Present Practice (Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Katherine Jenkins and Assistant Professor of Practice Parker Sutton) was featured in “Present Practice Takes a Sensory Approach to Landscape Design” in Metropolis Magazine.

In the case of Meadow Lines, an ecological restoration of a former industrial soybean field, Jenkins spent hours, in all seasons and weather conditions, meandering. The project covers a one-acre test site within Waterman Farm, Ohio State University’s laboratory for agronomy and environmental science. Jenkins and Sutton have worked to transform the site into a biodiverse prairie and pollinator meadow, and Jenkins’s walks, recorded via GPS, informed its design: Paths have been mowed, allowed to grow back, and then re-mowed in different shapes and configurations creating impressions of previous paths layered on one another in ways that allow the site to shift and evolve over time.

Given the site-specific nature of their work, resulting designs often interrogate and engage with Midwest agrarian landscapes. Sutton currently teaches a studio on Midwestern Aesthetics of Care that invites students to develop systems of maintenance to reduce carbon input, promote biodiversity, lower costs, and promote an alternative to the midwestern landscape aesthetic.

Read more at Metropolis Magazine