BSLA Fieldbook BSLA 2015 Spring Fieldbook | Page 24

BSLA

/ MEMBER

ASHLEY BRAQUET, ASSOCIATE ASLA
THIS IS MY NEW CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

A

s I write this in the dead of my first New
England winter, I find myself longing for the
endless flatlands covered in cane fields, and the
smell of those fields burning during sugar cane
season. As a Louisiana native, I have a different
understanding of seasons than most Bostonians—
i.e., sugar cane season, football season, crawfish
season, festival season, summer, and hurricane
season—and each of these creates a different
cultural landscape. Moving to Boston has given
me a more
traditional
understanding
of seasons, as
we’ve received
over six feet
of snow in the
last few weeks.
I love the snow
storms that
reshape the
micro-terrain of
snow drifts and
desire lines in
the city—this is
my new cultural
landscape. I
arrived in early summer, and there is definitely
something to be said for New England weather
and how each season drastically changes the land.
I am particularly interested in the larger systems
that affect our micro-terrains, such as sea level
change or climate shifts, which result in more
treacherous weather during all seasons, and
understanding how this affects the people who
interact with these landscapes. This interest arose
from growing up in a place where the balance
between man and nature is delicate, as many
people rely on both the fishing and oil industries
for their livelihoods. Any instability within that
system could cause another diaspora or perhaps
another economic crisis, as in the case of Hurricane
Katrina or the BP oil spill. When the physical

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landscape is affected, the human component
of disaster is often overlooked. After the oil
spill, I felt that I had to be able to do something
more to help protect the place I call home. There
were times when I wished I could just pack up
the entirety of South Louisiana and move it to
higher ground—I never said it out loud, but I
wanted desperately to find a way to preserve
that culture. Thinking that this was impossible,
I decided to focus on coastal resiliency and to
study landscape architecture.
While I was in graduate school, I realized
that the issues that face our generation are
great and wicked problems that may prove
impossible to solve. The projects were always at
massive scales and were geared to solve these
big problems, like overpopulation of cities in
developing countries or hurricane resiliency
for the Northeast region. While completing
thesis work on understanding the role of the
landscape architect in mitigating the effects
of climate change, I came across a course on
cultural landscapes. This was a breakthrough
moment for me, and I began to understand that
designing landscapes wasn’t enough—I needed
to be able to make a connection between design
and culture, which is something that I had not
thought possible before.
In my last semester, I took a course on
professional practice and was introduced to
someone who worked on cultural landscapes
within the National Park Service. I pulled this
amazing lady aside after class, and told her
quite literally, “I have to do what you do.” She
then invited me to a conference on Preserving
Coastal Heritage in New York a week later.
While there, I was allowed to collaborate on
a white paper that detailed the findings of
the conference, and I met my current boss,
who is the director of the Olmsted Center for
Landscape Preservation for the National Park
Service here in Boston. I essentially had an