Starting in the 1800s, in the Hudson Valley there was a shift in the relationship of humans to nature. The concept of land became re-articulated as landscape, and while neither was necessarily understood as wild, dynamics of power and control became paramount. Taking this as an entry point of curiosity, this project looks closely at ways that land is experienced. First by examining temporary stay (hotel) typologies that offer insight into architectural tropes as tools for framing nature and extracting value.

This project approaches reclamation as a catalytic process, one that is not controlled, but participated in.

The first thesis drawing considers the psychographic landscape of commodification of the experience of ‘nature’ in dialogue with a physical reality of the landmass of the Catskills.

Notably, the Kaaterskill Hotel suggests that the experience of nature becomes one of a social ritual, where the veranda is the architectural tool that creates the opportunity to see and be seen, while nature provides a backdrop to this performative choreography.

Golf courses are a quintessential manifestation of a typology that is dependent on this willful artificiality as well as a vestige of a culture of social exclusivity. Over half of Hudson Valley golf courses are built on wetlands, denying these territories that offer essential ecological cornerstone by draining and filling. There is a complex ground condition reliant on layers of artificiality. This layered artificiality also extends to ways of seeing – remote digital occupation of this space via VR.

A manifestation of the colonial attitudes of flattening global variation and denying ecological and climate specificity of place. The Golf Course Club House is analogous to the model of a Summer home of wealthy New York Robber Barons looking for sanctuary from the sweltering heat of Summer urbanity and for a realm to socialize with other members of their social caste.

This project approaches reclamation as a catalytic process, one that is not controlled, but participated in. In this act, there is a transformation of the concept of mobility as aspirational and reserved for the upper classes (tourism) to one that is a necessary and an undeniable human need to seek sustenance – social, financial and cultural (transience).

The process to strip back, excavate, repurpose this condition constitutes a different relationship to land, and with it subvert attitudes of ownership, exclusivity and permanence.