Shelterbelt landscapes

There was a time when the government paid people to plant trees. In response to the Dust Bowl, FDR created the Prairie States Forestry (Shelterbelt) Project, 1935-1942, which used the CCC and WPA to plant windrows and forests. This was an attempt to plant 220 million trees on private lands across the great plains. The map below shows the scale of the efforts. 

Today's Common Lecture by Sara Karle looks back at the project and traces its current remnants.

Implementing the idea was not as easy as it might have seemed. The science behind the ideas evolved with the project, establishing the idea but gradually improving the understanding of what should be planted and where. Congress designated $1,000,000 annually for labor and the rest was handled through cooperative agreements.

Of the first 6 million trees, 4 million were cottonwoods because they were seen as fast growing. This was disaster relief and needed to be quick.

The impact today is a series of unusually wide corridors of mature trees growing across the plains. Check out Scott Drickey's amazing aerial photographs.

Kevin Roche's Pyramids

When I first saw Kevin Roche's Pyramids in Indianapolis, I was still a high school student and was excited simply to see something other than the same old same old. By college I began to write them off as gimmicky without knowing who had designed them or thinking seriously about what they were really like.

While I would like to think that I am generally more thoughtful about such these days, I am particularly influenced on this by having an office next to Kate John-Alder who has both written and lectured on Roche's work and his sophisticated explorations of nature from within modern architecture.  So when I had the chance to check them out this past weekend (but only from the outside), I was really struck by how different they seemed to me now.  These quite solid buildings sit on a rectilinear parcel that juts into a very constructed lake, facing other office buildings.  Nature doesn't seem much part of the picture.  And yet the relationship with the water and sky is impressive.  And the recent re-landscaping creates experiences that connect with nature a tiny bit, if you look past the drought conditions that make these photos seem less inviting.

While others have more complete and well considered photosets, here is my quick drive-by:

While Roche might have been able to control the site, these large iconic buildings are heavily embedded in a suburban sprawl context that has probably changed significantly since the Pyramids were built. With that in mind, I offer this last photo from a distance.