Ben Larsen

In this dissertation, I argue that play is at the heart of process-based approaches in landscape architecture and design. In conversation with feminist new materialisms, multispecies approaches, theories of play, and landscape architects and designers, I position play as form of thematic knowledge that reconceptualizes risk, supporting flexibility and adaptability. I argue that in design thinking, therefore, epistemologies of play might have an important role in resisting pressures to exert ever-increasing control over the environment. Play reframes conversations about community safety, freeing the potentials of landscape architecture and design from the limits of scalar thinking and encouraging responsiveness to the dynamic (re)invention and maintenance of land-water-community relations. I further articulate this argument contextually, grounding my thinking in specific personal play situations focusing on play’s relational engagements. These relational themes, varying from skateboarding to trimming a dog’s toenails, inform my consideration of the power of play for design. I focus my exploration of design practice by examining a pair of ongoing storm surge protection plans for the Houston-Galveston region of the Texas coast: the Galveston Bay Storm Surge Barrier System (a project of the US Army Corps of Engineers) and the Galveston Bay Park Plan (a project spearheaded by Rice University’s Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters Center). These flood prevention plans highlight how climate-related threats offer opportunities to reappraise human and more-than-human relations.