f e l i p e   p a l a c i o s 
auburn university
master of landscape architecture
2014
A mis padres, Jorge y Fabiola
F L U X I T Y
F L U X I T Y
f l u x i t y  [ the in-between terrain ]
investigating change in Tallassee, Alabama
f e l i p e   p a l a c i o s 
auburn university
master of landscape architecture
2014
?Change is redefined as difference over time, and all form becomes relational, based on interval and 
change.? - Stan Allen
How can the concept of fluxity be used to inform a hybridized 
cultural/technological/ecological public space in Tallassee, Alabama? 
[ ] ABSTRACT
Linear, static, and monofunctional methods of design have historically 
resulted in landscapes of permanence, fixity, and immutability, even 
though they work within dynamic systems. This thesis emerges from 
the interest of things that move and things that appear to be still, 
and attempts to unfold their relationship. In other words, this thesis 
investigates the relationship between form and flow, permanence and 
impermanence, an in-between zone that is inhabited by a condition 
coined as fluxity, a hybrid of flux and fixity. Landscape is defined by 
process and change as a base-line condition. The concept of fluxity 
introduces a framework of rates or speeds of flux, which allows the 
differentiation of changes in condition, composition or substance 
at different temporal scales. For instance, succession of plant 
communities or the changing of seasons occurs at a much-higher rate 
contrasted to geological events like the collision of tectonic plates. 
Fluxity engages the dynamic conditions of the landscape, living 
material that changes over time. The reference to living material is 
not limited to plant matter, water, soil, biota, and other components 
typically understood as landscape, but includes media, information, 
knowledge, memories, and cultural phenomena. In this thesis, the 
town of Tallassee Alabama offers a collection of existing conditions 
to explore. Tallassee itself is a coagulation of fluctuating systems: 
as Tallassee?s story continues, as do the town?s changes.  Through a 
series of design-based investigations within this context, the adoption 
of fluxity provides a framework for a systematic response to gradual, 
cyclical, immediate or violent rates of flux where Tallassee Community 
Library is reconfigured into a landscape-based system and research 
station: a Landbrary. The result is a hybridized cultural, technological, 
and ecological field that promotes fresh configurations of elements 
emphasizing processes of formation, dynamics of information, and the 
poetics of becoming.
keywords: flux, fixity, change, dynamic systems
fluxity
 [ ] CONTENTS
[ 1 ] FLUX+FIXITY       ] 10
[ 2 ] TALLASSEE ALABAMA     ] 22
[ 3 ] INFRASTRUCTURAL OPERATIONS    ] 32
[ 4 ] PROCESSING FLUXITY     ] 60
 [ a ]  DATASCAPE      ] 70
 [ b ]  LANDBRARY      ] 86 
[ 5 ] CRITICAL APPRAISALS      ] 106 
 
[ 1 ]  F L U X + F I X I T Y
] 10
] 11
] 12
[ ] SCHTICK
< Latin fl uxus, participial adjective < fl u?re to fl ow. 
The world is in process of becoming, ever-changing, fl uctuating, 
inconstant, and variable. Change is the baseline condition in landscape 
systems. But, elements seem to be stable or permanent in situation, 
condition, or form. The claim is that they are just in a particular state of 
fl ux. From Einstein theory of relativity it is implied that ?[t]ime fl ows at 
diff erent rates depending on when and where it is measured. It is relative 
and contingent. Space-time becomes understood as a fi eld that cannot be 
reduced to component dimensions or conditions.?  (Barnett 2013)
What are the consequences of this conception for landscape architecture 
design?
] 13
The present thesis starts with the motivation of studying things that move and 
things that appear to be still. The fascination for form shifts for a deep appreciation 
of process, more attune with contemporary understandings of dynamic, systemic 
change. Here, the classical Newtonian concerns with stability, certainty, and order 
are challenged adopting change and uncertainty as the norm.  Landscape is a 
spatial-temporal field that encompasses environmental, social, political, economic, 
technological, informational flux. When design operations are deployed to address 
a given situation that is changing constantly, and the result is a frozen form in 
representation, and later on in reality, landscape architecture faces the ?enigma of 
design in a truly dynamic landscape? and the struggle of the landscape architect to 
navigate timescales, natural processes, and the inevitable uncertainty of the
physical world. It is noteworthy that Charles Waldheim agrees, as others argue, that 
urban form proposed by landscape urbanism has not yet fully formed.  Design is 
translated into defined physically bounded objects that generally are not responsive, 
adaptable or flexible to dynamic situations. In this case, flux is happening on one 
hand, and fixity on the other. The encounter between flow and form, permanence and 
impermanence, in different temporal scales is the focus of next investigations through 
design.
] 14
Figure [ 1 ] The ecology of urbanization: 
Flow diagram of external and internal processes of a city 
as an open system, by Howard T. Odum
Image retreived from Ecological Urbanism, p. 346
] 15
The changing of seasons is an example of cyclical change in the landscape. The 
seasonal variations in climate produce an periodic effect in plant and animal cycles. 
There is phenological research done by the LandscapePerformanceLab in Auburn 
University directed by David Hill that studies the relationship of the temporal 
dimension with its spatial implications. The interest here is ?how the structural, spatial, 
active and performative dimensions of landscapes can be formed through special 
attention to their phenological conditions.? (Barnett 2013) The project consists in 
observing carefully plant communities with their relational habits and operations. ?Hill 
considers that landscape designers too often imagine and present plants at one fixed 
moment in time.? The Phenology Project looks for design opportunities embedded in 
time and deploys the ephemeral qualities of plants to register the changing patterns 
and patterns of landscape systems. To accomplish that, the research investigates the 
textural and spatial qualities of a specific plant palette through a series of photographs 
taken from the same point of view at the same time each week through an entire year. 
The record of changes that plants experience and the countless ways these changes 
transform landscapes in which they are growing through of their relationships with 
light and shade, transparency, wind passage, color view, blooms, among others in 
terms of scale and spatiality.
This juxtaposition of photographs arranged by the LandscapePerformanceLab is a 
showcase of the research undertaken over the American Beech tree. The tremendous 
change in qualities are legible thanks to the generated contrast consequence of the 
adjacent arrangement of the pictures. 
] 16
Image courtesy of Prof. David Hill
] 17
] 18
?Recent ruins are emphatically sublime, terrific, and incomprehensible, but only 
time can provide the lens to appreciate their beauty.? (Bowring 2014) Even though, 
Bowring and Swaffield are talking about ruins caused by violent seismic events or 
human-induced disasters like war, Tallassee offers a collection of interesting  existing 
conditions to explore. The Tallasse Mills - Historical Confederate Armory - offers a 
temporal interlude in which its damaged structure loses its raw and painful appearance 
to be a tangible evidence of change. 
Geological time provides a conceptual measure for physical landscape, where the 
vastness of time becomes palpable through the presence of relics and ruins. Often 
compared to natural landscapes, particularly when weathered and invaded by 
vegetation, ruins are central to landscape architecture?s engagement with the past. 
Geological events, violent or imperceptible, ?radically recast temporal frames and 
demand profound rethinking of our place within the landscape. They highlight the 
vastness of geological time, the instantaneous nature of change, and amplify its 
recurrent unpredictability? (Bowring 2014). Recurrent but unpredictable natural events 
create distinctive and profoundly unsettling temporal regimes. Landscape theorists 
and practitioners are familiar  and accomplished at designing around and through 
predictable cyclic phenomena such as diurnal changes in light, temperature and 
activity, seasonal changes, lifecycles, ecological successions, etc.
] 19
The best way to create landscapes that are dynamic, flourishing, productive, suitably 
scaled and self-sustaining, according to Roel van Gerwen, is by utilizing the processes 
that form landscape. ?This counts for rural or natural circumstances but just as well for 
the urban environment, although the steering processes become more anthropological 
or democratic as the project becomes more urban.?  If cities are open systems it must 
be the case that urban processes, too, can be set in motion by means of a careful 
intervention and permitted to evolve in response to contextual change. 
For Henri Bergson the world is at once an aggregate of separate fragments and a 
materially indivisible whole. The substance of the world is not resolvable into pure or 
independent material forms. Rather, these latter shift and fluctuate in and out of formal 
arrangements. Bergson re-introduced the importance of the notion of becoming, 
the ancient philosophical conception of the world that had fallen out of favor after 
Newton published Principia Mathematica in 1687. In Creative Evolution published in 
1911, Bergson repudiates the mechanistic view of time. Understanding becoming, he 
argues, requires living in it, and therefore in time. Experience tells us we are immersed 
in becoming, in flux field. Movement is not constituted of successive immobile 
states, as Newtonian science would have it, but that ?the body is changing form at 
every moment; or rather, there is no form, since form is immobile and the reality is 
movement. What is real is the continual change of form.? The world is a moving field 
of vectors of differing qualities and intensities and that form is a ?mere cut made by 
thought in the universal becoming.? (Barnett 2013)
] 20
The concept of fluxity is introduced to investigate the relationship of 
these landscape fluctuating systems, and conditions that seem to be static 
and permanent. Fluxity attempts to unfold that relationship between 
permanence and impermanence, investigating the relationship between 
form and flow, an in-between zone that is inhabited by a condition coined 
as fluxity, a hybrid of flux and fixity. The interest for landscape architects is 
the connectivity that enables form and behavior to emerge from process, 
liable to fluctuation or change. 
 [ ] FLUXITY
] 21
] 22
[ 2 ]
 T A L L A S S E E 
     A L A B A M A 
] 23
[  ]
] 24
Tallassee?s story began 280 million years ago when the tectonic plates of the North 
American and African continents collided, creating the Appalachian Mountains and the 
?fall line? where they end and form the great waterfalls that defined the foundation of 
the town (Goss 2008). Tallassee offers a collection of existing conditions to explore. 
Beside the great falls at the Tallapoosa River, the town is an interesting terrain to talk 
about change. In the 1800?s, the legendary creek general Tecumseh paid a visit, and 
one of the first industrial-based Southern cities was founded and became a supply 
center for the Confederacy. The next century steered in prosperity, expansion, and 
electricity. During the modern age, the people of Tallassee also met challenges of 
floods and storms, and again acted as a supply center, this time for two World Wars. 
?In 2008, the people of Tallassee celebrated the centennial of the town incorporation. 
Tallassee?s story continues, as do the town?s changes.? (Goss 2008) 
] 25
] 26
Tallassee?s early days began with the Native American settlements Talisi and 
Tukabachi, both in the vicinity of modern Tallassee. In 1844, the antebellum mill 
complex was built on the west bank of the river, the second of its kind in Alabama. 
From 1864 to 1865, the mills and the Confederate armory made Tallassee a hub of the 
Confederate supply line. The old factory was transformed into a Confederate Armory, 
producing uniforms and cloth for tents. 
The Tallapoosa Rivers flows through Tallassee. The historic Tallassee Falls on the lower 
Tallapoosa River played a crucial role in Tallasse?s history and industrial development, 
contributing to its beauty and prosperity. On the other hand, it frequently flooded 
since it was not controlled by modern technology and became threat at flood stage. 
In the 1890?s, Tallassee Mills constructed the gristmill and dam on the west bank of the 
Tallapoosa. 
On 1919, the Tallapoosa River reached flood stage and demolished the upper Tallassee 
dam on the Montgomery Light and Power Company, and the Tallassee Mills dam, ad 
the 1896 iron trestle bridge. The railroad track of the Birmingham and Southeastern 
Railroad and Tallassee Mills weaving shed were heavily damaged. 
Until recently, Tallassee was a textile town. For 161 years, the Tallassee Mills operated 
in town producing cotton and woolen textiles. At one point, they were the largest 
textile mills in Alabama (Goss 2008) run by waterpower of the Tallapoosa. Downtown 
Tallassee was a hub of business activities in the 1920?s. One of the biggest changes in 
Tallassee came within this time with the construction of Thurlow Dam, built on top of 
Tallassee Mills dam. This mayor piece of engineering created Lake Talisi with a shoreline 
of six miles and an area of 574 acres. Today the power generated by the chain of 
Martin, Yates, Thurlow, and Harris dams, all on the Tallapoosa River, supplies electricity 
to Tallassee and the entire Southeast. 
] 27
1
5
0
0
1
7
0
0
1
6
0
0
1
8
0
0
1
9
0
0
2
0
0
0
T
alisi/T
uk
abahchi/Musc
ogee/
C
r
eek Indians se
t
tlemen
ts in 
the vicinit
y of modern 
T
allas
see
Spaniar
ds journe
y thr
ough 
Alabama under the leader
ship of 
De Sot
o
. T
alise
, T
allise
, T
alis
se 
appear s
ynon
ymously in the 
ac
c
oun
ts of De Sot
o?
s chr
onicler
s. 
Indian agen
t Benjamin 
Ha
wkins described the f
alls, 
the timber
ed hillside
, and 
riv
erbed r
ock: ?
suf_f_icien
t f
or 
the building of a lar
ge 
cit
y
?and the riv
er 
c
on
v
enien
t?
f
or mills on an 
e
x
t
ensiv
e scale
.
?
B
ar
en
t Dubois is the fir
s
t 
whit
e se
t
tler
, and f
ounder 
of T
allas
see
. Marries a C
r
eek 
w
oman named Milly R
eed 
and ac
quir
es apr
o
x 2,
000 
acr
es. 
In the 1880?
s, the T
allapoosa 
Riv
er a
t T
allas
se w
as not y
e
t 
c
on
tr
olled b
y modern 
t
echnology so fr
equen
tly 
flooded. Phot
ogr
aphs sho
w 
the riv
er
?
s na
tur
al flo
w
Do
wn
t
o
wn e
xpands t
o bec
ome a thriving 
busines
s c
en
t
er
. Mills under
go 
r
eor
ganiza
tion and e
xpansion: T
allas
see 
F
alls Manuf
ac
turing C
ompan
y
.
T
e
x
tile Mill No
.
2 built fr
om 
blue-gr
a
y gr
anit
e of the 
T
allapoosa riv
erbed. Lar
ges
t 
t
e
x
tile plan
t in the w
orld 
made of s
t
one 1982 
T
he municipalit
y of C
arrville 
is anne
x
ed t
o Eas
t T
allas
se 
C
on
f
orming the Cit
y of 
T
allas
see
1940 
Fitzpa
trick bridge dedica
t
ed
2008
C
en
t
ennial of the t
o
wn 
inc
orpor
a
tion
18
96
Ir
on tr
es
tle bridge acr
os
s 
T
allapoosa Riv
er c
omple
t
ed 
b
y T
allas
see Mills t
o 
c
onnec
t eas
t and w
es
t 
T
allas
se 
19
30 
T
hurlo
w Dam is c
omple
t
ed 
cr
ea
ting Lak
e T
alisi with a 
shor
eline of 6 miles and 5
7
4 
acr
es in ar
ea. 
T
hurlo
w Dam bec
omes part 
of the po
w
er ne
t
w
ork 
gener
a
t
ed b
y the chain of 
Martin, Y
a
t
es, T
hurlo
w
, and 
Harris dams ins
talled along 
the T
allapoosa Riv
er
. Supply 
f
or elec
tricit
y t
o the en
tir
e 
Southeas
t. 
19
28
T
hurlo
w Dam begins 
c
ons
truc
tion.
W
oodall Hot
el is built. 
(Hot
el T
alisi)
1919 Flood o
v
er
c
omes t
o
wn. 
W
a
t
er f
acilities f
or the mills 
and T
allas
see w
er
e 
damaged. T
he dam and 
18
96 bridge ar
e des
tr
o
y
ed, 
as the r
ailr
oad tr
acks of the 
Birmingham and Southeas
t
ern r
ailr
oad 
T
allas
see Mills es
tablished 
b
y T
homas B
arne
t
t on 
Dubois land. Sec
ond t
e
x
tile 
mills built in Alabama
186
1-6
5
T
allas
see Mills supply with the 
C
on
f
eder
ac
y with cloth f
or 
unif
orms, c
ots and t
en
ts, as 
w
ell as carbines and 
ammunitions. T
allas
see w
as 
ne
v
er a
t
tack
ed during the w
ar
Indian R
emo
v
al T
r
ea
t
y signed
Indian R
emo
v
al T
r
ea
t
y 
 ?
T
allas
see T
o
wn? es
tablished
T
alisi s
t
ood a
t the mouth of 
Euphaubee C
r
eek wher
e it 
mee
ts the T
allapoosa Riv
er
1
5
0
0
1
7
0
0
1
6
0
0
1
8
0
0
1
9
0
0
2
0
0
0
T
alisi/T
uk
abahchi/Musc
ogee/
C
r
eek Indians se
t
tlemen
ts in 
the vicinit
y of modern 
T
allas
see
Spaniar
ds journe
y thr
ough 
Alabama under the leader
ship of 
De Sot
o
. T
alise
, T
allise
, T
alis
se 
appear s
ynon
ymously in the 
ac
c
oun
ts of De Sot
o?
s chr
onicler
s. 
Indian agen
t Benjamin 
Ha
wkins described the f
alls, 
the timber
ed hillside
, and 
riv
erbed r
ock: ?
suf_f_icien
t f
or 
the building of a lar
ge 
cit
y
?and the riv
er 
c
on
v
enien
t?
f
or mills on an 
e
x
t
ensiv
e scale
.
?
B
ar
en
t Dubois is the fir
s
t 
whit
e se
t
tler
, and f
ounder 
of T
allas
see
. Marries a C
r
eek 
w
oman named Milly R
eed 
and ac
quir
es apr
o
x 2,
000 
acr
es. 
In the 1880?
s, the T
allapoosa 
Riv
er a
t T
allas
se w
as not y
e
t 
c
on
tr
olled b
y modern 
t
echnology so fr
equen
tly 
flooded. Phot
ogr
aphs sho
w 
the riv
er
?
s na
tur
al flo
w
Do
wn
t
o
wn e
xpands t
o bec
ome a thriving 
busines
s c
en
t
er
. Mills under
go 
r
eor
ganiza
tion and e
xpansion: T
allas
see 
F
alls Manuf
ac
turing C
ompan
y
.
T
e
x
tile Mill No
.
2 built fr
om 
blue-gr
a
y gr
anit
e of the 
T
allapoosa riv
erbed. Lar
ges
t 
t
e
x
tile plan
t in the w
orld 
made of s
t
one 1982 
T
he municipalit
y of C
arrville 
is anne
x
ed t
o Eas
t T
allas
se 
C
on
f
orming the Cit
y of 
T
allas
see
1940 
Fitzpa
trick bridge dedica
t
ed
2008
C
en
t
ennial of the t
o
wn 
inc
orpor
a
tion
18
96
Ir
on tr
es
tle bridge acr
os
s 
T
allapoosa Riv
er c
omple
t
ed 
b
y T
allas
see Mills t
o 
c
onnec
t eas
t and w
es
t 
T
allas
se 
19
30 
T
hurlo
w Dam is c
omple
t
ed 
cr
ea
ting Lak
e T
alisi with a 
shor
eline of 6 miles and 5
7
4 
acr
es in ar
ea. 
T
hurlo
w Dam bec
omes part 
of the po
w
er ne
t
w
ork 
gener
a
t
ed b
y the chain of 
Martin, Y
a
t
es, T
hurlo
w
, and 
Harris dams ins
talled along 
the T
allapoosa Riv
er
. Supply 
f
or elec
tricit
y t
o the en
tir
e 
Southeas
t. 
19
28
T
hurlo
w Dam begins 
c
ons
truc
tion.
W
oodall Hot
el is built. 
(Hot
el T
alisi)
1919 Flood o
v
er
c
omes t
o
wn. 
W
a
t
er f
acilities f
or the mills 
and T
allas
see w
er
e 
damaged. T
he dam and 
18
96 bridge ar
e des
tr
o
y
ed, 
as the r
ailr
oad tr
acks of the 
Birmingham and Southeas
t
ern r
ailr
oad 
T
allas
see Mills es
tablished 
b
y T
homas B
arne
t
t on 
Dubois land. Sec
ond t
e
x
tile 
mills built in Alabama
186
1-6
5
T
allas
see Mills supply with the 
C
on
f
eder
ac
y with cloth f
or 
unif
orms, c
ots and t
en
ts, as 
w
ell as carbines and 
ammunitions. T
allas
see w
as 
ne
v
er a
t
tack
ed during the w
ar
Indian R
emo
v
al T
r
ea
t
y signed
Indian R
emo
v
al T
r
ea
t
y 
 ?
T
allas
see T
o
wn? es
tablished
T
alisi s
t
ood a
t the mouth of 
Euphaubee C
r
eek wher
e it 
mee
ts the T
allapoosa Riv
er
A series of mapping analysis explored the existing conditions 
to recognize vegetation patterns, development patterns, use of 
land, networks, topography and slope, flood susceptible areas, 
recreation areas, road patterns, accessibility and social nodes. 
Several pressure points were identified as possible grounds 
to test a dynamic design that engages the timescales, natural 
processes and the inevitable uncertainty of the physical world. 
The aim is to develop a contemporary design reconfigured as a 
process that progressively transforms a critical urban landscape 
along multiple ecological dimensions.
] 30
[  ] 
[  ] 
] 31
[ 3 ]         
 INFRASTRUCTURAL     
    OPERATIONS
] 32
] 33
17 hectareas of land over a distance of 2.7 km along the River Neckar near 
Ludwigsburg have been converted to create new habitats, including a bypass 
channel and floodplain biotopes with different flow rates. 
Design: Landschaftsarchitekurburo Geitz & Partner Gbr, Stuttgsrt retreived from Time Scales 
Contemporary German Landscape Architecture p.11. 
] 34
In the past decades, landscape architecture has reclaimed its historical endeavor 
not only towards de city, but also on how the city works. Centered on the discussion 
about urbanism, the emergence of infrastructure is a central concept within the larger 
conversation on technological systems that support urban life. It is interesting to note 
how infrastructure remains invisible to most people until the moment they fail or stop 
working since they are often found underground, or on the periphery.  In embracing 
infrastructure, the aim is to extend landscape agency to look not just at the pieces 
and parts of the city, but value often-overlooked infrastructural systems to make them 
present and legible, sparking a perception of infrastructural crisis and finally getting 
some overdue attention.
An important and serious debate is held between proponents and opponents of ?hard? 
engineered defenses are ongoing, representing a kind of proxy war between traditional 
engineering approaches and an emerging alliance of advocates for more flexible and 
responsive, though mostly still untested, ?soft? systems (Carlson 2013). 
In an attempt to reexamine the essential processes that support a city/region, or in this 
particular case a small town like Tallassee, the attention is turned to the less visible, 
but indispensable systems that underlie urban fabric. In order to expand the scale 
and scope of the project, infrastructure has the potential to serve as fertile conceptual 
territory to investigate different performative systems that allow flux-generated form 
design of entire systems and their operations. How do you engage different degrees of 
flux in a design intervention at a piece of infrastructure?
] 35
Gwanggyo Pier Lakeside Park in South Korea competition entry.
Design: Stan Allen Architects. 
] 36
Stan Allen argues that the traditional role of landscape in the city needs to be re-conceived. 
He is talking from an architectural vantage point, attempting to revisit the intersection of 
urbanism, territory and architecture into infrastructure (Allen 2011). His entire argument can 
be debated, but infrastructure certainly has programmatic potentials, new relationships to site, 
and new technical challenges. It is not only an issue of scale. ?Infrastructure requires design 
specificity at the same time as they activate an open field of programmatic possibilities? 
(Allen 2011). Allen acknowledges the new attention to landscape infrastructure, but claims the 
reassertion of architectural expertise in the design of large-scale systems and structures. 
The images are part of a competition proposal for the Gwanggyo Pier Lakeside Park in South 
Korea. Two important reservoirs are the most important landmarks on site, where massive 
development is threatening to marginalize open space and fragment fragile ecologies. The 
proposal is a ?pier? infrastructure that bridges land and water alongside a ?field? strategy of 
landscape restoration. 
While the project claims to integrate the ?field? and the ?pier?, they seem separate and 
unresponsive between each other. The problem revolves around the iconic image wanted for 
the new ?park? that results in a megaform superimposed over the landscape. The intervention 
is not adaptive to its surroundings, nor enables form and behavior to emerge from processes 
already going on in situ. It is interesting about the strategy is the consolidation of active uses 
in a single strip. In this way, the remainder of the site keeps protected for quiet recreation. The 
strip is densely programmed to activate the site with movement and multiple uses. The field 
needs to be ?irrigated with potential?, as Koolhaas puts it. 
In terms of flux and fixity, the proposal is projected as an active biological engaging directly 
water flows and filtration mechanisms to return clean-water to the ecosystem. But the main 
intervention in structured-based, form-imposed and static over fluctuating systems like the 
reservoirs and their adjacent territory.  The ?pier? and the restoration ?field? are not integrated 
as Allen affirms. The pervading idea of hegemony of engineering and architecture over 
the landscape is evident in the submittal.  It is not a landscape infrastructure strategy, even 
though it minimizes environmental impact, generates energy seeking to be self-sufficient 
over time. The renderings show an iconic structure (architectural) that meet sustainable and 
programmatic goals. 
 
Conceptually and practically, a landscape-based infrastructural strategy unearths potentials 
from existing conditions. The resulting form adopted engages processes with an adaptive 
approach to fluctuation (ecological, social, economical). The systemic ability to respond to 
degrees of flux, gradual or cyclical, strengthens the system towards flexibility and resilience. 
] 37
[  ] 
] 38
Tallassee has a long history defined by infrastructure, which has structured the 
town over the years. The relationship with the river is crucial, where the first mill 
infrastructure sparkled the first settlements and farther development. But particularly, 
Thurlow Dam is the evidence of a major engineering manipulation that defined the 
future of the town. 
At the Tallapoosa River bank, the existing sewage disposal ponds were identified as 
static and monofunctional; a method of engineering that does not allow mutability or 
adaptation to different scenarios. Infrastructure here becomes a civic project, worthy 
of design consideration as the traditional urban fabric and territory that it supports. 
Deploying an ecological approach at the sewage disposal ponds infrastructural system, 
a design intervention challenges the current state it performs. 
Tallassee Sewage Disposal Ponds are located relatively close to Tallassee?s Industrial 
Park and the border of the Tallapoosa River, just off the 100-year event flood buffer.  
This area is subject to flash flooding where water level may rise 20 ft. 
The two ponds that constitute the water treatment system are in the town?s periphery, 
and usually overlooked. Their monofunctional performance was questioned and 
the re-conceptualization of this piece of infrastructure was considered necessary. 
The practical applications of theoretical constructs for an adaptive and flexible 
infrastructure were investigated through a series of drawings and hybrid models. 
] 39
INDUSTRIAL PARK 
EXISTING 
 CONDITIONS [ ]
] 40
sewage pond
area subject to flash flooding 
[ 20 ft  water rise ]
TALLAPOO
SA RIVER
deep revine and creek
fence blocks passage 
trough cleared area 
dense vegetation
dense vegetation
aeration
sewage pond
flood control 
] 41
?Landscape is defined by human intervention, created 
through the interactions of humans and a given environment. 
If we understand landscape to be the result of modification 
or utilization, and facilitation of program is the intent of 
modification, landscape becomes infrastructural whenever it is 
created.? 
- Dane Carlson
] 42
Design Process [ ] 
The model served to investigate the relationship of 
the wastewater treatment facility, the river, Lewis 
Creek, and the Industrial Park. It was clear from the 
beginning that the new waterscape is a distributed 
system of wetlands that use plant material to 
filter wastewater, engaged flash flooding from 
the Tallapoosa, and returned clean water to the 
ecosystem at the confluence with Lewis Creek at 
north of the site. Fresh configurations of ponds are 
introduced gradually to replace the existing ones. 
But this wetland system is different. Topographical 
and hydrological operations were undertaken to 
excavate, displace and deposit the excavated, 
install, and inundate again. 
] 43
The role of the plants
[ ] Pre-treatment eliminates the largest elements, including 
screening, grit removal and oil removal. 
[ ] Primary treatment lagoons separates the suspended solids 
through  activated sludge operations.
[ ] Secondary treatment ponds eliminiate carbon pollution 
(organic matter) dissolved by bacteria that consume oxygen. 
Oxygen must be supplied by filtering beds that resemble natural 
phenomena.
[ ] Tertiary treatment eliminates nitrogen and phosphorus through 
lagooning obtaining healthy water (free of germs and parasites). 
Planted filters offer the advantage of reducing and transforming 
sludge into water, carbon dioxide and nutrients. Sludge produced 
is re-used on site to rearrange the disposition of the ponds. 
The vision for the project imagined a the wetland system as a 
sculptural expression of water movement across the landscape, 
where landforms of positive and negative relief orchestrate water 
flow from high point to low point. 
The organization of the ponds responds to the needs of stages 
of filtration and wastewater flow, pollution levels, and sediment 
accumulation. A second area responds to water levels of the river 
and responds to stormwater events and flash flooding mitigation 
when Thurlow Dam releases water from Lake Talisi. A third zone 
engages Lewis Creek as the final stage of water filtration before 
going into the creek, and flood mitigation as well. 
[   ] 
[   ] 
[   ] 
[   ]
 
[     ]
 
[    ]
 
] 44
VERTICAL FLOW SYSTEM [ ]
?Planted filters? system uses several basins, fed by alternately 
by rotation. This alternation facilitates improved oxygenation 
of the filtering bed composed of gravel and/ or sand and adapt 
to different pollution levels. The water flows freely under the 
effect of natural gravity between different basins, for which 
slope is projected through topographical operations.  The subsoil 
is permeable so the treated water can infiltrate directly in the 
water table. The capacity for accepting fluctuating quantities of 
suspended solids makes this technique particularly interesting for 
treatment of domestic effluents and for the treatment of sludge. 
(Izembart 2003) 
] 45
] 46
TOPOGRAHICAL STUDIES [ ]
The hybrid model/drawing explored fresh configurations of form 
and flow, portraying the idea of mutability in different scenarios. 
In attempt to represent the wetlands ability to associate or work 
independently, the graphite strokes try reveal these processes at 
work. Some areas have more accumulation of water, sediment, 
or vegetation than others, but they are changing constantly. The 
speculative drawing is intentionally in process, with an unfinished 
feeling engaging depth and indeterminacy for this very reason.
] 47
] 48
In this way, the designed system exemplifi es a condition that 
inhabits the concept of fl uxity, an in-between terrain that is 
constantly changing due to the close relation to ecological 
processes, where it acquires a certain form according their 
functional needs. The emphasis here shifts from object 
appearances to processes of formation, dynamics of occupancy, 
and the poetics of becoming. (Barnett 2013) 
] 49
] 50
The result is a living field that performs filtrating water and 
processing organic matter from sewage disposal using different 
plant communities. The wetlands have the ability to associate 
or work independently, portraying the idea of mutability in 
different scenarios. The system contracts or expands depending 
on fluctuations of water levels, flash flooding events and pollution 
levels. 
FLUXITY MODEL [ ] 
] 51
] 52
10 YEAR SCENARIO [ ]
New recreational and programmatic potentials appear 
through time. The bounded condition is transgressed 
and a new living field encompasses the Industrial Park, 
Lewis Creek and the Tallapoosa River. The expansion 
of lagoon infrastructure to Industrial Park and floating 
wetlands into the Tallapoosa River allows the treatment 
of industrial wastewater.
] 53
The Filter Park emphasizes a logistical concern for a revelatory 
objective, designing to unearth processes that undergird modern 
life, that generate the social conditions for its making, now 
accessible to inhabitants of Tallassee, especially to people that 
work at the Industrial Park.  The strategy allowed to explore 
accessibility in a second design phase. At the Filter Park, new 
public space amenities emerged from the processes at work 
on site, and revealed those processes to people. Different plant 
species are brought in according the different stages of filtration 
(primary, secondary, and tertiary), which attract wildlife associate 
with these ecosystems. 
] 54
] 55
FLOOD STAGE [ ]
] 56
Strategic reuse of sludge generated on site permits 
to re-sculpt the ponds as an strategy of adaptable 
form-making.  The proposal is a strategy specific to 
site and program rather than designs that are product 
of formal, aestheticized visions. The processes of 
formation served as a creative end to show a dynamic 
lving and breathing system of infrastructure.  
] 57
With these first design explorations, the idea of the seasonality of 
infrastructures suggested that a sewage treatment system has an autumn, 
is quite accurate, but not entirely intuitive, perhaps because of the tendency 
to read infrastructures, like other artifices, as not-nature. Wetlands are 
infrastructure. ?Recognizing that infrastructures have seasonal and 
daily rhythms to them might be a useful clue not only to their utilitarian 
management, but also to the development of an infrastructural aesthetics 
(and, related, to understanding the infrastructural vernacular)? .  The 
reconceptualization of the existing sewage disposal ponds reveals the 
subsurface presence of infrastructures, linking humans to infrastructural 
processes and flows through responsive efforts with ecologies. More 
importantly, however, is the ability of infrastructure to offer a framework 
for asking larger questions about competing visions of urban structure 
and performance: about the relationship of a designed intervention to its 
surrounding biophysical flows; about the connection between a system, its 
context and constituents; about the role of social and economic forces in 
shaping urban life. 
The design for the new sewage ponds investigated the relation of form and 
flow, in a way where form is based in natural processes. The elements engaged 
?materiality of soil, plants, and water? are dynamic, ephemeral, and to a certain 
degree, indeterminate. The understanding and response to landscape change 
here is a dialogue with an evolving and emergent choreographed design 
of a filter systems framed in an environmental conversation. The ecological 
approach reorients the design goals from program to performance. Also, 
presupposed a relatively predictable temporal frame, which provided an 
opportunity to explore daily and seasonal rhythms that impacted the physical 
and aesthetic result of proposal. It highlights the instantaneous nature of 
Gwanggyo Pier Lakeside Park in South Korea competition entry.
Design: Stan Allen Architects. 
] 58
Some issues were encountered with these design iterations. Engagement with 
cultural contexts was superficial, and relied heavily on biophysical processes 
through and around diurnal changes in water flow, seasonal changes, lifecycles 
and ecological successions. Intangible material like social and cultural 
phenomena are much challenging to grasp as vital part of place making, and 
were not explored deeply within this ecological approach to infrastructure. 
The ephemerality of these materials requires innovative approaches to 
landscape intervention and provide a framework to accommodate unfamiliar 
elements in the conversation about the constantly morphing nature of the 
landscape, the town of Tallassee understood as a landscape. In order to design 
a truly dynamic/hybridized cultural, ecological, and technological public space  
is precisely necessary to initiate strategic explorations, and enable design 
to better adapt to the revealed dynamics of landscape and the poetics of 
becoming morphing space. ?Landscape is not purely a temporal or biophysical 
phenomenon; culture is an integral component in the formation of both 
landscape and the infrastructural systems which transverse it, many of which 
are unique to place and people (Carlson 2013).? The next design investigations 
will try to engage these different critical components.
] 59
[ 4 ]
 PROCESSING
   FLUXITY
] 60
] 61
WHY LIBRARIES [ ? ]
?Globalization of technologies, societies and economies 
is transforming the world along diverse and unforeseen 
pathways, and landscape architecture is challenged 
by the need to both respect the past and confront the 
certainty of an uncertain future? (Bowring 2014). 
?If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.? [ Cicero ]
] 62
The reference to living material is not limited to plant matter, water, soil, biota, and 
other components understood typically as landscape, but includes media, information, 
knowledge, memories, and cultural phenomena. The library is a finite entity that 
gathers these aspects, and intrinsically plays a varied and dynamic nature in the 
community they serve. While their core mission remains information, literacy, and 
public education, libraries can also serve as a valued asset as catalyst for cultural 
potentials. 
Libraries also reach large numbers of young people when they are not in school, 
especially in after-school and summer programs. They are an important asset in 
community efforts that involves public education, communications, and  social 
interaction. The potential to explore the library as a dynamic condition is tremendous, 
a generally overlooked. Tallassee Community Library provides community-based 
facilities, with knowledgeable staff, typically open in evenings and on weekends, 
generating thousands of visits each year. In 2009, 169 million people in the United 
States visited a public library to find work, apply for college, secure government 
benefits, learn about critical medical treatments, and enjoy free access to the Internet. 
A recent study revealed that approximately 40% of library patrons use library 
computers for career and education needs. 
Fluxity serves as a framework to engage these changing and moving informational 
systems, and translate it into the landscape. Technology has impacted deeply the 
functioning of contemporary libraries, particularly with the extensive use of the 
Internet, tablets and e-books. Nowadays, the World Wide Web and the Internet 
offers a continuum, a constant flow of information, both produced and shared in 
real time. That flux of information is acknowledged in the design of a datascape that 
reformulates the interaction of people and contemporary systems of information. 
World Connection Density, Chris Harrison, 
http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Visualizations/
InternetMap
] 63
water treatment 
facility
tallassee mills 1
historical confederate armory
tallassee 
mills 2
] 64
tallassee 
mills 2
city hall
veterans park
veterans memorial
first baptist 
church
tallassee 
community library
[  ] 
] 65
The library offers a framework to explore the shifting nature of culture, and its manifestations within the 
context of a small town of Alabama. Culture formation is in fluxity, while relentless change is happening, 
it is not necessarily evident to our human eye. Even though the library performs as a dynamic entity 
within the social and cultural life of the town of Tallassee, the same dynamism is not reflected in the 
grounds of the institution. The building itself has suffered several changes in use and structure. The 
Tallassee Community Library first opened in 1921 in the sunroom of the Scout Club House. The first 
librarian was the minister of the East Tallassee Methodist Church, the Rev. W. E. Bryant and the library 
had fewer than 2,000 books. A new wing was added in March of 1978, housing a local museum. The 
room was remodeled in 1988 and the Mildred Weedon Blount Reading and Reference Room formally 
opened in November 1989. ( Tallassee Community Library website) 
In March of 1978, Tallassee Mills donated the library to the City of Tallassee and the facility became 
a public library, no longer owned by the Corporation. Before donating it, a new wing was added on 
the south end of the building. This wing housed a local museum for several years. In 1988, plans were 
initiated to turn the museum wing into a reading and reference room by the library board. With two 
grants from the Mildred Weedon Blount Educational and Charitable Foundation, Inc., the room was 
remodeled, refurnished, and named the Mildred Weedon Blount Reading and Reference Room. It was 
formally opened in November 1989. The building appears today as it was remodeled in the late 60?s.
Currently, Tallassee Community Library has over 26,000 materials in its collection, 7 public access 
computers with Internet access and wireless connectivity and an annual circulation of over 34,000. 
[ ] TALLASSEE COMMUNITY LIBRARY
] 66
] 67
Landscape is the medium through which culture - society and the individual -  interact 
with biophysical, meteorological, geological fluctuation. But, the interaction with 
intangible media such as information, knowledge and cultural phenomena becomes 
less apparent. In order to explore fluxity with an extended landscape agency with 
these less tangible material, it is interesting to read to Cosgrove talking about J.B. 
Jackson: ?more evident perhaps is the influence of his consistent demonstration that 
landscapes emerge from specific geographical, social, and cultural circumstances; 
that landscape is embedded in the practical uses of the physical world as nature and 
territory?. These ?practical uses of the physical world? are infrastructural: transport, 
production, mediation, and facilitation. ?The geographic, social, and cultural origins of 
landscape, as stated here by Cosgrove, mark landscape and infrastructure as human, 
and rooted (in origin) in biophysical systems specific to place and time? (Carlson 2013). 
This is particularly evident in Tallassee, where the town exits as a consequence of the 
entwined relation of the infrastructure that made possible to produce energy for the 
cotton mill industry in the 20th century. Geology, River and Town are a complex matrix 
of urban and natural systems with extraordinary potential to investigate fluxity.
] 68
] 69
[ a ] DESIGN 
  INVESTIGATION [ DATASCAPE ]
The aim for this investigation is to find a strategy that reveals the dynamic potential of the 
library transmitted to a public open space in an interactive and compelling way to engage 
people with activities that foster traditional and new cultural manifestations and expressions. 
The Tallassee Community Library grounds are reconfigured enabling a new river access, 
opening its citizens/inhabitants up to all the entwined values and histories of the Tallapoosa 
River and Tallassee transforming the town?s current sense of itself and the river. 
The use of technology becomes a driver to for innovative design strategies, as Alex Wall puts it, 
?targeted not only toward physical but also social and cultural transformations, functioning as 
social and ecological agents? (Wall 1999). The proposed devices work in real-time, simulating 
and visualizing dynamic processes of change under the river and town specific conditions, 
modeling complex ecological and cultural flows in relation to the design intervention. 
In the configuration of the proposed datascape, the library performs within a more fluid field of 
data, ideas, information, and form. The strategic move redefines the library?s site edge with the 
Tallapoosa River as a Research Station. The research unit is a series of constructed platforms 
that allow interaction with the tidal flow of the river. The proposed measurement device will 
collect and produce data about water, sediment and pollution levels found on the reservoir.  The 
library shifts its traditional role of repository of information into a producer of data emphasizing 
the dynamics of information, which are presented in projective media instantly. 
] 70
] 71
] 72
In this sense, Abby Feldman, independent practitioner founder of Heavy Meadow, injects 
imaginative solutions into solving problems of environmental degradation, social injustice and 
neglect. Her philosophy is to seek design solutions that are grounded in solid reasoning and, 
like a meadow (in her own words), appear simple but actually embody a very complex and 
hard to establish ecological network. The Fiber Optic Marsh is a conceptual project developed 
in 2007 which ?proposes a hybrid of two living systems: a structural system that enables the 
establishment of devastated eelgrass marsh ecology in highly polluted coastal environments; 
and a sensory system that illuminates data, both literally and figuratively? (Margolis 2010). 
The project consists in bundles of fiber optics, connected through an anchored matrix of 
conduits, which sway with the tidal flux. During nighttime, the water off the coastline of 
Providence?s Field?s Point glows with a shifting array of luminescent colors. The design fitted 
monitoring pollution levels in the water while the fiber optic strands translate the data into a 
dynamic pixilated painting. The idea was to provide a constructed habitat where endangered 
species of fish now would dwell, consuming marine organisms attached to the synthetic 
infrastructure. According to Feldman, 
?[T]he Fiber Optic Marsh is an aquatic infrastructure that will resurrect urban salt marshes and 
translate ecology into art as a nighttime spectacle. It is a synthetic structure made of bundles 
of fiber optic cables allowing it to kick-start the regrowth of a natural marsh by providing the 
structure for sediment accretion, refuge for living organisms, and fostering of marine food 
webs.? (Feldman 2007)
Anchored to the riverbed and intermixed with salt marsh grasses, it will sway with tidal flux 
to create a pixilated grassland in the water that is sublimely attractive to people. Integrated 
into the lighting component, will be mechanisms for translating information about water 
quality, habitat growth, and tidal fluctuation to the public. Margolis and Robinson continue to 
explain that the fiber optic bundles are proposed to act as an aquatic infrastructure initiating 
a new food chain and habitat where eelgrass marshes once thrived. This technical solution is 
?a response to eutrophication, caused by excessive nutrient qualities in the water (primarily 
phosphorus, nitrogen, and carbon) due to runoff and sewage plant effluents.? (Margolis 2010) 
As the development of FO-Marsh is taken from the conceptual stage into product development, 
a new collaboration formed between a coastal marine ecologist, Keryn Bromberg Gedan and 
Abby Feldman. This partnership is a marriage of art, technology, and ecology, says Feldman, and 
ultimately seeks to provoke a lively conversation about the degraded nature of our waterways.
] 73
In a similar approach, the built project Amphibious Architecture is a visual interface floating 
on the water?s surface, an authentic looking glass into the aquatic ecosystem, developed by 
xClinic Environmental Health Clinic at New York University and the Living Architecture Lab 
at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation commissioned for 
the exhibit ?Toward the Sentient City? by the Architectural League of New York in 2009. The 
concept consisted in a ?manufactured point of connection submerges ubiquitous computing 
into the one element that covers 90% of the Earth?s inhabitable volume and which envelops 
New York City but remains under-explored and under-engaged.?  The temporary installations 
were located at two sites along the East River at Pier 35/Rutgers Slip, and the Bronx River 
next to the Bronx River Art Center. Conceived by the architect David Benjamin and the artist 
Natalie Jeremijenko, Amphibious Architecture proposes a dynamic, participatory city through 
a dynamic and responsive medium to interact with the natural environment. This project is a 
network of floating interactive markers housing a range of sensors below water and an array 
of light emitting diodes (LEDs) above water. The sensors monitor water quality, the presence 
of fish, and human interest in the river?s ecosystem, while the lights respond to the sensors, 
creating feedback loops between humans, fish in their shared environment. A key technological 
feature is an SMS interface, which allows humans to text-message the fish and receive real-time 
information about the river, contributing towards the collective display of human interest in the 
aquatic environment. The aim of which is to simultaneously spark a larger public interest and 
dialogue about our local waterways. (Sanders 2011)
The proposal encourages curiosity and strong engagement, clearly moving away from the 
persistent idea of ?overlooking? nature within the city, and pushing forward the solid trend 
of urban environmentalism. The East and Bronx rivers water becomes a two-way interface 
between the terrestrial and the aquatic, human and non-human. The sophisticated devices 
installed create ?a dynamic and captivating layer of light above the surface of the river, making 
visible the invisible through real-time mapping of the new ecology of people, marine life, 
buildings, and public space.?  One of the primary goals is to change the view of this quite 
beautiful view into an understanding that this is not just a pretty reflective surface, but a 
habitat... A packed body that?s alive with organisms whose health affects our health and our 
activities affect their health. The use of technology in the project encourages user engagement 
with text messages?incoming and outgoing?that offer real-time information about the 
river?s situation. In short, the project Amphibious Architecture takes the river as a site of active 
exchange, establishing, according to the designers, ?a two-way interface between environments 
of land and water.? The project transforms the river, once an uninhabitable human space, into 
a site for civic participation, fusing ecology and urbanism in a feedback loop facilitated by 
interactive communication software, which seems more and more important in our way to 
relate to other humans and the world. 
] 74
Technology has the potential to intersect the fields of landscape and architecture by blurring 
inside-outside relations and functions, as in climate control and water recycling; between 
landscape and engineering, as in the potential for landscape to prevent flooding, process 
sewage, or retain stormwater runoff; between landscape and urban-regional planning; and 
between landscape and ecological conservation/rehabilitation. Within an increased interest in 
landscape within architecture, the study aims to deepen the understanding of the complexity 
and operative potential of landscapes as mutable, working systems. 
 
The case studies illustrate how technology becomes integral to the conceptual framework, 
and catalyst of new ideas embedded deeply in the design process. The agency of technology 
in landscape has shaped a new research model, based on knowledge transfer and knowledge 
deployment, and evidently has expanded the scope of contemporary thought and practice. 
For example, in the Fiber Optic Marsh and Amphibious Architecture, the development of novel 
technologies is situated at the heart of the design process and final proposal. The design 
process integrates the function into the design itself from the outset. 
As technology becomes very high performance and environmentally efficient, landscape 
materials and constructions are discussed in terms of performance criteria and operations 
that facilitate and adapt to the cyclical processes of natural processes notably: exchange, flow, 
metabolism, and growth. 
] 75
] 76
Conceptually and physically, the building is opened to 
reconfigure the relationship of the library with its biophysical 
context. Through the elimination of the parking lot (locating 
automobiles on the adjacent parcel) and carefully situating steel 
armatures with visualization mechanisms, and high technology 
media projection in real time, movement of people trough the 
site in engaged to revitalize the civic context of the library. This 
eco-visualization, which the media artist Tiffany Holmes defines 
as the ?creative practice of converting real-time ecological 
data into image and sound for the purpose of promoting 
environmental awareness and resource conservation? (Lima 
2011). The DATASCAPE design provides as a trusted place for the 
community to learn about the world of digital information, how 
to harness strategies and the Internet for social well-being and 
economic sustainability, with the potential to reach out to poor 
and marginalized communities and help them bridge the digital 
divide through innovative library services, plus catalyzing change 
throughout the intensification of cultural expressions around the 
library. 
[ ] DATASCAPE
] 77
] 78
The reconfigured grounds of the library act as a new 
type of town square, a place for people of all ages 
and backgrounds to seek help, connect with others, 
and get access to the information and services.
] 79
[ ] RESEARCH UNIT

Through the intervention, the intrinsic dynamic nature of the 
Library is reflected in the adjacent grounds of the building. 
The Library can be theorized as a stream, a continuous flow of 
information and data. In this investigation, the library?s adjacent 
grounds are set to translating large volumes of data into 
digestible insights, creating an explicit bridge between data and 
knowledge. The intervention encourages people to use the space 
capturing the interest of individuals traversing across the town, 
and stimulate individuality and community appetite for learning, 
evolving, and communicating. 
] 82
] 83
] 84
The research station platforms provide the surface area for algae and fish habitat. The 
data sensors provide a visual translation, which makes the conditions of the aquatic 
behavior legible, where emitted light transforms the research unit into an engaging 
spectacle. Levels of luminosity show different water and pollution levels. 
In terms of fluxity, instant, daily, and seasonal cycles of ephemeral forces such as 
wind, rain, fog, light, sound and temperature are legible through mechanisms that 
visually transmit ever-changing data in a way to capture it momentarily, in a state of 
flux. Fluxity provides a conceptual design platform to engage change in an innovative 
way to reactivate Tallassee?s civic area, where interactive medium document, reveal, 
and expand the information kept inside the building or in the World Wide Web, and 
intentionally showcases it to the town?s population. 
] 85
[ b ] DESIGN 
  INVESTIGATION [ LANDBRARY ]
Upon reflection, the DATASCAPE proposal was modest in terms of implications of 
fluxity with the ever-changing integration of internet-connected gadgets into our 
daily lives; data about our activities, interests, and movements are generated across 
physical, social, and virtual domains. What are these consequences for design process 
and for tangible desired outcomes? 
It became clear that it was necessary to push for a landscape-based typology that 
truly hybridized cultural, ecological, and technological endeavors in light of fluxity, 
an intervention that remind us the of the ever changing complexity of landscape 
dynamics in-between times. The idea of a LANDBRARY resonated in attempt to 
investigate fresh configurations of landform impacted by contemporary understanding 
of media, data, information, and knowledge that enable social and ecological 
enhancement.  
] 86
] 87
] 88
It is interesting to study the spatial fi eld implications of Barry Le Va?s sculpture 
work. Stan Allen in his essay ?From Object to Field?, discusses that beginning 
in the mid-60?s, Le Va began making pieces, some planned in advance, others 
incorporating random processes, that resulted in the dissolution the idea of 
?sculpture? as delimited entity, becoming more a fi eld rather than a distinct 
object. (Allen 1999) Le Va, Allen explains, called these works distributions, 
working sometimes with random or orderly confi gurations, ?a ?distribution? 
is defi ned as ?relationships of points and confi gurations to each other? or 
alongside, ?sequences of events.? (Allen 1999) The organizational principles 
proposed here suggest the new defi nition of ?parts?, and alternative ways of 
conceiving the question of relationships among those parts. 
The strategy used was a random ?distribution? of folded wires in diff erent 
directions that sit on top of the Tallassee Library site and adjacent context. The 
idea was to explore a method to materialize the highly dynamic and entangled 
World Wide Web, and exchange of information. Several confi gurations were 
studied were local relationships were more important that the overall form or 
confi guration. In analogy with Le Va?s exercises, the design had little precise 
control over the wire material that was directed loosely to fi nd interesting 
patterns. 
World City-to-City Connections, Chris Harrison. 
http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Visualizations/
InternetMap
] 89
One of the resulting models is the option adopted in the LANDBRARY 
investigations. The strategy is to proceed to seek out pressure points where 
two or more wires cross in order to obtain a network-like system, inspired in 
contemporary thinking about cities, the brain, the World Wide Web, social 
groups, knowledge classification, and the genetic association between species 
all refer to complex systems defined by a large number of interconnected 
elements, normally taking the shape of a network. ?This ubiquitous topology, 
prevalent in a wide range of domains, is at the forefront of a new scientific 
awareness of complexity? (Lima 2013). According to Manuel Lima, networks 
are not just an omnipresent structure but also a symbol of autonomy, 
flexibility, collaboration, diversity, and multiplicity, all characteristics needed 
to explore at as agents responsive to change. These pressure points become 
strategic actions that portray community-wide significance, a species of PODS 
or NODES distributed through the landscape. 
[  ] PRESSURE POINTS
] 90
] 91
] 92
A key theoretical construct is explored within the frame of the speed of 
change of technologies, specially starting to affect the physical book culture, 
which is the notion of digital fields. Traditional analogue technologies of 
reproduction, Stan Allen explains, work through imprints, traces, or transfers. 
The resulting image might shift in scale or value, like a negative, but is going 
to maintain its iconic form and internal hierarchies. In terms of shifting from 
analogue to digital technologies, a significant alteration happens when an 
image is converted to digital information. Allen cites, ?[d]igital electronic 
technology atomizes and abstractly schematizes the analogic quality of the 
photographic and cinematic into discrete pixels and bits of information that 
are transmitted serially, each bit discontinuous, discontiguous, and absolute ? 
each bit ?being in itself? eves as it is part of a system.? (Allen 1997) 
An immediate consequence for the LANDBRARY design investigations is 
that hierarchies are distributed and value is evened out, the library itself 
becomes a fragmented network of individual entities reconfiguring its figure/
field relation. The traditional library is noted as the analogue image and the 
Landbrary becomes the digital image, where background and foreground 
information are equal. ?Blank space is not empty space; there is empty space 
throughout the field?, where digital technologies have enabled on a field-to-
field relation, instead of a classical figure-ground.
] 93
 ARBORETUM [  ]
] 94
Connecting to the established Arbor Day and Earth Day & Spring Team-Up to 
Clean-Up Tallassee, which is a citywide effort to beautify Tallassee; grouping 
in Litter Teams, while contests and outdoor celebrations are portrayed is 
continuing power of the local. Tallassee has inherited social capital and with 
strategies that foster opportunities for community building among inhabitants 
and visitors in a common ground, people can start to care about the land. 
The proposal to transform the grounds of the Community Library into an 
Arboretum is an strategy initiate strategic change, and enable society to 
better understand the revealed dynamics of landscape. 
] 95
FLUXITY OVER TIME [ ]
Topograhical reconfiguration
Arboretum implementation
Nonhierarchical system 
] 96
Expansion
Pods incorporation
] 97
LANDBRARY 15 YEARS SCENARIO [ ]
] 98
] 99
] 100
] 101
] 102
[  ] 
They are singular entities that conform a larger 
interconnected network. They are conceived as a 
nonhierarchical distributed system, meaning that all the 
?pods? are basically the same, offering flexibility and 
adaptability to required programs by the library or the 
town. They operate seamlessly open-ended towards 
offering contemporary and innovative services with specific 
programmatic assignation, but easily transferable to other 
function. 
PODS [ ] 
] 103
Fluxity, the in-between terrain, heightens the need to 
engage the very nature of landscape as process, yet not 
landscape as product. Intentionally, the LANDBRARY 
is not a ?finished? plaza, park, or garden. This new type 
of hybridized public space aspires to reveal natural and 
cultural processes in the face of constant, relentless change.
] 104
PODS [ ] 
] 105
[ 5 ]
 CRITICAL 
  APPRAISALS
] 106
] 107
Upon reflection, after the development of this design research, outcomes 
become crucial to evaluate its results. Within the Landbrary design, tangible 
expressed as a rich and diverse stream of services and values, such as 
biodiversity, heritage or recreation, adopting fluxity as a base-line condition, 
their expression is inevitably less easy to define and predict than the form 
of particular object or surface installations. However, assumptions about 
continuity in the material conditions of landscape are very needed, and not 
totally explored in this thesis. It is interesting to see that the development 
of the design here thrive to be ?open-ended?, but are typically set in known 
landscape contexts, sites that are in flux, and are based on predicted or 
assumed relationships within landscape. ?Reflections in the face of intense 
change are therefore offered here as insights into understanding and  
designing the ?new normal? of shifting landscapes ?in-between times,? of 
working in those temporal conditions where everything is suspended in an 
indeterminate state? (Bowring 2013). 
How can the concept of fluxity be used to inform a hybridized cultural/
technological/ecological public space in Tallassee, Alabama? 
Fluxity is a particular state of the materials encompassing a specific landscape. 
The adoption of fluxity, as a general framework, develops a methodology of 
temporality to understand change over the course of time. Things change, are 
becoming, but not necessarily at a rate we recognize. Within the framework 
of this thesis, change is a specific category of landscape that encompasses 
uncertain terrains not necessarily associated with natural processes. The 
engagement with the intrinsic uncertainty of dynamic characteristics of the 
landscape enabled enriching explorations, especially through the agency of 
thinking and drawing as single complex operation. 
Processes of formation were investigated at the sewage filter park, where 
tangible biophysical conditions were engaged. The exploration relied on 
ecological relations to establish landform, but a missed opportunity was 
not overlapping the entwined and complex nature of the cultural landscape 
founded in Tallassee. The reason might be the location of the infrastructural 
system in the periphery of the major urban development. The Landbrary 
proposal attempted to hybridize culture, technology, and ecology in a 
dynamic field engaging not only with biophysical contexts, but also with 
social, informational, and environmental. 
] 108
The poetics of becoming is fascinating topic only touched tangentially, 
but that has been present during the whole development of the thesis 
project. Fluxity serves as a lens to describe the beauty of things constantly 
transforming in the landscape. This in-between terrain reinforces the nature 
of landscape as process. The Landbrary project resulted from a series of 
investigations to grasp intangible material such as media, memories, data, 
information, knowledge and cultural phenomena, all of them in constant, 
relentless change. 
Another missed opportunity within the research project was the decision to 
remain in a conceptual stage of design. A more focused and directed study 
on the nature of change into a detailed, for instance a pod, would have been 
beneficial to showcase change clearly along multiple scales. 
A major challenge to assume that change is the base line condition is that it 
could be overwhelming, since the designer would not have a clear framework 
to choose from all the things that are ever-changing. For instance, other 
contemporary landscape dynamics that also unpredictable like economic 
fluctuation, political unrest, or climate change were not addressed as they 
escaped the goals of the investigations. 
] 109
BIBLIOGRAPHY [ ]
[ ] Allen, Stan. (1997) ?From Object to Field?, Architectural Design, 67: 24-31.
[ ] Allen, Stan. (ed.) (2011) Landform Building: Architecture?s new terrain, Lars M?ller 
Publishers
[ ] Balmori, D., Sanders, J., (2011). Groundwork: Between Landscape and Architecture, New 
York: Monacelli Press. 
[ ] Barnett, Rod. (2013) Emergence in Landscape Architecture, New York and London: 
Routledge.
[ ] Belanger, Pierre. (2010) ?Redefining Infrastructure? in Ecological Urbanism, Cambridge: 
Lars M?ller Publishers. 
[ ] Berrizbeitia, Anita. (1999) Inside Outside: between architecture and landscape 
architecture, Rockport Publishers.
[ ] Bowring, Jacky., Swaffield, Simon. (2013) ?Shifting Landscapes In-between Times? in 
Harvard Design Magazine, 36: 96-104.  
[ ] Carlson, Dane (2013). ?The Humanity Of Infrastructure: Landscape As Operative Ground?, 
in Scenario 03: Rethinking Infrastructure, Spring 2013. 
[ ] Cosgrove, Denis. (1998). ?Introductory Essay for the Paperback Edition,? Social Formation 
and Symbolic Landscape, first published 1984. Madison: University of Wisconsin. 
[ ] Crayfort, Robert (et.al). (1980?s?). Tallassee: a case study in small town environmental 
design, Auburn University. 
[ ] Feldman, Abbigail, ?F-O Marsh. Published in Living Systems? accessed December 9th, 
2013 http://www.heavymeadow.com/work/fo-marsh-published-in-living-systems-2007/
] 110
[ ] Geffel, Michael, ?From Landscaping to Infrastructure: The Scope and 
Agency of Maintenance? accessed December 8th, 2013 on Scenario Journal 
http://landscapeurbanism.com/article/from-landscaping-to-infrastructure-
the-scope-and-agency-of-maintenance/ 
[ ] Goss, William. (2008). Images of America Tallassee, Charleston, Chicago, 
Portsmouth, San Francisco: Arcadia Publishing. 
[ ] Hertlein, Vera (ed.). (2013). Time Scales: Contemporary German Landscape 
Architecture, Basel: Birkh?user. 
[ ] Izembarth, Helene. (2003). Waterscapes: Using plant systems to treat 
wastewater, Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili. 
[ ] Jackson, J. B. (1984). Discovering the Vernacular Landscape. New Haven: 
Yale Architectural Press
[ ] Lima, Manuel (2013). Mapping Patterns of Information, New York: Princeton 
Architectural Press. 
[ ] Margolis, L. & Robinson, A.(2010). Living Systems. Innovative Materials and 
Technologies for Landscape Architecture, Basel: Birkh?user.
[ ] Wadsworth, E. W. (2004). A History of Tallassee, Tallassee: Blount 
Foundation. 
[ ] Waldheim, Charles (ed). (2006) The Landscape Urbanism Reader, New 
York: Princeton Architectural Press. 
] 111
] 112
[  ] AKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, thanks to God. Right after, thanks to my loving family. 
Thanks to Professor David Hill for his enthusiastic encouragement throughout all this thesis.  
Thanks to Professors Rod Barnett, Jaqueline Margetts, and Michael Robinson. 
Thanks to my thesis studio, Drake, Matt, Rachel, Carlton, BJ,  it has been a pleasure to see 
you grow as designers. 
Thanks to the rest of my classmates and friends.
] 113
?I don?t want pictures. I just want to find things out.? - Piet Mondrian,