PULLMAN, Wash. – Landscape architecture, design, and education graduate students from Washington State University and the University of Idaho will present their visions for the Lower Snake River Basin Dec. 9 – Jan. 31 at the Sage Baking Company in Lewiston. The opening reception for the show is at 6:30 p.m., Dec. 9.
Snake River reView showcases the design work of graduate students in the course “Cultural Interpretations of the Regional Landscape.” During the course, students studied the connections between people and place in the Lower Snake River Basin, and the ways that these connections are affected by and affect the Lower Snake River Dams.
For their final projects, students have created design visualizations that explore the future of the Snake River. The designs were informed by the networked stories and ecologies of the regional landscape, and feature sites from Pasco, Wash. to Lewiston, Idaho.
“The students’ projects address and reveal the complex relationships among organisms, locale, the built environment, ideologies, and time,” said Jolie Kaytes, the course instructor and associate professor of landscape architecture at WSU. “They employ design strategies that require us to broadly reflect on values, energy, edge, transport, recreation, farming, community, power, sustenance, soil, settlement, and salmon.
“Ultimately, the students’ projects challenge us to reexamine how we see and understand the region, to continually review, in the multiple senses of that word, the Snake River Basin and what it means to be a citizen of this landscape,” she said.
Although the students are still working on their projects, some of the working title ideas are:
- Placing the Rail Back in Road, Doug Stewart
- Channel Change: Shifting the Dialogue on the Lower Snake, Francene Watson
- Beyond Slackwater, Abby Anderson
- State Park Gone Wild, John Buchko
- Hungry Beaver Bites into Park’s Plans, John Buchko
- Salmon Survival Secured!, Stephen Ulman
- Plan to Breach Within Reach, Stephen Ulman
- The Snake River: Back in the Flow, Stephen Ulman
- Braided: Weaving Culture, Economy, and Ecology in the Lower Snake River Basin, Chris Barnes
- Renewing the River’s Edge in Lewiston, Idaho, Alice Tan
“This is the second year students are exhibiting work at the Sage Bakery. We put the show up at the Sage Baking Company because it’s downtown and is an informal setting where people gather and talk. And the Sage is in Lewiston, which sites at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers. Students and I hope that having the work in this setting will facilitate conversations and get people talking about the Lower Snake River Basin’s future,” Kaytes said.
The show, including the opening reception, is free and open to the public. The Sage Baking Company is located at 1303 Main St. in Lewiston.
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