Julie Bargmann

, International

Sustainable Designer

¢  An internationally recognized landscape architect

¢  She reclaims polluted industrial sites in America that have been severely affected by mining or the dumping of rubbish.

¢  Treatment of AMD (acid mine drainage) which spills into streams & rivers thereby raising the acidity levels and suffocating life forms.

¢  Creative potential of these degraded landscapes and alters them into regenerative landscapes.

¢  Her practice is called:

D.I.R.T. Studio

¢  Innovator in regenerative environmental design and interdisciplinary design education. D.I.R.T. Studio (Design Investigations Reclaiming Terrain)

¢  “Dump It Right There!” of which she is the principal, excavates the potential of degraded landscapes.

¢  Challenge the restrictive policies and conventional remediation practices that plague large industries.

¢  She researches into the effect of past & present industrial operations & urban processes on ecological systems & communities & applies emerging technologies to regenerate the sites.

¢  Bargmann joins teams of architects, artists, engineers, historians & scientists to imagine the next ‘life’ of landscapes such as closed quarries, abandoned coal mines, fallow factories and urban railway yards.

¢  innovative designer in building regenerative landscapes

¢  Her on-going design research Project D.I.R.T. (Design Investigations Reclaiming Terrain) continues to excavate the creative potential of degraded landscapes.

¢  Bargmann teaches critical site-seeing as a means to reveal multiple site histories.

¢  Her Design practice, projects at the D.I.R.T. studio (Dump It Right There)

¢  From closed quarries to abandoned coal mines, fallow factories and urban railyards, Bargmann joins teams of architects, artists, engineers, historians and scientists.

¢  Along with a degree in sculpture from Carnegie-Mellon University, Bargmann earned a masters in landscape architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design followed by a Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome.

¢  Julie Bargmann sees beauty in land littered with mine refuse and scarred by acid-laced waters.

¢  Example of Work: At an abandoned coal mine in Vitondale, Pa., she is creating what she has dubbed a "regenerative park" to capture the horror and the beauty of its industrial legacy.

¢  Instead, she combines an archaeologist's reverence for the land's past, an environmentalist's concern for its future and an artist's appreciation of its present to create a new kind of public space.

¢  Example of Work: Bargmann sees her 35-acre Testing the Waters park, which will break ground next month in rural Vitondale, as part nature preserve, part geological washing machine.

¢  Dumps became "sanitary landfills" when legislation required the installation of environmental systems to control landfill-related pollution.

¢  Sanitary landfills are essentially giant baggies in the ground with ‘impermeable’ membranes entombing trash.

¢  Common remediation practices in waste management disguise large mountains of trash (each called a "cell") as pastoral green hills or happy recreation fields.

•       D.I.R.T. believes landfills could be more productive.

•       Remediation systems could be more transparent.

•       Communities could feel fortunate that a landfill was, or is, in their town.

•       Varying with the type of trash being:

•       MSW (municipal solid waste) or

•       CDD (construction demolition debris), three main issues plague landfills, ones that could become opportunities.

1. Leachate (like the nasty stuff at the bottom of your garbage cans) is usually collected and sent off to often over-burdened and expensive waste water treatment facilities.

•        Alternatives include on-site systems such recirculation of the leachate through the garbage to increase bioactivity as well as constructed wetlands to treat the leachate.

•      
2. Methane gas emitted from the very slowly decomposing garbage is commonly flared off (invisible by day but flaming at night). When MSW landfills produce enough gas, methane can be captured and converted through a fuel cell to produce energy.

•       3. Subsidence of trash can be uneven and produce unanticipated ankle-breaking topography. In spite of this fact, closed landfills are commonly contorted to create super taut planes of sports fields or the typical artifice of golf courses.

•       In the case of CDD landfills, vast quantities of inert debris are hidden beneath generic landforms, not sculpted nor reused.

•       The dynamic settling and reusable material of a landfill can inform a new type of topography.
One of these days, we will mine landfills, re-read about our struggle with garbage in un-decomposed newspapers, and undo the terrain of trash.

•       Most important of all is the question of producing garbage in the first place. Clearly the three "R"s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) are becoming more and more operative.

•       Ivy landfill site:

•       The Ivy Landfill has alienated itself from its surrounding biotic context as well as its human context.  Undesirable by-products from the encapsulated layers of trash have contaminated the site, damaging the surrounding streams of the Broad Axe Creek and adversely affecting the ecology of the immediate, natural systems. 

•       Residents living near the perimeter of the landfill are also impacted by these contaminants in the form of dust plumes and the unpleasant sites and smells of the trash cells. 

•       The remediation of this site begins with the insertion of several systems and experimental tree plots.  Once the site is healed from its contaminants, several activities will transform it into a productive landscape which will begin the healing of the site's relationship to its human and biotic neighbours.

•       “Testing the Waters” – former coal mine site

•       Bargmann transformed the site of an abandoned coal mine in Vintonvale, Pennsylvania into a 45 acre park for acid mine drainage (AMD) & community recreation.

•       She assembled a team of professional people to spearhead the project:

•       Project director & historian – T Allen Comp

•       Hydro-geologist – Robert Season

•       Artist – Stacy Levy

•       Bargmann - architect & photographer

•       She designed the layout of the park by carving the existing shape of the landmass into a form of passive AMD treatment system.

This was in fact a giant ecological washing machine

¢  She invited the public to witness the cleansing process physically as well as symbolically.

¢  The AMD goes through a series of retention basins and spillways & as polluted water passes over this “treatment Garden” its colour changes from acidic orange to pea green and then to alkaline blue-green.

¢  Each of these colours represents a symbolic & physical change.

¢  The cleansing process is symbolically shown in the “Litmus Garden”.

¢  The seasonal colours of the bark, foliage & fruit of the alternating rows of indigenous trees & shrubs, visually represent the treatment sequence, progressing from deep reds & oranges to cooler hues of green & blue.

¢  The food plane of the site’s creek is reconstructed into a new marsh & additional wetlands for the final ‘rinse’.

¢  After flowing through these wetlands areas, water returns to the local creek in a purified state.

¢  Evidence of the site’s former identity is represented by earthen and planted forms suggesting footprints of former mine buildings.

¢  A plinth of mine refuse is inscribed with black discs recalling Vintondale’s 152 coke ovens.

¢  The park includes recreational amenities such as picnic grounds, play areas & wildlife trails that serve both local & regional communities