Denaturing the Korean DMZ

Abstract

In this essay, I analyze representations of nature in the landscape architecture and architecture of the partially built Migratory Bird Village (MBV) project proposed near the Korean Demilitarized Zone. In an international context of conflicting political and economic agendas, this ecotourism project represents the particular contexts of local human and nonhuman populations. The project embeds within its design drawings, maps, and charts a grounded environmentalism responsive to local farmers, birds, and history. MBV demonstrates how landscape architects and architects can work with communities to value nature as a locally specific cultural and spatial condition. But, like other representation projects addressing biodiversity, this speculative project also demonstrates the perils of greenwashing. Despite the careful particularity of its ecological and social goals, the project replays an international greening style that portrays environmentally destructive development as natural. This formulaic eco-logic readily backfires by supporting associated territorial and capital growth more than the nature it represents. I draw on Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive analysis of nature’s cultural formulation to examine how the idealized representations of ecological design projects can act paradoxically to denature even as they naturalize environments.