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