Emerging Terrain: Burgeoning Public Interest Design

Speaker: 
Anne Trumble
 
18 Apr 2012
 
5:30 PM
 
Kocimski Auditorium, College of Design

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Anne Trumble is the founder of Emerging Terrain, a nonprofit organization in Omaha that exists to creatively engage the public about factors shaping the built environment. She was responsible for the design and management of West 125th Streetscape in Harlem with the NYC Economic Development Corporation in addition to other streetscapes, greenroofs, parks, and plazas. Trumble began her interest in landscape while growing up on a farm outside of Omaha. She earned an undergraduate degree in horticulture and landscape design from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a Master's of Landscape Architecture from the University of British Columbia. She has studied architecture in Tokyo, Japan, and urban development in Havana, Cuba, and then designed Olympic venues in and around Vancouver.

Emerging Terrain entered the Omaha landscape in 2010 with a mission of creatively engage the public about factors shaping the built environment. Last fall, the organization completed its first public project by covering a prominent vacant grain elevator on the I-80 corridor with super graphics chosen through a juried open call for submissions. The images were selected for their visual and conceptual depth in explaining the interrelatedness of land use, agriculture, and food as embodied by the vacant elevator. The installation was brought to life through a five hundred-person dinner provided and prepared by local chefs and farmers at an 800' long table at the base of the elevator. The combination of the graphic installation and the inclusive performance art of the dinner was intended to create an experience of scales from industrial agriculture to the human body through juxtaposing infrastructures of a concrete grain elevator and a continuous community dinner table. The project has continued with the selection of thirteen more banners on the topic Transport(ation), to complete the entire elevator. Most recently Emerging Terrain was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to conduct a comprehensive mapping, aerial photography, and local resident driving interview project focusing on the peri-urban edges of Omaha.