Hello, friends. I hope you’re well and feeling centered and engaged with the world. I’m writing, primarily, to share some news (hm…a “newsletter?"):
This email is the last thing I am doing before I start on the road for my travel research! As in, I leave today! First stop is the mining areas of West Virginia where mountaintop removal mining has radically altered the landscape, with, of course, significant and dramatic implications for the built environment and water resources. Then to Asheville, NC, then Raleigh, then Charleston, SC, (all to visit friends, primarily) then further afield, in the generally Southern direction. Currently deciding if I go all the way down to Miami (for obvious city-water related connections) or pivot West before the Florida panhandle. (Thoughts? And again, if you live somewhere in between Maryland and Florida, or between Florida and Los Angeles for that matter, reach out! I’d love to see you. And, truly, probably intended to reach out but have been above-averagely avoidant in planning this trip.)
If you haven’t heard about my travel research project: I was awarded a generous travel fellowship upon graduation, and pitched in the application to study water infrastructure and water scarcity’s impact on urbanism/ city life. Then, in a hubristic and potentially regrettable bolt of inspiration, I bought a camcorder from the web and decided I would make a documentary (despite my complete lack of filmmaking experience and slim knowledge of water resource management). I am tentatively calling it WATERWORKS. You can read a bit more here.
And the name change. In short, I’ve decided to hang out my shingle! I am pleased to introduce Field Works, an experimental design and research company of which I am sole proprietor. The past month, I’ve been thinking a lot (constantly) about the type of work I’d like to do, and how one might practice design and design research both full-time (i.e. make money) and ethically. I still don’t have the answer, but I know one thing: I care about studying and improving how we live and make our way through the space around us, and I want to try to keep doing it as long as I’m able. On the name (in a small nutshell): I see a disjunction between how we study and design our living infrastructure, in the “studio”(i.e. inside, separated) and the material reality of the world we live in. Whatever the scale, from a piece of furniture to an urban plan, good design work begins and ends with observation and exploration outside the studio— in the field. I’ll be doing a lot of “field work” on this road trip, and I hope to continue making such observations wherever I next land. And so this newsletter, formerly Broken Fences Almanac, will now be fieldnotes, the newsletter of Field Works.
Is Field Works a proper design practice? A form of conceptual/ social-practice art? A way for me to cosplay my childhood dreams of being an adventurer/explorer/ scientist? I suppose the answers to these questions are in its reception (i.e. if I get any clients). Really, it's just a way for me to construct legibility in my own life, a structure in which to concentrate my diffused and disparate passions (history, research, writing, photography, building things, design) into a shorthand which I can use to explain what I am doing with my life and not sound crazy (maybe?) And, an even slimmer maybe, get paid for it?
fieldnotes is a change in name only. This newsletter will retain much of the same form (sporadic, rambling) as Broken Fences Almanac, just hopefully with a bit more legibility, and over the next few months, will serve as a log of my travels and discoveries along the way.
A (fledgling) website for the practice can be found at www.field-works.org
I’ve also, against my better judgement, made an Instagram @field__works
Finally, I've got a new email: ben@field-works.org
I’ll go ahead and sign off here. Thank you, so much, for reading this little bulletin. Writing them certainly helps me to get my head around things, and it means so much when some of you reply that you enjoyed reading. A more fun one should be coming soon that isn’t just life updates, and I promise from here on out they will feature more fun/ fascinating/ hopeful observations and tidbits and less existential neurosis! ◬
This email is the last thing I am doing before I start on the road for my travel research! As in, I leave today! First stop is the mining areas of West Virginia where mountaintop removal mining has radically altered the landscape, with, of course, significant and dramatic implications for the built environment and water resources. Then to Asheville, NC, then Raleigh, then Charleston, SC, (all to visit friends, primarily) then further afield, in the generally Southern direction. Currently deciding if I go all the way down to Miami (for obvious city-water related connections) or pivot West before the Florida panhandle. (Thoughts? And again, if you live somewhere in between Maryland and Florida, or between Florida and Los Angeles for that matter, reach out! I’d love to see you. And, truly, probably intended to reach out but have been above-averagely avoidant in planning this trip.)
If you haven’t heard about my travel research project: I was awarded a generous travel fellowship upon graduation, and pitched in the application to study water infrastructure and water scarcity’s impact on urbanism/ city life. Then, in a hubristic and potentially regrettable bolt of inspiration, I bought a camcorder from the web and decided I would make a documentary (despite my complete lack of filmmaking experience and slim knowledge of water resource management). I am tentatively calling it WATERWORKS. You can read a bit more here.
And the name change. In short, I’ve decided to hang out my shingle! I am pleased to introduce Field Works, an experimental design and research company of which I am sole proprietor. The past month, I’ve been thinking a lot (constantly) about the type of work I’d like to do, and how one might practice design and design research both full-time (i.e. make money) and ethically. I still don’t have the answer, but I know one thing: I care about studying and improving how we live and make our way through the space around us, and I want to try to keep doing it as long as I’m able. On the name (in a small nutshell): I see a disjunction between how we study and design our living infrastructure, in the “studio”(i.e. inside, separated) and the material reality of the world we live in. Whatever the scale, from a piece of furniture to an urban plan, good design work begins and ends with observation and exploration outside the studio— in the field. I’ll be doing a lot of “field work” on this road trip, and I hope to continue making such observations wherever I next land. And so this newsletter, formerly Broken Fences Almanac, will now be fieldnotes, the newsletter of Field Works.
Is Field Works a proper design practice? A form of conceptual/ social-practice art? A way for me to cosplay my childhood dreams of being an adventurer/explorer/ scientist? I suppose the answers to these questions are in its reception (i.e. if I get any clients). Really, it's just a way for me to construct legibility in my own life, a structure in which to concentrate my diffused and disparate passions (history, research, writing, photography, building things, design) into a shorthand which I can use to explain what I am doing with my life and not sound crazy (maybe?) And, an even slimmer maybe, get paid for it?
fieldnotes is a change in name only. This newsletter will retain much of the same form (sporadic, rambling) as Broken Fences Almanac, just hopefully with a bit more legibility, and over the next few months, will serve as a log of my travels and discoveries along the way.
A (fledgling) website for the practice can be found at www.field-works.org
I’ve also, against my better judgement, made an Instagram @field__works
Finally, I've got a new email: ben@field-works.org
I’ll go ahead and sign off here. Thank you, so much, for reading this little bulletin. Writing them certainly helps me to get my head around things, and it means so much when some of you reply that you enjoyed reading. A more fun one should be coming soon that isn’t just life updates, and I promise from here on out they will feature more fun/ fascinating/ hopeful observations and tidbits and less existential neurosis! ◬