BSLA Fieldbook BSLA 2015 Spring Fieldbook | Page 32

BSLA / MEMBER MATTHEW CUNNINGHAM, ASLA Y ANKEE INGENUITY I grew up in Bucksport, a rural blue-collar mill town along the coast of Maine, where the locals use common sense to solve even complex problems. Folks incorporate whatever materials and skills they have and make it work in an ever-changing environment. I have a great deal of respect for this way of life and have tried as much as possible to integrate these core values into the way I live and work. Many of the principles I’ve learned from my fellow Downeasters didn’t come from textbooks, but rather from lifetimes of hands-on experiences rooted in necessity and practicality. Whenever I return to Maine, I am completely inspired by many examples of simple Yankee ingenuity in the built environment. Landscape architects and designers can often over-think things resulting in complicated details that are too expensive to build. That’s not to say I don’t love nice things—to the contrary. I suppose I’m a solid hybrid between MacGyver and Martha Stewart, and I look for people with similar backgrounds and experiences to be part of my team. Almost all of the most memorable experiences I have encountered so far in my career are weather related. The summer of 2009 was an especially wet and windy one. At the time our project Le Petit Chalet in Southwest Harbor, Maine was in full construction, and I was driving between Boston and Acadia two to three times a week for site visits. I happened to be spending the night on site in early June when a tremendous storm passed throu