On Friday, December 8, four students of the Environmental Planning workshop–Kitt Urdang, Dover Sikes, Brian Lavinio, and Tiffany Wu–gave the final Log Lunch lecture of the semester. The class is an opportunity for students to get real world experience solving climate change issues in the community. Each group of students is paired with a client, who in this case was Andy Schlatter, the director of facilities and campus planning at Mass MoCA. The group worked with Andy to reorient the museum’s campus to better suit the outdoor space, helping to make the site more welcoming for visitors.
The students began with a brief history of the Mass MoCA site, including the previous ownership of Sprague Electric, a company that dumped industrial waste–including chemicals such as PCB’s–into the Hoosic river. After the 1980’s post-industrial decline in North Adams, the state decided to bring an art industry to the area through a contemporary arts museum, opened in 1989. Since then, Mass MoCA has brought in millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs, becoming an anchor institution of economic and cultural power. With this history in mind, the student’s centered their project around the relationship between Mass MoCA and North Adams, using a “place-based framework” that focuses on people and community building, serving as a bottom-up approach for environmental planning.
Due to the history of chemical pollution at the site, the current physical space of Mass MoCA presents some limitations; much of the contaminated soil in the area has either been removed or sealed off by concrete caps, making it safe for visitation and current use, but occupational and agricultural use are still not permitted. With these limitations in mind, along with the intention of working from a place-based mindset, the group set out with Andy to accomplish three goals through their work: to get Mass MOCA better equipped to engage in outdoor spaces, to tell the story of Mass MoCA’s industrial history through these outdoor spaces, and to improve the museum’s sustainability efforts.
From these goals, the group came up with a list of recommendations. At the entrance to MoCA, in Courtyard A, there are several picnic tables and raised beds in the summer, but the space is not used beyond parking and delivery in the colder months. Some potential alternatives include artistic display rather than concrete, adding fountains or seating that could be there year-round, or turning the area into green space. Another potential option is an ice skating rink in the winter. The students also recommended the installation of a mural or a green wall in Courtyard C, just through the main lobby, involving native plants, pollinator species, and capturing rainfall. A green wall would survive all year round and provide a focal point for the otherwise underutilized space. The mural would bring art into the outdoors and allow visitors to engage with the physical material of the landscape. The group even thought of potential uses for the bridges across the Hoosic River, suggesting light show installations and plant features to turn the unappealing, under-utilized concrete into an attractive aspect of the campus, making the river a defining aspect of the visit.
Through all of their recommendations, the students emphasized the importance of working with the features of Mass MoCA that already exist, uplifting its histories and incorporating them into the present identity of the place and its community. As they closed out their speech, the group finished with the notion of change as a central aspect of place, and that to plan for a deeper relationship between place and people, that change has to accepted and celebrated.
The Log Lunch team rounded out a hugely successful semester of cooking with a potato and squash gratin, onion soup with thyme, crusty bread with olive and rosemary, spicy tahini beet dip, roasted carrots with harissa and pomegranate, a Thai cabbage salad made with romaine lettuce and kale, and–of course–their famous toffee chocolate chip cookies. The produce this week was provided by Full Well Farms. Stay up to date on our website to apply to be a Log Lunch cook next semester!
BY CAMPBELL LEONARD ’25