Our research focuses on the artificiality of nature and the systems behind it. Systems like fish hatcheries and water reservoirs extract natural resources for population centers downstream while preserving the myth that we live alongside a healthy natural environment, stocking our bodies of water with fish and water like products in a grocery store.

Our proposal is a constructed habitat research and development center set in the tidal marsh north of Furgary, in Hudson, New York. Furgary represents a relationship with the water that is no longer possible given the river’s current state of depletion. The Hudson waterfront turns from industrial operations, public park, and conservation areas depending on where you look, with its economic and environmental possibilities constantly in tension. The campus consists of differing degrees of managed and unmanaged wetlands and water bodies, weaved together into a new “natural” landscape with different scales of intervention through both human and nonhuman interfaces. Overall, this proposal challenges the existing paradigm of the hidden infrastructure that reinforces our natural and artificial world. Instead, we chose to show them side by side, re-staging the way in which our current world is constructed.