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Let's talk ecosystems. When you come right down to it, anything beyond an amoeba is an ecosystem. Each one of us is an ecosystem. The worlds we find ourselves in, the worlds we create for ourselves, the obstacles and the fulcrums encountered on the way. The family you grew up in, the relations of power between you and your parents, your siblings, your friends and adversaries, the house you grew up in, the neighborhood, the street, school and church. And no less than a bird building a nest or a rabbit digging out a burrow - if with a measure more ability and presumption - we also fabricate our own environments, in structure and landscape. Winston Churchill once said, "We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us." That's an ecosystem.
It's easy to walk the site of the stunning new Nature Boardwalk, designed by Studio/Gang around the South Pond of Lincoln Park, and feel as if it must have been there forever, but in fact it, too, is a fabrication, the end point of a succession for urban interventions.
