Rescue Lines

Rescue Lines at the 17th annual Venice Architecture Biennale, is a collaboration with Geoff Manaugh (bldgblog) and supported by the Bartlett School of Architecture Research Fund.  

"Once again I see,
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, 
Little lines of sportive wood run wild." 

William Wordsworth

Orchards, grids, and proving grounds. Hedges, paths, and instruments. Nurseries, zoos, and labs.

Rescue Lines proposes a world in which the forests of the United Kingdom, both ancient and modern, can be expanded, restored, and connected once again. Our project takes the form of a series of south-to-north ecological bridges—linear super-landscapes—along which displaced or endangered species can safely travel and threatened human economies can thrive.

At the heart of Rescue Lines, elaborate forest ‘proving grounds’ serve to host new, prototype landscapes. Inside these experimental facilities, species hardened against climate change will be both cultivated and preserved, forming tactical landscape ‘starter packs’, ready for planting elsewhere. Within these proving grounds, resident stewards will also monitor speculative plant-measurement labs: whole-tree temperature chambers, soil-acid gauges, canopy-enrichment nets, and deep-ground rhizotrons where members of the public can watch in real time as roots expand through designer soil.

Worms, birds, moulds, and other species also live here, eager to follow the northward expansion of our ‘rescue lines’, tracking the warming gradients of the planet’s collective future. Even the internal sounds of this new, climate-adapted ecology can be checked daily inside recording studios staffed by acousticians trained to hear the subtlest notes of landscape change.

Rescue Lines explores the future of green infrastructure through the lives of those who engage with it. Our project connects ecological zones and economic territories at the same time, suggesting that longitudinal lines of connection, bridging forests across the United Kingdom as a model for sites elsewhere, can help us all prepare—hectare by hectare—for a climate-changed world.

17th annual Venice Architecture Biennale, titled How will we live together? curated by Hashim Sarkis 
The Central Pavilion, Giardini, 22 May to 21 November 2021.

Credits
Design and Production Assistant: Ness Lafoy Research Assistants:  Doug John Miller and Matei Alexandru. Specialist joinery: Mauro Dell’Orco at Workshop East