no grizzly bears, no caribou, no Dall sheep, no golden eagles, and not even a marmot or a pika.
True to form and the vagaries of weather and wilderness, the next day was unbelievably magnificent. Clear and relatively warm, we had a bonanza of wildlife sightings – numerous moose; over thirteen-hundred caribou (a good portion of the small ‘McKinley’ herd); eighteen individual grizzly bears including three sows, each with two yearling cubs; over fifty Dall sheep in several distinct groups; golden eagles and several species of hawks. We also glimpsed a Canadian lynx (a rare siting) and most fortunately, a grey wolf from afar (a very rare siting). As for Denali, the day was clear and cloudless from sunrise with its summit in alpen glow (from around eighty miles away), to the mountain in its entirety from thirty miles away later in the day (the mountain rises three miles from its base, and thirty miles from that base is its closest distance from the Park road).
At the end of this day and back at the Park entry, my very tired but appreciative, mostly elderly passengers disembarked, having had what I believe was one of the most memorable days of their lives. As most of them disembarked, rushing to secure their baggage and quickly get to the train depot for their six-hour ride to Anchorage, one woman came off the bus and took me aside. She told me her husband had recently passed and they had planned this once-in-a lifetime trip together. As difficult as it was for her, she still came in spite of his passing, hoping to honor his memory. She was absolutely sure that the rare nature of the day and the things she was able to see were the doings of her husband’s spirit, and that she felt him next to her the entire trip. I often still hear and feel her words.
Towards the end of each trip into the Park, I used to implore visitors – most of whom were only in the Park that one day in their entire lives – to remember what they had seen and to take those memories back home with them, seek the wilderness still existing in their own communities, and then work hard to protect and conserve it. If my message resonated with at least a couple visitors out of the 40 or so I’d guided through the Park on any given day, I’d consider it a success. Certainly that message resonated on that most memorable day.
Denali – tallest mountain in North America, Denali National Park
Note: The annotated photographs throughout this post and Part Two comprise of a few digitized copies of 40+ year-old slides (so please, excuse the quality). Some of the best photographs were graciously ‘loaned’ to me by Kenny Bahr, a semi-professional photographer and one of the members of our Gates of the Arctic party. If you’re at all compelled to share any of these in any form, please refrain from sharing Kenny’s, as they represent a good portion of his livelihood (you can, of course, contact him to purchase: kennybahr@ofmlive.net).
