On Monday, 8/29, I finally met with my advisers at the Resilience Center, Stephan Barthel & Jeff Ranara.  Jeff has been quite busy preparing to defend his licentiate, which he did yesterday, but managed to spend the good part of the day with me, helping me get set up and securing a desk as well.  I sit in a cozy upstairs office in Krafton, in a little house with a high-end cafeteria next door where the Systems Ecology graduates and PhDs have their space, close to the Resilience Center and Environment Institute.  We are at the north-end of the Kraftriket (Crayfish Kingdom) campus, which is south of the main University campus and along the shores of Lilla Brunnsviken.  After a center-wide meeting that afternoon, Stephan joined us for a short brain-storming session where we decided that I would begin by researching vegetated wall systems, which so far has resulted in a 10-page literature review of research pertaining the potential benefits of these systems as well as the technology involved.  The goal of this work is to identify viable vertical-wall plant species and systems that would support critical habitat for selected, red-listed species in Stockholm, and we have identified several strategic sites for Stockholm’s first living wall.  Interestingly, some of this work closely parallels efforts at the Green Futures Lab at UW’s CBE, so we will be sharing some of our findings in the coming weeks, as the GFL recently received grant funding to develop a green wall system at Gould Hall.  On top of that, Nancy Rottle (GFL founder) will be in Stockholm this coming weekend and I have arranged for her to meet with Stephan and other members of the Albano group to discuss plans for the new Stockholm University campus as well as the development of possible future collaborations.

The last few weeks have been full of meetings and outings, new friends and plenty of work.  Jeff was thoughtful enough to put me on the waiting list for the Stora Karlsö staff trip, a first-time all-center, 3-day excursion to the wildlife preserve island off the coast of Gotland 7.5 travel hours away–I’ll write more about this trip soon.  Other meetings have included the first of many ‘Resilience Dialogues,’ which are held every Wednesday during the fall, one of which I’ve been asked to conduct–Landscape and Resilience; several meetings with the Urban Theme (lead by Thomas Elmqvist, who will be traveling to Cornel University for the semester to work on a joint project updating the Melenium ecosystem assessment); and a meeting regarding the Albano project and the existing plans for the new campus, among others.

The Albano meeting was a somewhat surreal experience, as the plans as they are now completely ignore the sensitivities of both Copenhagen-based Christensen&Co’s competition-winning entry for the new campus as well as the Patch-Work Group’s efforts to instill resilience-thinking and a sustainable, visionary architecture.  Depressing is one apt description of the proposed plan as it sits today.  However, it seems unlikely that this will be allowed to proceed unchallenged by community organizations involved with the park.  The current proposal is basically an urban development within the Urban National Park, rather than the more conventional “houses in the forest” approach.  Likewise, the current plan makes no provisions for habitat, integrated systems, or innovative, social spaces.  From my perspective, the SRC appears to be in an unenviable position of deciding whether to proceed with fund raising efforts for their own center, one which would more closely reflect their values (e.g. the Lewis Center at Oberlin) or carefully engage in a larger political debate regarding the entire campus plan.  Hopefully both will be possible and bring about better outcomes than a replica of a 1970’s Swedish college campus, as represented in the current proposal.