Wilderness training: in the field, students unearth the link between design and the environment

Residential Architect, July, 2002 by Lori Ryker

The Northern Rocky Mountains meet the plains in the middle of Montana, where I live and work. It is an inspiring place, where the Absaroka, Beartooth, and Crazy Mountain ranges form around the Yellowstone and Shield rivers. It is one of the few areas in the United States where the wildlife is truly wild. It is also a place that is undergoing development unmatched since the frontier expanded.

As picture-perfect mega-log cabins replace undeveloped landscapes, rivers are drained, and wildlife is pushed out of its home, I ask myself, as a teacher and practitioner of architecture: Am I attentive to and critical of this vastly changing environment? How can we reconcile our perceived needs while gaining a clearer understanding of our place in this world?

natural order

In the shadow of the Absaroka/Beartooth Wilderness, I teach a program at Montana State University called the Remote Studio. It focuses on helping architecture students come to a clearer understanding of their responsibility to the world around them--the world in which they will someday practice. The key to the program's structure is the students' firsthand experience of the world, referred to by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger as "dwelling."

Heidegger, writing in the 1950s at the height of the housing shortage in Germany, stated that simply building more houses does not attend to the primal condition of the human being. He believed that housing should not only provide shelter, but also make people aware of their connection to the rest of the world through the poetic expression of architecture. Dwelling, he wrote, was the mortal condition of being on Earth, through which we "cherish and protect" the planet and ourselves. Our attentiveness to this condition helps us understand that we are part of a larger whole.

The architect's gift is that of making places that situate us, that give grounding and meaningful context to our experience, thoughts, and actions. We have all been to places that help us recognize nature's continuity and beauty. Le Corbusier conveyed water's restorative qualities when designing the tiled recliner in the bathroom of Villa Savoye. The entry sequence in Mockbee/Coker's Barton residence reveals a considered sense of living that is intricately tied to the shift from day to night. The residences of Glenn Murcutt even articulate the presence of rain throughout the changing seasons.

disappearing act

Despite such contributions, I am concerned that these experiences are dwindling from the artifacts we make, and that their disappearance affects our understanding of our place in the world. Architects have a responsibility to weave together the experiences of the unbuilt with the built. How we design the fireplace, the bathing experience, and the cooking of food in relation to the natural elements of fire, water, light, and air can become the connector to the world around us rather than the mundane solution of pragmatic function.

Helping students come to an understanding of their creative responsibility is key to the Remote Studio's program of study. The program teaches that deep understanding and compassion come from the firsthand experiences we have, that loving the place in which you dwell is the most vital step toward taking responsibility for the place, for making holistically considered choices about the built environment.

The Remote Studio takes the place of a typical upper-level semester at Montana State University. The program is run entirely off campus in a rural and semi-wilderness locale. Classes and living spaces are located in cabins throughout Paradise Valley, in Park County, Mont. The program combines an integrated course work of wilderness living, ecological education, discussions of sustainable design methods, and reflection upon these issues through individual small projects and the group design and construction of a small-scale structure.

learn by doing

It is the intent of the program that reading and discussing the history and philosophical underpinnings of Western ecological ideologies be grounded in the students' experiences of the place. During the semester, students learn about how cultural, environmental, and geological influences affect the places in which they live, design, and build.

The knowledge they gain as they participate in the program helps bind them body and soul to the natural world. The aspiration of this binding experience is that as professionals, their architectural propositions will not only support humankind but also support the environment in which they live. To date, the design/build component of the Remote Studio has involved both public and private work. In the summer of 2001, my 10 students worked at the B-Bar Ranch in a valley not far from the border of Yellowstone National Park.

The ranch has a long history of introducing visitors to the Montana wilderness. The students' task was to design and build a wind shelter for the ranch's Belgian draft horses. The students were involved in all aspects of the design, engineering, and construction of the structure, including harvesting and milling lumber from the ranch and mixing fly-ash concrete for the footings.