 Hello, I'm Paul Edmondson, President of the National Trust for Swarth Reservation. Like many long-time Washingtonians, like many visitors from across the country and across the world, of a deep appreciation of the National Mall Title Basin is one of our nation's most significant cultural landscapes. Until our current time of social distancing, I've joined the millions of people descending to see the cherry blossoms in their glory, and have also been a frequent visitor on summer bike rides and walks. But also, like most people, I've focused on the beautiful setting, and not necessarily on the crumbling pavement beneath my feet. The truth is, the Title Basin is an endangered cultural landscape. Subsidence, daily flooding, and failing infrastructure threaten this important site. That's why the National Trust for Swarth Reservation has teamed up with the Trust for the National Mall on the Title Basin Ideas Lab presented by American Express. This is not a design competition, but a collaborative forum to explore innovative solutions to the many complex threats facing the Title Basin. During the current pandemic, the memorials to American ideals and the beautiful landscape of the Title Basin remind us that as a nation, we've overcome incredible challenges in the past, and we will overcome this one as well. Our historic sites and cultural landscapes reflect our own resiliency, and even in ordinary times they serve as places of comfort and inspiration. Today I am honored to introduce a panel discussion among principals from the five landscape design firms participating in the Title Basin Ideas Lab. Each firm has its own approach to designing bold, provocative, and creative solutions to preserve, enhance, and revitalize the Title Basin. The resulting designs will be part of a curated digital exhibit paired with events to engage the public in the work of the Ideas Lab and the future of the Title Basin. So without further ado, I'm pleased to present this opportunity to explore new ideas to ensure the future of this important national treasure. So I'd like to now introduce our panel moderator, Edward Krekmalnikov, who is the Director of Public Engagement Programs at Trust for the National Mall, an organization that we've been working with so closely on this Ideas Lab. Edward? Thank you very much, and thank you to our presenters, advisors, and everyone who is joining us now or at some point in the future. I'd like to reintroduce our panelists, and as I do so, please turn on your webcam and on your tear microphone. Welcome back, Katherine Gustafson from GGM, Walter Hood from Hood Design Studio, Gary Hillerbrand from Reed Hillerbrand, Susanna Drake from D-Land Studio, and James Corner from Field Operations. We have just 15 to 20 minutes, and much to discuss in a very short time. I'll start and conclude with a pre-prepared question and may interject from time to time, especially with questions from the audience. So most of the time, this is a platform and a forum for the panelists to discuss amongst themselves and ask each other questions. There's no suborder, so whoever wants to respond first can do so, and I'll keep track of the time. Again, the first question, how do we think of historic preservation in the face of profound uncertainties, especially climate change? Will the idea and practice of preservation have to change? And whoever wants to go can go. No pressure. Part of the reason that I shared the history of the evolving landscape was to talk about how there are many important moments that happen in relation to certain periods in history. And that preservation is tricky because you have to figure out what moment to preserve. And when we're looking at a landscape that is an evolving thing, and it's always changing, I think we have to reflect a certain level of dynamism in that landscape. And I guess part of my thinking is that sort of understanding what was there hundreds of years ago with the sort of channels of the natural landscape is as important as kind of the cultural elements that have developed over time, and that somehow, as we move forward, we need to be figuring out the integration of those elements. So that's kind of where we started with our design. We're trying to draw upon as many of those factors as we could, but ultimately understanding the power of nature. Edward, there's been 30 years, 40 years really, of really good work in preservation in landscape architecture. We've all watched it and we've all participated in it. We've situated ourselves at varying distances from it sometimes. But I think the guidance doesn't go far enough when we're looking at a class of historic assets that are truly threatened and simply cannot remain in place. And the guidance really doesn't provide for the ability to migrate things outward. As we've all suggested today, this is needed. And so I think, you know, this may be that, you know, the so-called rehabilitation framework that is set out in the guidelines simply has to evolve in some of the ways that we've shown today. I think also to add to that, I think there's two things that are going on. One is a physical thing and then one is interpretive. And I think in all the different pieces, the importance of the interpretive is, I think in Walters, it was specifically very much an interpretive piece. The reason you put a memorial is to memorize and memorialize and it is interpretive. And so the preservation of the memorial, but then how is that preservation projected through time and space and through communication, I think needs to be part of it. This is Walter. I think another way to think about preservation is to also think about letting things go. I mean, I was particularly taken by Jim's, we call the melancholic, but this idea that maybe we do have to let certain things go to actually begin again. And this idea of the constant maintenance of an idea that defines us, when I say us, I'm talking about the U.S. And maybe it's time that we begin to chip away at that. And can we chip at it in a way that one holds it up through a kind of a romance with the one, but also beginning to think about what those new monuments might be in concert with them. Because I think this idea of holding things in time doesn't allow those new here right now for us to come together in this country. You know, whether it's, you know, as Gary pointed out where we are today, you know, in this crazy time, but maybe there's a way to begin to think about origin story here in D.C. And so, Jim, I would say it's not that dystopian for me. I actually found that a nice revelation. Yeah, I think the Europeans have addressed preservation issues in a more advanced way than we have in the U.S. Yeah. I mean, 20 years ago, they were trying to simply reproduce the historical artifact. So whether it was a cathedral or a castle or ruin, they would try to add onto that or fix it in an exactly the same technique. But now they realize that whatever they do today needs to be of today. And there needs to be a very clear trace or very clear legibility between the original and the change. So this issue of authenticity is key. And so if we, if the ruins are to, if the monuments are to become ruins, then that process of ruination is, is, is part of the spectacle and part of the time. If there are new amendments to the landscape or to structures around those, then those new amendments in a sense need to reflect the time that they're built designed and built today, which is today. And I think this collage or this brick a large of the original with the new insertions, the new graphs that we add on today. And whatever comes tomorrow is what I think preservation should be aiming for an authenticity of time instead of a sort of a simple reproduction of an of an idea of history. I don't think anybody is suggesting a reproduction of history. I think the, the, the existing monuments are there and they, they exist and any new monument or new landscape will be of its time when we'd hope and I don't think there's any suggestion about going back to historical and doing McMillan plan or something else. But I, I find that the, I work in Europe a lot and I know this what you're talking about James is the new has to be new and the old has to be old but you still fix the old, by the way, you don't just add new you do fix the old and so I think here we have the old and we need to preserve them and then the new does have to be of that timeline, but I just want to make that distinction. And a follow up to that, as I may. What is the symbolic nature of title based on and how does that overlap with the practical utility. That is what is the symbolic. What is the title based on me and how do you interpret it all the time. It means many, many things. There's no single guarantee. It wasn't built with any, with any intentionality for symbolism or even recreation. And then later, it became a great symbolic landscape, especially with the cherries coming from Japan. And that's reaching out to internationalism. And then more recently it's become a sort of recreational where families come and enjoy the place as if it's a kind of a recreational landscape. So the title basin has had a variety of identities, if you will, from infrastructure to to symbol to kind of monumentality to soft recreational uses. And I think as Walter was pointing out, which I found very interesting, there's a lot of very, very different cultural narrative here as well as very, very different cultural perspective. It makes it very difficult to pin down in a paragraph, you know, the meaning of the title basin because it really does mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But you can say the same about the mall. I think, you know, that we have a kind of national narrative of how democracy is represented in the mall, beginning with L'Enfant Plan. Susanna went through quite a lot of that. We have to question all of that. Some of that is just based on, you know, untruths and really, really questionable, you know, ascendancy to power in the United States in the 20th century. And, you know, this is our time we question these narratives and so if anyone would propose a singular narrative. Walter's project is an artistic view of the opposite of that. It's multiple narratives, many experiences. And if we don't make this title basin about many narratives, we've really missed the mark. But in a way, that's what I find the interesting thing about America, right? I mean, actually if you read the landscape, you read the history of this country, right, from colonial to imperial. That's ingrained in the landscape. You can understand the cultural history of segregation in this landscape. You can understand a lot of things. You can even understand globalization. So, you know, again, America kind of reaches out in different ways. But I just think we need to be good storytellers. And I think that's something that I do believe landscape in the landscape. We can tell those stories and we can create these kind of places of disjunct that things don't always go together. I mean, that's the thing that I'm more interested in, you know, when these things kind of come together, then allow us to talk about them when we create them more congruent that allows us to sort of not talk about things. And are there any questions you have for each other anything that's doubled up during the process or last few months that you've been curious about and wanted to ask the group. It's good to see you guys. It would be nice to have more interaction. Well, you know, one, one would like to think that maybe there is another level of interactions is Anna. And I just think we have placed a very big feast on the table at the National Trust and the trust for them all. And I think maybe you could use our help in unraveling that and kind of recreating the menu, because there's so much here. I think there's, I think there is a discussion between the five of us about the built and unbuilt. And that there, there's, you know, the disparity between the projects is really about the built and unbuilt and the, whether it's, it is a constructed landscape. It is definitely, you know, where there's, you know, floodgates and it is a constructed landscape. But it doesn't look constructed, right? It kind of looks like the opposite of the mall. It looks like more easy going. It's more open. I think somebody talked about it as more free and less constructed. But then, should we actually be bringing in new hard constructions? Or is, is that, I think there's a real debate there about, no matter what we do, we're going to have to do something, right? Or we just let the whole thing flood, which is the opposite. But just how far do we go in construction as an advisory group to say, yeah, it should become this new monumental piece like James proposed this in his last proposal. Or should it be something that there's part of it's constructed or more like Gary's saying, there's not, it's just a landscape this raised and moved. And, you know, as a, we've all come up with different ideas and we can give them all to a client say you decide but I think we're here to be an advisory group and to have a debate about it. And as far as environmental and how much resources we're using, how much resources are we building. And then, are we actually know where we're going, because we're only going to the end of the century. And so are we creating new structures that are going to have to be saved later. I think there's there's a debate on that level. Or did I just put my foot in my mouth. I think it seems sort of inevitable that with DC under the sort of flood hazard that it saw just a few years ago. There's no projections that you know what is going to see in the near future, but there's going to have to be something built along the edge of the Potomac. Whether that's an earthwork or a wall, a straightforward levy, or whether we design that levy in such a way that it becomes popular. That's the city and the investment. The investment that the politicians make isn't simply to create a beautiful park, but is really for infrastructure to protect the city from billions and billions of dollars of damage. So, you know, there's sort of an intelligence in all the different approaches that we've seen today toward trying to fix the bigger problem. In the ways that perhaps engineers could do simpler and maybe a bit cheaper. But at the same time, we fix the problem. We can also make something very, very beautiful and very what we can do a comedy. I think that's the value of all of these five speculations and the exercise in and of itself. At the end of the day, you have to convince some pretty, I don't know what to call them, some pretty stubborn politicians as to why it's worth spending tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars to fix the resiliency issue that DC as a whole is facing. The title book is just a portion of the larger challenge here. I agree, but there's, I mean, I think. Sorry, let me just say one other thing here. I think also there is James, there's economic. The basic of what you're going to lose in tourism or gain in this. I think that the peninsula. I call it the peninsula. I don't know what's legal name is the point. Just if we somehow grab that piece of land also and also raise it up. You could have an economic balance with that you could have more parkland with it. I think going into the brighter, broader scale of things and looking at them and maybe part of this Edward of this think tank is somebody should be doing the economic numbers. You know, like how much development can you do how much are you going to lose from tourism. What are you going to gain, you know, make it a reality even if it's over spread over 100 years. You gotta gotta run the numbers. You can't just take projects like this to people and say, fund it. Well, what are we funding and when and you know so there's there's a reality check to that. Sorry, Suzanne. Oh, not at all. No, that's a great better follow up. I was going to kind of divert a little bit. So, because I think I think one of the big issues is that the Washington DC is representative of the United States, or at least it's, you know, supposed to be. And that the elected officials are operating there, but they're representing the ideas of their constituencies across the country, and that there are a lot of issues happily you know DC is placed at this interesting position it's not directly coastal. It's on a river and represents a landscape that is a happy hybrid because of that. And so, some of the strategies that we're proposing here in this, you know, hypothetical laboratory could potentially be useful to those representatives from Ohio, and Colorado, and Wisconsin or, you know, Alabama, whatever all across the country. And one of the things I thought was really important was something that I think, I mean, Gary and I were sort of touching on it very lightly was with the idea of a regional approach, because the regional development of this landscape is really the major contributor to the flooding that's happening in DC. Yes, we have climate change and we have that's leading to these increased storms. And with these increased storms, you know, we've, we've designed, we've engineered those surrounding landscapes and DC for the 10% storm and now we're getting the, you know, the 10% storm. Much more often, you know, we, we, we now have to kind of change the economics of our engineering systems and change our approach to regional design in order to sort of get back in and protect our cities. And so it's representative of a much larger issue. And if we can use this as a way to highlight some of the things that decision makers might be able to do in their cities in their region across the country. Then I think we might have more power. I want to agree with all of that. I want to agree with all of that, you know, the economic and the political issues that Jim has raised the potential for this to be a model across the nation is what Suzanne is saying, but I am still interested in I think what the, what the two trusts in a way brought to us. Without us the freedom to in some ways ignore it, which is that in all of this, because there are so many assets, we all work on coasts. So much of our culture, our patrimony is in that risk right now that we have to evolve preservation practice. And I think that that debate with this team of really amazing advisors and some really good designers. I think that is the way to move that forward. I'm really hopeful that we can continue to do that. Thank you, Gary. And we have time just for one or two last comments. The last question I was going to ask, but we spoke to it was what are the benefits of the document to use as a precedent, as opposed to a lab format. As opposed to a design competition. What are the benefits of the idea of lab process that you participated in. No winners. Well, it's not a competition because there's nothing to win. But, you know, actually, this is a, this is just purely speculative to begin a process around which the issues here might be taken seriously by the powers that be. And that monies and funds might be allocated and that that's really the big, the big challenge. And so I think the work we've all produced is to try to precipitate an increase more awareness around the issues here and to try to get a sense of urgency. And to also at the same time see the potentials and get excited about the potentials for this. And maybe one day there'll be funding and it'll be a real project and we'll all be competing aggressively but right right now it's, it's really being a largely pro bono effort to take a very significant national importance and symbolic landscape speculate on alternative scenarios. But at the same time try to raise political and cultural and social awareness of the issues. If not desire also to for real change. I love. We have time for one last. And then then we'll conclude. I really appreciated that it was a platform that could enable more ideas. I brought it to my studio at the School of Environmental Design at the University of Colorado Boulder, and it was incredible. What the students were able to do they come from all over the country. And we had sort of parallel efforts. You know, I think that that working on this for them really enriched their views of the country and of the capital and of ideas of democracy, but also ideas of how we move forward in terms of how we interact with the environment. So it was just a really incredibly valuable experience. I'm just really grateful to have been involved, and also grateful to have been, you know, working with all of you. I just want to say one last message. I think when you talk about going out to the public. And what this brings the public, it's kind of simple, either you lose it or you keep it right. Either you lose an entire area that is for the city that is recreational is environmental. It can be part of the memorials, or you're going to lose it. I mean, it's as simple as that. And so, I think that a lot of people are going to be very happy to keep it. And so, and they're going to have these this group of five have come together to show you all different ways to hold on to it. And so I think that's a good message. I mean, we're all saying yeah we need to hold on to it, but kind of how. Or another way to say it is that you can lose it in it. And it can be very powerful. I mean, I think the losses I mean I think I think what the project show though that there is something beautiful about the loss because you gain a lot versus always trying to hold on and I thought there are a lot of ideas there about losing because that's part of life. We got to get used to it. Yeah, it's losing and redeeming at the same time. Right. It's not just losing completely. Anyway, I want to build it. I really think people will want to build something to preserve and to have a space that does environmental and does cultural. Yeah, they all work, you know, I wish we could continue the conversation for probably hours to go, but we've just hit the clock here so we'll have to conclude now on behalf of the National Trust for historic preservation and the trust for the National Mall. Thank you each and every one of you for all of your effort, your profound knowledge and expertise and your vision for sharing out today and in the past meetings. Thank you to our advisors for their assistance along the way. And thank you to everyone listening in. Please stay tuned in the coming months as we continue to build on the ideas lab, the future announcements and events. This has been an absolute pleasure for us. We have many ideas to explore and much, much work to do and much building to do. So thank you all very, very much and take care. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Lovely seeing you all.