Imagine a drop of water creating ripples out across a still pond’s surface. Now imagine the pond is 3,800 acres of gorgeous Nevada desert known as the Fly Ranch, and the drop of water is a dome-shaped eco-restoration base surrounded by rings of restorative vegetation. This is the concept for the self-sustaining Ripple design, created by a diverse team of recent alumni and students across AGNR while stuck at home during the pandemic, and selected as one of only ten worldwide winners of the 2020 Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) International Design Challenge.
“The name Ripple comes not just from the shape of the dome and the rings, it’s also an ideology that the things that we do should have an impact,” said (William) Jacob Mast, ‘20 graduate of Environmental Science and Technology (ENST). “And ideas like this about self-sustainability, applied ecology, and environmental restoration–we want those ideas to cascade throughout society and become a movement. So by doing this, we hope that it creates models for others to go off of and further the discussion towards a sustainable future.”
Ripple beat out over 180 submissions from more than 80 different countries around the world. As winners, the team will get to build their design on the Fly Ranch property, recently acquired by the Burning Man Project. These will be the first permanent structures on the ranch, a protected ecosystem with its own maintenance and restoration challenges. Ripple will create a flexible space for humans to regenerate native plant diversity and ecological wisdom of the Great Basin region.
“Ripple is like a ranger base for ecological restoration,” explained Mast. “You can live in this dome, harvest water from the cisterns, grow the food you need from the surrounding gardens, and restore the land. It is all self-sufficient, creating its own power.”
Mast co-leads the team alongside Matt Lagomarsino, ‘18 ENST graduate. The team also features current landscape architecture graduate student Xiaojin Ren (‘19 ENST and Xiamen University graduate), current undergraduate student Israel Orellana in horticulture, also with Plant Science and Landscape Architecture (PSLA), and a ‘20 UMD graduate in English Language and Literature and Film Studies, Melika Tabrizi. Other collaborators include Pierre- Yves Bertholet, who designed the solar energy system, Scherwyn Udwadia, who helped visualize the work, and Bas Kools, who designed the dome and co-founded Geoship SPC, a regenerative architecture firm.
“Two of the main impactful components inside the dome are the seed bank and library,” said Lagomarsino. “As people interact with the library, they learn from the writings and voices of those with regional ecological knowledge, engaging local tribes and other stewards of the land to preserve their wisdom and send it rippling outwards. The seed bank compliments the library in a physical way, as it preserves the genetic diversity of the seeds and ripples the regenerative powers of native plants outwards as well.”
But beyond its technology and functionality, Ripple was designed as a beautiful physical example of permaculture (regenerative and self-sufficient), hopefully making waves to inspire sustainable living. Orellana assembled a list of dozens of plants, prioritizing native species with restorative properties, flowering plants that can attract pollinators and wildlife, and plants with cultural significance to local native tribes.
“The real emphasis of Ripple is that it has to be regenerative and giving back to the environment, and that’s a really key component for permaculture design and composting,” said Orellana. “It takes a lot to maintain things that are unnatural. If you plant natural native plant material, it is less maintenance and works with the environment. We need a movement for people to understand how we play a bigger role in the environment.”
Additionally, Orellana led the design of the composting toilet based on previous research on offgrid living. The compost can be used in the outermost rim on native plant life, with a protective layer of antimicrobial moss acting as a buffer between the outer and inner layers where food is grown.
“It becomes an oasis,” said Mast, “which is actually part of the ecological consideration because when you have so many plants grouped together like this, you create a microclimate–it becomes more hospitable to native plant life and saplings. So if you did want to start more gardens in the desert, you would do something just like this and could expand it outward. It is convenient that it’s good looking, but it was rooted in functionality.”
...concentric circles are the most efficient arrangement for resource management in the desert. And it is, indeed, good looking. All of the pieces come together artistically, philosophically, and scientifically to show what a sustainable future could look like. In this way, Ripple is a perfect example of the functional art that LAGI promotes. An exciting part of the design is the combination of science and art. -Xiaojin Ren
Ripple also hopes to pay equal homage to the land and the indigenous tribes who once lived there. Once the structure is built, Tabrizi will lead an effort to convert Ripple into a museum as an ode to the regional wisdom of the Great Basin area. “We want to celebrate native tribes and how their plants have been used, and what we can learn from their wisdom,” stressed Tabrizi. “We hope that Ripple promotes a more conscious sense of living based on that wisdom.”
The team visited their build site for the first time this summer, surveying the land and water options, and meeting with the other winning teams to build relationships and help bring Ripple to life. They are excited to see this work and the overall mission of Ripple come to fruition.
By Samantha Watters
