Date of Award
Spring 6-4-2022
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA)
Department
Landscape Architecture
First Advisor
Emily Vogler
Second Advisor
Ann Kearsley
Abstract
For decades, landscape architects have been working with water, proposing vocabularies like sponge parks, rain gardens, emergent shorelines, and hydrologic urbanism. Surviving with water is common sense. However, there is not enough landscape design research and practice when it comes to another destructive natural force - fire. The new normal is that people are being exposed to more frequent and catastrophic wildfires and the burn-on-burn phenomenon is becoming common. With climate change and sprawling land-use patterns that increase the wildland-urban interface, a greater number of communities are having to adapt to living with fire. Landscape architects are in need to play a more significant role in establishing a beneficial and sustainable human-fire relationship.
Based on the study of the historic and modern prescribed burning, fire-mitigation, and post-fire recovery strategies, this thesis focuses on the wildland-urban interface and the Mediterranean ecosystem in the Santa Monica Mountain region. By transforming a ranch into a fire educational park and proposing multifunction installations as markers in fire-touched wildland, the thesis aims to convey new attitudes towards the fire landscape and initiate aesthetic and ecological dialogues on innovative ways of living with fire.
Recommended Citation
Wang, Mohan, "Living with fire" (2022). Masters Theses. 947.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/947
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Comments
View exhibition online: Mohan Wang, Living With Fire