MY HOME iS IN THE DELTA

Swamps, Architecture, & Liberatory Ecologies

AIA New Orleans Center for Design, 2024

Designed for Rebecca Choi’s course My Home is in the Delta at Tulane University, this exhibition challenges architecture’s conventional relationship with the ground and ecological systems. Floating plywood platforms, crafted from recycled wood and hovering 0.5” above the polished gallery floor, present a fragmented and irregular landscape that reflects the instability of swamps. The voids within the platforms, filled with soil and resilient Carex plants—donated to a local charity after the exhibition—highlight nature’s reclamation of space within the architectural intervention.

“The ground is no longer a foundation but a contested space—one that hovers, unsettled, & alive.”

Fragmented Topography

The floating platforms, with their irregular, organic shapes, mirror the unpredictable nature of swamps, disrupting the polished surface of the gallery. These fragmented forms create a topography that forces visitors to move thoughtfully between and around them. The exhibition challenges the idea of the ground as stable, transforming it into a contested site where architecture hovers, unsettled. This spatial disruption aligns with the course’s exploration of swamps as marginal landscapes of potential, positioning architecture as an act of negotiation rather than domination. The floating platforms act as a metaphor for architecture that resists being rooted, offering a vision of design that exists in dynamic negotiation with its surroundings.

Platform Engagement

Each platform is more than a floating form—a curatorial surface embedded with content. Visitors must bend or kneel to interact with the texts, drawings, and images on the platforms, making viewing a physical experience. This design choice reflects the course’s emphasis on embodied research and the study of marginalized sites, encouraging visitors to lower their gaze and engage intimately with the material. The low height of the platforms alters the traditional gallery dynamic, creating a more personal and immersive interaction between the viewer, the architecture, and the content.

Liberating the Void

The voids within the platforms filled with soil and Carex species—Everest, Everillo, and Eversheen—transform these empty spaces into sites of ecological presence. These plants are not passive elements; they actively reclaim the voids left by architecture, embodying nature’s resistance within the built environment. Integrating natural systems into the exhibition resonates with the course’s focus on “liberatory ecologies,” where landscapes typically overlooked or exploited become spaces of growth and potential.

Instability and Interaction

The exhibition encourages visitors to actively engage with its fragmented layout, compelling them to navigate between floating platforms and curated content. This interaction mirrors the instability of the landscapes explored in the course, where swamps resist easy categorization or control. Moving through the space, crouching to access content, and negotiating the platform’s irregularity reflect a broader theme of instability—ecological and architectural. My Home is in the Delta transforms architecture from a static, controlling force into a fluid, evolving practice that responds to the unpredictability of nature.