“Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forest and meadows with surrounds it. We need the tonic of wildness…” From Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau

The inspiration for the project comes from my personal experience as a new resident of Chicago. When I first moved to Chicago for graduate school, I lived downtown. The elevated train rumbled as it passed by my window at all hours. The surrounding buildings stopped my roaming eye and created an endless palette of gray. I longed for the rural surroundings of my birthplace, Canton, Ohio.

I soon discovered, however, the importance of the city parks – a unique landscape where concrete mixes with planted trees, with the Chicago skyline often present in the background. This is a landscape that is not quite wilderness, yet is somewhat removed from the normal urban context. The space of the parks is open and expansive, at least compared to other parts of the city. How the space is used and how I interpret this use is my primary concern.

Author Henry David Thoreau describes Walden Pond as an unpopulated wilderness. His writing is rich with romanticism and the idea that “in wildness is the salvation of the world.” Thoreau spent two years at Walden Pond in order to escape from society and to discover what was truly important to him. This other landscape of trees, water, and sky, provided something deeply meaningful for him – what he refers to as “the tonic of wildness.” The parks, through not the unpopulated wilderness Thoreau describes, are still capable of providing something meaningful to the urban dweller. Just as Thoreau went to Walden to escape the troubles of his time, present day people go to the parks to escape contemporary life.

It is not the landscape that is important, but how one approaches and thinks about their landscape. All landscape is capable of redemption, whether built by people, by nature, or both.