Invoking the Wild

Abstract

Wild places remind us of the adaptability, resilience, and fragility of plants and humans alike. The urban environment is awash in plant life, often taking root in remnants of industrial infrastructure in poetic ways—along roadsides and chain-link fences, between cracks of pavement, and within vacant lots, rubble dumps, and highway medians. Future Green Studio’s investigations into spontaneous urban plants have aspired to engage people with their neighborhood environments—streets, walls, lots, and tree pits—through a series of walks, talks, citizen science participation, and the publication of a book, SUP: Weeds in NYC. This work continues to feed planting concepts behind many of the studio’s designed landscapes, which seek to capture the rugged vision of urban wilderness. Species for the studio’s projects are selected for their ability to tolerate the proposed habitats created on sites and are often drawn from local plant communities, such as oak barrens and shrublands; the plants and ecologies of project sites are a frequent source of inspiration. The studio does not see uncultivated plant growth as the specter of disinvestment, but as an asset to the performance, health, and well-being of its inhabitants, human or otherwise, which demonstrates the ability of the city to support the evolving ecologies of the future.