Machine Ecologies

Student Name: Sarah Klym

School: UBC School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture

Degree Program: M.Arch-20

Location of Project: North of Charlie Lake, BC

Year of Project: n/a

Brief Description of Project:

This thesis explores the relationship between productive landscapes and the machines that shape them.

Built to draw resources from gridded “peripheries”, machines of industry have reshaped the rural north. In tailoring the landscape to the machine, these territories have come to be misunderstood as physically and temporally disjointed sites of extraction. In reality, these places are critical future thresholds for ecosystems in flux, now more than ever in need of succession and connectivity. This project proposes an ecology of machines that celebrates complexity in the way we divide and cultivate agricultural landscapes in northern British Columbia.

This thesis was awarded the Vaughn Berg Memorial Prize and nominated for the Canadian Architect Student Awards of Excellence.