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Projects
EMF : MLK site Austin, Texas
Since 2004, this two-acre site has been our chance to practice what we preach (or simply practice what we practice). Bound by a neighborhood through-way and a busy arterial leading to Austin’s center of town, the property has a public urban face and downslope, nestled in a canopy of native trees, a private rural feel.
Our aims and prospects for inhabiting this “rurban” site converge with our ideas and interests in our profession. Here we are able to build, fabricate, and re-instill usefulness in older conditions. We can work over time, allowing new conditions, ideas, and interests to inform and alter the physical forms and systems we create. Thus, our “master plan” is continuously re-imagined and accrues more value as it goes through iterations over the years.
In seeking relevancy in a swiftly changing world, we see involvement in local solutions and strengthened community as an increasingly important part of the cure for what collectively ails us. With the decline of petroleum dominance, climate instability, and economic house-of-cards scenarios, we think ‘sustainability’ is now a matter of a solid return to basics: food and water security, energy availability, appropriate technologies (low and high), holistic design, and right living.
We use the EMF:MLK site to apply our design skills in addressing these concerns, exploring our efficacy as professionals, citizens, and community members. We invest energy in making a place of natural and cultivated beauty, a place that serves us and others, a place that might even grow to become a link in a chain of productive green spaces in the urban sphere that demonstrate new paradigms for survival.
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