Designed Wild: Cultivation Connections to the Natural World Through Architecture

Abstract

The typology of visitor centers for state and national parks is long overdue for reinvention. These buildings often fail to truly integrate themselves into the environment that surrounds them. These places, despite being “natural,” are often curated and cared for by humans in a highly complex relationship. This, however, is not to be scorned, but embraced and taught. Through immersive architecture, parks have the opportunity to create places which heighten people’s environmental consciousness and create ecologies with the end goal of mutualism. Rather than acting to exclusively maintain the environment as it is, these parks can act with foresight to actively enrich the conditions for the flora and fauna that call these parks home and can do so while enriching the experience and knowledge of those who visit the park.