In fact, I had the exprience of designing with community and animals. In my portfolio, one of the programs is about solving elephant-human conflicts by landscape architecure. So at first, I thought I could make use of the knowledge I learnt from that project. But deeper I go with Marin City project, larger differences I can feel.
Unlike the former program, elephants and human are already connected, we need to build a new relationship between citizens and the animal we choose in this program. For human, understanding each other is so hard, how can we use landscape to increase human awareness of and empathy towards the animal’s existence?
Especially for those animals who don’t have beautiful outlooks as birds and butterflies and those sensitive species, how can we build a balance between the demands from community and animals? It’s a huge challange, and I am continuing to figure it out.
