Framing the Forest: Restoring Nova Scotia's Hidden Landscapes of Extraction

Abstract

Nova Scotia is home to vast areas of ecologically unique and sensitive Acadian forest, almost all of which has been cut down and regrown several times, damaging its integrity as habitat for wildlife and as economic and cultural asset. This landscape is now neither human nor wild—a latent, withering wasteland hiding in the hinterlands of the province.

This thesis argues that architecture might actively contribute to the recovery of this ecosystem while providing for a program of forest recovery and public understanding. The project proposes surrogate habitat for endangered organisms, programming for the multiple agents at work in recovery, and the provision for public experience of the forest renewal process. Using narrative to represent several exemplary human and other-than-human agents, this thesis proposes a prototypical architecture of care shaped by the interdependence and overlapping perspectives of the people and organisms who inhabit the recovering clear cut.