Vintondale Reclamation Park, Vintondale, Pennsylvania. Landscape architect Julie Bargmann’s “work to revitalize toxic sites and reconnect them to their communities has earned her the nicknames ‘Toxic Avenger’ and ‘Queen of Slag,’ ” says the Times.
Have you ever looked at a polluting site, maybe fire from a smokestack or rusting steam engines, and seen a kind of artistic beauty — that is, something that would be beautiful if the poisonous fangs were removed?
Today’s story is about a landscape architect with that way of seeing and the skills to reclaim what had been lost.
Tanya Mohn reports at the New York Times, “For more than 30 years, Julie Bargmann, a landscape architect and founder of D.I.R.T. Studio (Dump It Right There) in Charlottesville, Va., has focused on contaminated and forgotten urban and postindustrial sites, dedicating her practice to addressing social and environmental justice. …
“Her projects include an abandoned pump house and reservoirs in Dallas transformed into an art-filled residential garden; the derelict parking lot of a 19th-century fire station in Detroit converted into an urban woodland; historic shipyards that became welcome centers and corporate campuses; and former coal mines, quarries and foundries recast as community parks and public spaces.
“In an essay titled ‘Justice from the Ground Up,‘ Ms. Bargmann wrote that there is a disturbing overlap between maps showing where poor people and ethnic minorities live and where contaminated soils exist in the United States. …
“In October 2021 she was named the inaugural winner of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, created to celebrate prominent living landscape architects.
“ ‘Being a fierce public advocate is part of the practice of landscape architecture,’ said Charles A. Birnbaum, president and chief executive of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, the nonprofit that awarded the prize. … ‘Bargmann’s legacy is much bigger than the built work,’ Mr. Birnbaum said. ‘It’s valuing the landscape and the cultural life associated with it.’ This interview has been edited for clarity and length. …
“NYT: Did your early years impact your career focus?
“Julie Bargmann: My own little industrial history started riding in my family station wagon on the New Jersey Turnpike. I was living in a really nice postwar neighborhood with big old trees, but when we would see all of the refineries and factories I thought, ‘Wow.’ I remember looking beyond them at all the modest workers’ houses. I went to college in Pittsburgh, a city with those same working neighborhoods stacked up on the hillsides and those belching steel mills down in the valley. I loved the steel mills. They’re so raw, they’re so tough. Everybody sees the bridges, but in the mills you’re seeing and feeling the heat, your jaw drops at the faces blackened by smoke. …
“Three decades ago no landscape designer was looking at the vast manufacturing and mined landscapes, landfills and every type of degraded landscape. When I thought about the number of acres, it was astonishing. That set me off. Folks might think I’m a bit crazy, but I’m going to go find the landscapes that I want to work on, not more or less already perfect landscapes. …
“Was there a turning point in your approach to landscape design?
“During my first teaching job, I got some funding, and I took off on the road and looked at mined landscapes around the country, including restricted areas. It was fascinating, but when I learned what environmental engineers were doing, it infuriated me. They were doing very quick fixes. They took no account of the social or cultural implications of the landscapes; environmentally, they were squeaking by to meet the regulations. That completely negates any of that human agency. They’re throwing meaning out, robbing it from the community. That’s really when I launched into a holistic approach to my work.
“Do most prospective clients understand your approach?
“When I talk to a corporate leader or an E.P.A. representative who are skeptical, I don’t go on defending the sexy rust. I tell them stories. And I work really hard to pose alternatives. Degraded sites, toxic sites, a lot of times are not 100 percent contaminated. I always use the word ‘regenerate,’ to create anew. I became fascinated with biologically-based remediation technologies. That science has totally propelled what we can do.
“How did you learn about those technologies?
“I go out into the field. I call up a scientist. The whole mining world was a total crash course on the different types of reclamation law.
I always tell my students, do your homework, and do it in the world. Engage real people with the design process.
“Vintondale Reclamation Park, a 35-acre site in coal country near Pittsburgh, completed in 2002, was pivotal. Why?
“It was a perfect, multidisciplinary team of engineers, hydrogeologists, architects, artists, historians and landscape architects. We learned everything about acid mine drainage treatment to design a natural filtration system that addressed years of pollution from mine runoff. Excavators resculpted 19th-century beehive ovens used to convert coal to coke to make steel. We brought them out from behind those chain-link fences and made the science visible, beautiful. Now it’s a neighborhood park alongside a historic bike trail. I mean, boom. It all came together. People started paying attention. There really weren’t any models at that time in the U.S. From then on I could point to something in rural Pennsylvania and say, ‘This is totally possible.’ ”
More at the Times, here.
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