Little Goose Dam, current. Illustration by Stephen Ulman, courtesy WSU.
Little Goose Dam, a revision. Illustration by Stephen Ulman, courtesy WSU.
PULLMAN – Landscape architecture, design and education graduate students from WSU and the University of Idaho will present their visions for the Lower Snake River Basin Dec. 9-Jan. 31 at the Sage Baking Company, 1303 Main St., Lewiston. The opening reception will be 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 9.
Snake River reView showcases the design work of graduate students in the course “Cultural Interpretations of the Regional Landscape.” During the course, students studied the connections between people and place in the basin and the ways these connections are affected by and affect the Lower Snake River dams.
For their final projects, students created design visualizations that explore the future of the river. The designs were informed by the networked stories and ecologies of the regional landscape; they feature sites from Pasco, Wash., to Lewiston, Idaho.
“The students’ projects address and reveal the complex relationships among organisms, locale, the built environment, ideologies and time,” said Jolie Kaytes, the course instructor and associate professor of landscape architecture at WSU. “They employ design strategies that require us to broadly reflect on values, energy, edge, transport, recreation, farming, community, power, sustenance, soil, settlement and salmon.
“Ultimately, the students’ projects challenge us to re-examine how we see and understand the region – to continually review, in the multiple senses of that word, the Snake River Basin and what it means to be a citizen of this landscape,” she said.
Although the students are still working on their projects, some of the working titles are:
Placing the Rail Back in Road, Doug Stewart
Channel Change: Shifting the Dialogue on the Lower Snake, Francene Watson
Beyond Slackwater, Abby Anderson
State Park Gone Wild, John Buchko
Hungry Beaver Bites into Park’s Plans, John Buchko
Salmon Survival Secured!, Stephen Ulman
Plan to Breach Within Reach, Stephen Ulman
The Snake River: Back in the Flow, Stephen Ulman
Braided: Weaving Culture, Economy and Ecology in the Lower Snake River Basin, Chris Barnes
“This is the second year students are exhibiting work at the Sage Bakery. We put the show up at the Sage Baking Company because it’s downtown and is an informal setting where people gather and talk,” Kaytes said.
“And the Sage is in Lewiston, which sites at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers. Students and I hope that having the work in this setting will facilitate conversations and get people talking about the Lower Snake River Basin’s future,” she said.