EveryVille Competition by La Biennale di Venezia -  project 29 of 40
HON. MENTION
Saavy page 1 (page 2)
Valentina Mele (CANADA), Ya'el Santopinto (CANADA), Amy Norris (CANADA), Shannon Wiley (CANADA)
Human Lawnscapes
What if lawns were removed from Everyville entirely? The lawn is at the root of the exurban crisis: the obsessive culture of private land creates isolated domestic enclaves, while pesticides and spilled gasoline contaminate the water table, and water resources are exhausted to sustain non-native grasses. In the Human Lawnscapes proposal, private lawns become public terrain. Everyville citizens don seed-dropping lawntextiles and become suburban pollinators: sowing the terrain into a shifting lawnscape. Everyville becomes an ever-evolving map of the human trace: A trail of poppies through a parking lot records Mr. X's shortcut to work. Nearby a knitting circle meets, surrounded by geraniums. Citizens emerge out of the isolated indifference of suburbia with a stake in the contested terrain they inhabit: Suburban monoculture becomes a dynamic polyculture in the expanded public realm. What persists over time is the memory of each citizen-pollinator, inscribed in the overgrown lawnscape.