Building Ecologies: Maintaining Land, Working with Wood

Author

Taylor Jais, Rhode Island School of DesignFollow

Date of Award

Spring 5-31-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA)

Department

Landscape Architecture

First Advisor

Johanna Barthmaier-Payne

Second Advisor

Tom Weis

Third Advisor

Laura Gomez

Abstract

This thesis critiques contemporary architecture and building practices for their fundamentally unsustainable and place-less assemblies that rely on extracting finite resources that generate significant emissions while simultaneously neglecting to consider the needs and existence of humans and non-human species with in the built environment. Through experimental material research that diverts “wood” waste streams and integrates land and multispecies care, this work demonstrates how maintenance-based approaches to construction can transform built assemblies into ecological systems. By deconstructing wood to its cellular components and recombining these elements in novel ways, this research reveals possibilities for collaborative, materials-driven, place-based building practices. This thesis proposes that maintenance of ecological systems is not only necessary but inherently non-hierarchical, positioning humans as collaborators rather than managers. It suggests that by making visible our participation in landscape maintenance and building ecologies, we can create habitats that support complex multispecies futures, ultimately challenging natureculture binaries and reimagining the built environment as an integrated ecological system rather than an isolated artifact. The resulting material assemblage is a place-based architectural wall membrane including insulative, structural, and ecological components.

Recommended Citation

Jais, Taylor, "Building Ecologies: Maintaining Land, Working with Wood" (2025). Masters Theses. 1360.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1360

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.