Date of Award
Spring 5-22-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA)
Department
Landscape Architecture
First Advisor
Johanna Barthmaier-Payne
Second Advisor
Markus Berger
Third Advisor
Tanmayee More
Abstract
In April 2023, a brushfire erupted at the Queen’s River Preserve, a tract of open land in Exeter, Rhode Island. It spread quickly, to the level of a firestorm, driven by gusty winds and dry conditions. The preserve is a pine barren, a landscape of sandy soil and pitch pine trees, along the Queen’s River. It also abuts the residential and agricultural corridors of Exeter, creating a vulnerable threshold between open land resources and human habitation, known as the wildland urban interface. It required an unprecedented wildfire response for New England, including the region’s first human and livestock evacuation protocol. 300 acres of meadow, pasture, protected land, and private property were burned.
Wildfires are rare in New England, and the Queen’s River inferno is a signal of landscape change and an unpredictable climate. What isn’t rare in New England is a surplus of fire resistant materials; abundant, inexpensive, and easily accessible. Two such materials, wool and salt, are the cultural backbone of New England’s place in the world. Individually, they exhibit natural qualities that make their use in the built environment suitable for fire resistance, structure, and insulation. But their combination, adding salt to wool, wool to salt, salt through wool, wool on salt, and salt in wool, is an unexplored investigation of compounding qualities.
A tailing is something left behind, discarded or remaining. Salt Tailings is an inquisition into the material logic that exists between wool and salt, the impression they leave behind in the pursuit of new information for an evolving world.
Recommended Citation
Friedman, Evan, "Salt Tailings" (2026). Masters Theses. 1707.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1707
Creative Commons License
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