 Good afternoon everyone my name is Richard Brown and I am the Vice President of Philanthropy at American Express at American Express We have been a long time supporter of the work of the National Trust to save national treasures across this country From the federal hall in the heart of New York City to the Miami Marine Stadium on the shore of Biscayne Bay in 2019 we were proud to expand this partnership with the announcement of the title basin as a national treasure and to back the Ideas Lab, which you will see the results of today with a $750,000 grant As part of America's front yard the title basin is home to some of the most iconic landmarks and traditions in the nation's capital However, daily flooding, growing public visitation and unmet safety and accessibility requirements threaten the sustainability and visitor enjoyment of this public landscape By assembling the Ideas Lab, our goal was to create a forum for generating and disseminating and vetting a new vision for the future of the title basin And over the course of this project, we have been excited to help the National Trust and its partners bring new energy, innovation and resources to address this site's critical and growing needs I'd like to personally thank the preeminent landscape architect firms that you will hear from today for participating in the Ideas Labs and for their hard work I hope that you are inspired by their vision for this deeply important place as I am. Thank you and enjoy the session. Good afternoon everyone. I'm Nate Hevers. I'm a landscape architecture professor at Virginia Tech. It's a privilege to moderate this panel The topic is the future of the title basin in Washington DC and the extent to which it might be reimagined With us today are leaders from five outstanding landscape architecture firms In the order that they will present, I'm joined by Rodrigo Abella from GGN Alma Dussoliere of Hood Design Studio Eric Kramer from Reed Hildebrand Sarah Astheimer and James Corner of James Corner Field Operations And Susanna Drake, principal at D-Land Studio As you are probably aware, the Army Corps constructed the title basin beginning in the 1880s And it was set within the path of the Potomac River It was designed to flush water gathered by the tide Through the title basin and out the Washington Channel Which is where the historic shoreline of the Potomac is It was created as a practical fix for flooding in a heavily silted river But gradually it's become the home of significant monuments As well as the flowering cherry collection Which one and a half million people flock to annually The urgent issue is that high tides combined with sea level rise, subsiding ground And storm surges have begun to threaten this national treasure And it gets worse daily So under the leadership of the National Park Service The Trust for the National Mall The National Trust for Historic Preservation Corporate partner, SOM And a team of advisors These five teams that we'll see from today have engaged in a novel process An ideas lab to generate proposals for how to think about and approach this complex problem The big idea of the ideas lab is that the teams did not compete But rather they developed their concepts in a more collaborative approach This allowed the teams to see inside the schemes of their peers midstream I think what you'll see today in these landscape architects Is the groundwork for envisioning the next century of the title basin It's similar to former plans of Washington But what's different is that these plans duly consider the dynamic nature of the title basin landscape And how the river and culture contribute to it As Sarah Astheimer has said The title basin has evolved through subtle incision-like moves Making it difficult to assign any singular period of significance to the landscape So let's hear their arguments and see how they're addressing the inevitability of climate change and the social challenges of our time So now Rodrigo Abela Good afternoon everybody Severe frequent flooding, sea level rise, dying trees, deferred maintenance, millions of visitors, changing cultural attitudes All these elements taken together can be overwhelming and so instead of getting bogged down in an action We fast forwarded to the end of the century and tried to imagine what this landscape might become We imagined replacing the empty lawns of East Potomac Park with a flood plain forest, a critical piece of infrastructure to protect the city But also a monument in its own right In that forest, clearings with cherries at once familiar, but also new ground to hold new memories and meaning for future generations On the water's edge, instead of a sterile static border, we imagined a complex, ecologically rich and diverse living edge in the form of a tidal marsh The edge is designed to mitigate floods and to adapt to the changing water elevation resulting from sea level rise While also providing a more immersive experience for the visitors in their native landscape Coming back to today, just as the mall we know and love is a result of decisions made 100 years ago We asked ourselves, what can we do now to lay the groundwork for this transformation? These are big changes and they need to unfold over decades We can start the process, but it must be adaptable to the needs of future generations It needs to evolve over time with the groundwork laid in Of course, it's important not only to imagine all the new changes, but to also think about how to preserve, protect and adapt the existing monuments There's not a single solution, but in each case we see an opportunity and a responsibility for sustained dialogue to continually be considered the relationship between these historic elements in their changing world The tidal basin is an important part of the legacy of the city, it's intricately tied to the national identity of Washington It brings together many important and meaningful destinations for millions of visitors, but it's also a beloved space for those who live here It's in great danger and we must make choices today to guarantee a future Thank you, Homo de Celia Hello everybody, I'm the student director of Hood Design Studio and we call ourselves a cultural practice because we do landscape architecture and visioning, etc But we always look in for the layers of sites that make cities unique So for the tidal basin, we were looking into what are these natural layers, but also these cultural stories that had made the basin what it is And trying to figure out how we respond to that to make it familiar, but also manifest maybe alternative or potential future So we got very interested all the way from the technologies that created the basin itself to some of the moments in history, like when the basin was a whites only swimming beach to the older history of Roosevelt Island across the bay, across the river where color of soldiers were trained during the Civil War And all of those stories for us became quite interesting. So what we decided to do as a way to test them was to envision for stories and we call them novellas And with that we were trying to figure out how through storytelling we can make the, understand the site differently and maybe come up with solutions that are slightly different Just as an example, one of the stories that we created was called the Hush Harbors and this is basically an a narration of a family that comes to D.C. and Texas new, this new tour around the the re-envision basin that now has wetlands around it and a walk that is a cultural sort of storytelling of all these layers that we were researching So the family sort of moves all the way from Arlington Cemetery maybe to the African American Museum, they encounter MLK Memorial, see across the new basin, Jefferson and how that relationship has And the site itself then is interleaved with a lot of the narratives that make the site what it is and one of them is this idea of the Hush Harbors, which were this secluded informal spaces near the swamps that the slaves used to use as a way to escape and gather momentarily for Workship and burial. And so we were trying to tie then sort of this idea of a natural restoration of the basin with this history that was part of the South in the US and how does that sort of kind of makes the big circle come together. So in that way, again, it's always trying to figure out how a narrative can help us understand a landscape in a different manner to suggest transformation in order to move forward but not forget the pieces that were left behind. Thank you. Eric Kramer. Thanks Nate. As you look at our proposal, I think you'll recognize that, you know, our approach to the title basins future is not radical, and it's not revolutionary. It's actually more adaptive and evolutionary. We don't see preservation here as choosing between a kind of false dichotomy between stasis and erasure. Instead, we saw the ideas lab as an opportunity to argue that historic preservation is about living landscapes and about what how they are valuable for what we say about ourselves today and and what they can say about who we want to be in the future. In that way this project marks the departure from the singular and steadfast monumental core. It builds upon the traditions of multiple voices embedded in the title basin to project a fluid diverse and authentic expression of who we are as a nation, and we call it an open work because it's something always in process. How do you design a work in progress. Well, it's a kind of improvisation just like the history of the title basin itself. And as we look ahead to the impacts of sea level rise, we invent new ways modes of preservation reinforcement and migration, and we also foresee new layers of intervention that come from the communities of the future. One of those interventions is the capital overlook that you see here which marks the axis down Maryland Avenue from the capital, as it meets a more fluid edge along the Potomac. It really is about the dynamic interplay of city and river. You also see a shaded canopy of trees here that provide respite from an increasingly hot city and paths that connect to larger regional systems. At the heart of the proposal is a transformation of this singular pathway around the title basin into a woven network, which is more diverse, where people cross paths regularly. In the reservation approach we said, what is the greatest character defining feature of the title basin and we said it's not a single feature, but it is the quality of perambulating around the center. So for us, it was a renewed idea about movement. Here, one of the moments of its highest expression is where the geometry of the city on this bridge overlaps the geometry of water, the paths that surround that creates an opportunity for cherry trees to move up above the land and out of the water flow. And of course that's just one image of what we really see as a possible multiple images, a kind of permanently dynamic future. Thanks, Nate. Thank you, Eric. And now, Sarah Astheimer and James corner. Thank you, Nate. And thank you everybody. It's a great pleasure. I just firstly like to thank our team. Sarah Astheimer, Megan Bourne, Aaron Kelly, John jail. Thank you. Slide please Nate. We approach this. I mean, this is look, it's an amazing and important site. We wanted to construct an argument really. And so we actually developed three schemes and the schemes have to do with different ideas about nature, different ideas about this site, different ideas about transformation and time. There's an inevitability to flood and to decline and to damage you unless something is done. In this first scheme, we called it curate entropy, let nature take over, and we built an elevated ring walk that would connect the title basin to the National Mall, but really allow the site to literally decline as a ruin where nature begins to take over next. And, you know, there's an air of melancholia, there's an air of sort of sadness, there's a sort of inevitability to it, but it does allow for reflection on time. Next. And this is sort of a provocative image but it does show the idea of ruins, the sort of poetics of ruins, and the interrelationship between natural time and cultural memory. Next. This is much more sort of radical and spectacular and transformative we call it the archipelago we actually allow the river to become permanent in the top in what is today the title basin create a series of islands that protect the monuments. Next. And again create a very watery landscape with new hills and topographies and gardens with bridges and walks and it becomes a totally new transformation and a new destination. Next. And finally, a protect and preserve scheme where we make the title basin better than it's ever been, we restore the cherries we allow the monuments to be restored and protected. We're building an earthwork levy along the Potomac a sculptural earthwork that has a series of buildings and amenities built into it, but it really expands the parkland and creates a new product where the basin itself is preserved next. And you can see this new landscape adjacent to the Potomac and the title basin. Next. And finally, just a sort of a making it more classic more classical more timeless than ever. Next. And so really, there are three schemes, we don't have a favorite, neither one is more important than another is that we put them out there for discussion and conversation around the inevitability of how nature intersects with cultural monuments and cultural memory. Thank you James. And now we have Susanna Drake D land studio. My anchor position. Before you move on I just want to thank. Oh, can you go back one second. I just want to thank my, my teammates, Josh price and, and our intern Kami co and then also we had support from Fortin Tomasetti and I just want to recognize them, because we couldn't have done it without a really strong team. But now you can advance. We developed a three prong strategy that started with pilots. You can go to the next slide to connect the monuments with them all and reconnect natural systems to absorb more people over a broader landscape and more stormwater, and secure the site to protect them all from flooding to reduce pedestrian and particular conflict and protect the beloved vision experience and idea of the cherry trees. The jetty to the west of the Lincoln Memorial creates an eddy to trap sediment from the Potomac that will naturally build a protective landscape for them all. The jetty becomes a new home for the Martin Luther King Junior Memorial oriented towards Roosevelt Island to the west. It's flanked by a cherry a lay and then becomes a new space to reconnect people with the Potomac waterfront where performances used to occur. In the Jefferson Memorial we created an engaging public space that includes a new plaza with reflecting surface, a protective green security wall and a softened waterfront edge images to the right show later stages that strengthen the connection back to the mall, create new elevated cherry a lay and renew waterfront access with swimmable waters for all eliminated because of racist and sexist attitudes of the past. The landscapes include an elevated embankment, a land bridge that connects or corrects misalignments with the Washington Monument and the White House with force perspective, new ecologically productive and physically protected sponge park edge along historic areas by indigenous tribes for fishing and broad lawns and wide paths to protect the fragile root zone of the cherry trees. The FDR Memorial is moved closer to the World War two Memorial, arcing around a reflecting basin that includes a temporal temporal path that appears and disappears with the tides, hard traffic is moved underground improving pedestrian safety and an elevated edge and constructed sponge scape wetland restore ecology of the marsh landscape and add an important barrier for storm surge. Our project looks forward and back, it recognizes the power of nature and patterns that predated western settlement in this area. It draws upon the legacies of long phone the Hudson River School of those arts and WPA in an approach that reconsider the limitations of modernism, our design embraces environmental and human complexity, and utilizes old and new technology to create a more secure future with our design history is secured with a balance of nature and culture. Thank you. Thank you, Susanna. Thank you all for these inspiring visions, you can find much more information and detail in them on the trust for the National Mall website. But we'd like to use much of this time for a conversation about some of the ideas that have been put forth here. So we have expedited the presentations themselves. I'd like to change this so that we can see more of everyone's faces for the question and answer session, or the discussion rather. I have questions for each of you. In no real particular order. We'll begin with Eric and read Hildebrand scheme. This lab offered a unique format in which to develop your arguments about how to preserve or change the title basin. And I'm wondering how working in this collaborative structure informed your approach. Was there any sort of cross fertilization of ideas through the process that were particularly memorable. Oh, my goodness. Well, I think it is worth identifying that we did all meet in DC, before it was impossible to meet in person. And we spent a whole well we did it twice we did it once as a walk around where we toured the site together and we were really able to have conversations about what we were seeing and share each other's point of view and I do have to say I, I feel like each of us was looking at that site differently in those times and before I was walking with at any one moment. It was, it was eye opening I think we then met and at a sort of midpoint and we presented our work and we all have conversations about it and I, I will say this I think one of the things for us that it did was it helped us focus our energy around a conversation that was two fold one about how do the real hard questions of historic preservation come out and be tested in a place they've never been tested before entirely about sea level rise in a cultural landscape like this. And then it was also to say, let's also not just look back and look at responding to what we know about title change, but to put a cultural lens on it and to say, we understand these sites to be expressions of who we want to be as a country. How do we think about that towards the future and I think those are the conversations I think it allowed us each to take a different track. So they, you know, hopefully, for the public they see five very different ways of thinking about it which aren't just formal arrangements, but their conceptual arrangements. Wonderful anyone else have a thought about the collaborative nature of the process. I think if I made I totally seconded Eric was saying it was very interesting from the beginning how each firm had a particular interest let's put it that way. And so it was very for us it was very liberating that we were not necessarily competing but rather trying to figure out how we can be complimentary I think that allowed us to be a little bit freer into dive into our areas of preference in a way but also our areas of expertise so I think my sense is when I look at all the schemes is that is the accumulation of those ideas that really build up into something and some are a little bit more different aspects than others, but we all took into consideration all those all those aspects because we were basically getting understanding of this from others at the same time we were diving into our own topics so I felt that that was a very useful even if we were not meeting constantly and checking on each other what you're doing. Rather we were going on our own but knowing a little bit what everybody else was doing. I thought that was pretty fruitful. It seems like you came together and then you started to differentiate. After the kind of reflecting on what the others were doing. I think like almost said that there was a certain freedom knowing that you could you could in some ways focus and keep your energies tied to not trying to solve every single aspect is like they said in my presentation can be overwhelming and so knowing that all the whole group was going to address everything collectively we could just choose to not focus on every little thing and dive deeper in some ways into the areas we thought are fruitful. I also find it really interesting at that point review that in effect the DNA of each firm so present in each proposal, you know, you really saw the personalities emerge that you know from past work is really interesting to see it come out. Rodrigo I could see that with your your team's work, you came to two ideas very quickly that first this is a long term phased project, but that there's work that you could do very soon and immediately or should be done immediately. But then there's also a longer term project of developing a new cultural aesthetic as you called it. I think some of the main drivers are for evolving a cultural aesthetic. And how do they relate to the idea of preservation. I think that the key driver for all of this is flexibility, right, is that, you know, when you design a landscape unlike a building, which is so these days are so purpose built landscape, which is designed for 100 years or more has to be able to adapt to all sorts of unforeseen pressures uses people, you know, we've been having conversation with us and Suzanne is team, you know, we said well in 100 years is Washington even going to be the capital of this city, you know, so much may happen that time. And so the question is like how, how can you set up a process that is adaptable. And sort of recognizes what you can do within your generation your lifetime, and sort of just set that groundwork. I was very much informed by, you know, I have the fortune of living here and having spent time in these spaces and also I mean, you know, very familiar with the history of them and seeing how long it's taken them to evolve. And realizing that, you know, everybody does their part and we're part of this continuum we build on the work of each other. It's not a blank slate and so recognizing and respecting that past I think is the starting point. Because it challenges the notion of historic preservation a bit to think about this place evolving as much as your various schemes suggest the Sarah I was wondering, you know, you're working on the CNO canal in Georgetown, and confronting some of the historic preservation challenges with it in real time not in this more imaginative scenario that the ideas lab is set up. What have you learned working in that situation that maybe informed your approach to the title basin, or are these just too radical to compare to two different to compare. It's a great question I mean I think when we started our work on the title basin we had just completed a series of investigations and alternative ways to move forward with the CNO canal as part of an environmental assessment. And I think maybe there were some seeds of inspiration from having just moved through that process that we as a team explored three future scenarios in a way that great entropy scheme was sort of like the no action alternative. The island archipelago sort of the most radical rethinking. And for us I think, you know, on the CNO canal, we had been just really seriously thinking about what is the appropriate balance between preservation. And what is the appropriate and change. And at the title basin, I think those issues are really amplified in incredible ways because the title basin is a site that literally floods every day and is in a constant state of change. But it also is this place that speaks of permanence you know it houses so many of our memories and our collective, you know, cultural sort of memories and expression so I think it very much informed our thinking and I, and I think in a way. The three schemes can offer a little bit of a critique on sort of how we might move through these these environmental assessments. And in a way, you know, can you still use that framework, when you have a landscape that is in such a state of radical change, you know just how do you confront that preservation when, when the world we live in is so dynamic. And the river itself is going to do the assessment at some point right right will actually rearrange things if we don't work work to to deal with it. Jim you're following up with Sarah here and your team your team developed three really rich and compelling schemes I see that you've put yourself in one of them. I don't know if they you've actually picked a favorite now or not. But the, you know that fully saturated image of the FDR Memorial is going to enter our collective imagination whether anything like that actually happens I think. I, I'm wondering if, if this is the place to kind of unbridle the river and create a new fluvial edge, or if, if you would, you know, take the preserve and protect scheme, you know if handed the job. We've had a number of media. People interview us and they keep asking just like you did if we have a favorite. Right. Honest to goodness, we do not. Yes. All of them, I think have some merit. They have pros, and they have cons. I think that's what makes it interesting to actually use all three as a means of comparing and contrasting and fostering a conversation around these very, very challenging issues, you know that we've all pointed out the sort of inevitability of change. And yet monuments have something that that they never want to change. So this dialogue between permanence and change. When, when does permanence become a still life. When does it actually lose its resonance and its relevance. And literally when does nature just become ruinous and loses its benevolent aspect so there's. So we have these three schemes but we do view them equally. We kind of love them all. We curated them as you would children. They're very different, but they all have their own merits, I think. Very good. I remember you talking about postpartum I don't know if this is an acceptable thing now but with the high line. So here, the fact that you, you enjoy them so much is just wonderful. The one thing that you do do is that you keep the kind of positions of the fixed more fixed elements the monuments and Susanna your schemes challenge that the structure. You take on the challenge by moving FDR a couple of the other schemes do it as well. And the MLK memorials kind of like their pieces on a chessboard. It suggests that the monuments themselves should be preserved, but that their arrangement is perhaps more malleable. It's obviously a benefit to bringing some of these structures to a higher ground. I'm wondering what sort of conceptual ground you find in shifting the arrangement of things in this area. We didn't take any of those decisions lightly. We tend to do very deep research for our projects and, you know, even to the point of looking at the, you know, the deeper geomorphological patterns and the geology but, but I think what we're trying to find is the DNA of the place. So we're trying to figure out sort of the cultural patterns that have created the place and then also sort of the ecological patterns that created it back when historically but then also how those forces will reshape the landscape over time. And this was something that, you know, I think showed up in our mama resin currents exhibition as well, you know, looking at the 1625 water line and recognizing, Hey, wait a second that water line is going to come back. We're looking at the same thing here, understanding that that that water line, the path of the river wants to maintain its its full breadth and not be channelized. I think what we did was look at the position of the monuments which seem to be not necessarily as as resonant as it could based on all this history that we we examined and and put things in very significant places. So, for instance, you know, moving the, the, the FDR Memorial over closer to the World War two Memorial and having it kind of nestle around that and, and talking about that relationship. I think probably more significantly or more, perhaps more controversially, creating that big jetty online with the mall, and placing the Martin Luther King junior Memorial there in a position where it's looking west, sort of out to the future, an idea of the future instead of looking back towards Jefferson. And, and re rehabilitating or reviving an open space that used to exist there they used to be public performances there they used to be public space there before highways destroyed that. And so it's commentary as much on the positioning of the memorials it is as it is also about the car and the relationship of the car to the mall. And I think that that should not be given as much prominence as it is. So, you know, there's, there's that layer as well, the layer of infrastructure that was kind of applied onto this that, that, you know, it's given kind of too much power, I think. So, so we were critiquing all of those issues or sort of trying to meld all those different issues and bring it all together with our scheme. So, yeah, there's so many layers to it, I think it's fantastic. One of the things that it seems to do to me is that it critiques the idea of manifest destiny. I don't know exactly how you talk about that. But by putting that that important, our leading figure of the civil rights movement in that spot it, it questions the way that the National Mall is set up and what it symbolizes. I mean, I love this about what Susanna did and the question I would say we, we were timid we were interested in this question I think we backed off a little bit but I think the notion that the writing of history is fluid and it changes by the context in which we understand it I mean Susanna made that very clear in the choices that she made so you can say preservation is about preserving a set of arrangements that tell a single story. Or that can evolve actually in the story of who we are can evolve over time. And maybe there would be a notion that, you know, that's the arrangement for the next 100 years but actually 100 years from now there's a new arrangement I mean I just think that's a fascinating kind of conversation to engage in. I agree. I think it was a bold move. Like poking the bear, you know, why not. The history should be something that is considered to be a dynamic idea, you know, we don't just, we can't just be in this, this idea of, of embalming a particular moment in time, right, we need to be looking forward. Yes. And that's what almost work does, right. It does. So many of the, you know, a lot of the visions that we've seen today. Incorporate the the marsh, they colonize the title basin area. And it's usually for ecological or aesthetic reasons. But the idea of bringing this bringing a hush harbor builds on a kind of cultural history. We have enslaved African Americans, finding refuge and spirituality in swamps. I think this is a critical narrative to tell now, especially as a, as an expression of anti racism. And so given the layered meanings and roles that the title basin has had. This is the designer at any given moment of curate the, the narratives that are told in a place like this and, and how might we rescue and lift up narratives in this situation. So the crux of the way that we were tackling this, this challenge or this, this exercise rather and this is what I was saying that there was some, some freedom into being able to test many ideas. And, and we went in our case we we tested like four different scenarios and each one of them focus on a particular narrative from sort of the technology of making the, the basin to some of the harder topics to discuss I guess so one of the three, the mantras that we had and Walter and our studio and I'll talk a lot about was this idea of sort of telling the truth, and this is something that we try to do in a lot of our projects as well and that sometimes means how do you bring something that is definitely a part of the, of the way that this project evolved or the way that the site evolve, bring it to light, and then try to find a way to transform it for the positive. We always talk about this notion that it's a privilege to fix things. And so we as landscape architects we spend our time sort of going around sites and figure out what do we fix and how do we make it better and what do we solve problems somebody else with good intentions or maybe some bad intentions created in the past that has led us to where we are. So I think this is part of what we think is super important here because of the position of the basin within our nation's capital and because DC, in particular, was built over a lot of very dark stories that are not all beautiful, you know, monuments that represent our moments of glory, but that it does sort of bring that sort of uglier past if you may. To us is always this notion of and I think Jim was beginning to suggest that that those scenarios tend to be where do you stop looking back what how far or what how many of those layers you bring forward, and that's never a straight answer. So what we were trying to do here is sort of mix how the intervention in the physical space like creating a swamp, right, can then bring some idea of remembering some cultural layers that may inform how we move forward in the future, understand our actions in the past but also turn it into something that may be relevant today and open the dialogue I mean that's part of what are the mall in the capital is and should be about it's about representing all of us today but also it should be a platform for us to look back and say we screwed up, we have to do things better in the future etc. So, I don't know, we feel like in landscape is an amazing medium to try to describe all of that. It certainly is the there are a number of questions coming in from the audience that you have today. And some of them this or ask about whether universal design or accessibility has been a significant component of these schemes. I wonder if any one of you wanted to comment on that. How are you thinking about accessibility. Seems like we could talk about this on different levels accessibility in terms of cultural accessibility but also the physical accessibility. I was just going to comment on that brief. See, when you look at all the schemes, there's obviously an understanding of how right now the way that you walk on the path because sometimes it's impossible to walk through it because of sort of subsidence and some road issues and obviously flooding. But also that other layer precisely how do we, you know, explore or open some of these other stories that would make other users and everybody who comes to visit from Americans to any other visitor from around the world to understand and feel welcome and not, you know, feel like there's some limitations there so I think it to those two degrees of accessibility I think are crucial. In terms of the schemes you can kind of see all of them, the universal access in the intercept so like the physical universal access is one of the main things that all the schemes did resolve, I feel. I mean, maybe I'll add that I think we were very interested in the physical experience of being on that path and moving around different kinds of views the way in which you are held by the cherries and certain perspectives the way in which your view is directed. And to a certain extent I think we read that as a kind of a universal kind of communicating right it's physical it's embodied it doesn't matter whether I come from here or there I have this history or that history. So I say that in that way I feel like a lot of the moves that are about how you experience that space were the ways in which we were thinking about that kind of opening up of accessibility. A lot of the schemes eliminated the barriers to we we made better, I mean just universally across the board I think people made, made better connections to the mall, there were, you know, fewer road crossings there was, you know, there weren't there were times that had these larger staircases or made spaces that were inaccessible I think, I think it's a natural for us as landscape architects to be designing for universal design is just ingrained in what we do. So, you know, there's kind of that as a baseline and then you move forward into adding a lot of these other layers. And then on the sort of cultural side, there's something it's easy to forget how unique in some ways this landscape is inside of a city and it's sort of openness and it's vastness. You know, when you're in deep inside of it you almost forget that the city didn't near you because of the relationship to the river. And that openness and public nature of it I think is really important in terms of how it welcomes everybody and you know I moved here when I was 10 years old as an immigrant from Bolivia and so that that stuck with me, you know, living in the city is how welcoming it was in public spaces. And I think a lot of the scheme sort of don't lose the side of this landscape as even though it's fairly small piece of ground that has a vastness to it that makes it feel more public and accessible than a lot of other places and keep that. I think a lot of us realize that we have to raise the ground to deal with some of the water levels and so just that raising of the ground within the scale we're talking about, you know, maintains those sight lines and that expansive nature. Yes, one of the amazing qualities of it is being so close to the water. You want to be with the water, but a lot of the schemes, you know, inevitably you've got to lift it up to get away from the water. There's another kind of set of questions coming in from the audience that have to do with the idea of moving the monuments so that's that's one they're just thinking about that the and another is, is there room for more memorials. Do you see within this next 100 years, a kind of way of continuing to fulfill that commemorative function, but it's not about the past and maybe figures that are that are coming forward now. So in our scheme, you know, one of the challenges is how tight the edges around the water right and so we try to expand into what are now ball fields, and even to the south to the golf course. There is a lot of other ground there that can become a site for other things but I think you also have to start questioning what, what does the memorial mean in 20 years and 50 years you know I think, you know with Vietnam we move beyond the statue of the, you know, person who came into the hero sort of worship, into something more experiential, and so as the whole evolution of what it means to make a memorial expands. You know, it doesn't have to be a piece of ground, is it a relationship, is it a visual connection on their theme these stories within the grounds that are already there. There's space but I think the whole question of what memorials become needs to be answered by, you know, each subsequent effort to make a little it's not something that one designer's going to solve the grand big vision sort of gesture. Very good. The Sarah assured me there'd never be a lull here because James corner is in on the panel. But the, it's interesting to me that the title basin was listed as one of the 11 most endangered places on the 11 most endangered places list in 2019. And we're here in a historic preservation conference but we're talking about reimagining the this place in grand ways. And it's interesting to me that we're, we're both classifying at something to preserve, but now projecting ideas upon it, as though it is something that that needs to radically change. It's a bit of a paradox. So, to to the historic preservations in the audience, I'm not one I'm already sort of just enjoying the range of ideas that are that are here, but to the historic preservationists in the audience. How can we keep things there that we really value. And what is it that we keep. What is the what is the hierarchy of decision making that will go into the next 100 years. And what will we need to or choose to get destroyed by the river or absorbed by the river. I guess I mean in my mind the thing that was interesting about this is that I mean traditionally in a preservation model you would say if you don't, you don't change it if it exists but here you cannot not change it you we know that everything has to give. And, you know you can say that the easy answer is to reinforce by building the seawall and protect everything. But of course in doing that if you literally did that and I think actually field operations did that model in our early like work, but you actually destroy everything else that is significant about the place. And that would be a simple approach of just like building up the seawall and so I think what's interesting among our teams is everyone kind of honed in on a different question of what is significant about this place and what is it that you're trying to preserve. And you know in a very simple way we said like I said it's about that path it's that experience of walking around the path and the kind of narrative that evolves there. So we recognize that things will have to move things will have to change. But if we can preserve that and the cultural kind of experience that comes with that. We preserved the general relationships of the memorials because we understood that the conversations they were having is something that we could preserve. It's the experience of being against the cherries, but they have to move upland they just can't stay where they are so you agree to give up the other thing which is the space between the cherry and the water. So, all of it is a negotiation and of course, in a big public process you'd have to have that debate over and over and over again, right, about which ones, which part of that you're trying to preserve but. And those are the hard questions and they involve all of the value systems we all bring to this but in reality, we have to have them because it can't, it can't stay put. So the hope here also is that these may be a model to start rethinking what what do we define as preservation because, you know, with, with many ways to sort of remember things nowadays used to be like you have to keep the object that's the only way to move, you know, forget it but now one of the things that we were very fascinated initially in researching the site is obviously that he was created with that the time was a reflection of the ingenuity of American, you know, engineering and there was all this sort of gates and things that worked in sort of in a perfect harmony to make it work. Nowadays they don't work so but but the question is maybe what we are trying to remember here celebrate is that idea of ingenuity and that means that now we need to bring what is the new layer to that for the current conditions and anticipating a sea level right so maybe the way to preserve that moment in time or that memory is through some other medium in which we document, create virtual realities even or something and then let the entropy happen as James was saying so then the new layer is celebrating and remembering how we have been very creative before and now we're more creative in this new era and that may be another way to discuss preservation that I know for for sort of the sort of straightforward definition of preservation that really is in suggesting destruction but on the other hand is bringing the memory of what we think is a valuable layer. I don't know what you guys think. Go ahead sir. I was going to say I think it's really incredible that the trust invited a bunch of landscape architects, because we are medium is is in a constant state of change and I think all of us one consistent thing is that we all approach the project. I think that was not as sort of a series of discrete and static monuments, but we looked at the site and sort of the systems and the monuments as part of that as a cohesive whole. And so I think that was something just incredible that we brought brought to the table, I mean landscape is this evolving entity and I think one question I would have after Susanna makes a comment is sort of, would anyone change what they would have proposed that's sort of the radical change that's been happening in the country. We're all inside for the symposium. There's tremendous cultural reckoning and I think we we just constantly look at those balances. And it's an interesting interesting thing to think about even for the future. You're the last comment. You're the last comment. It's just a brief comment, just taking in what what you all said it and it gets to the idea of figuring out what the DNA of the site is right and we were all handed this really thick really fascinating historic report on the title base and that's so really different directions that that you know anyone of us could have pursued. And but there's a lot of history that that was that isn't necessarily revealed or that we didn't know about until we started doing this project and we thought well how do we get that information out there and how do we communicate that. I think one of the things that's really exciting about this is that we all read it and we all were able to start to sort of really make a much richer exposition of what's there what could be there in the future. And so that's that's kind of what I want to conclude with it's just really understanding the DNA of the place and and figuring out how that can become a representation of who we are as Americans. Thank you. You all make tremendous arguments. The, I'd like to thank all the presenters, the advisors. Sarah Warden, Teresa Durkin, and sort of the brains and organizational muscle behind the ideas lab. It's wonderful to hear from all of you today. Thank you for sharing the work and I highly recommend that those who saw this then go seek more information at the trust for the National Mall or National Trust for Historic Preservation sites. Thank you all, and take care.