The form, material and experience of space is both produced by and produces culture. While design may seek to actively control the engagement of an object with the world, the effect of an engineered object on culture is often unintentional.
Visible from space, the Alberta Bituminous Sands are currently being engineered at a scale equal to or greater than any other human landscape project. And yet we do not see landscape architects engaged in the design and specifically the topographic shaping of these sites of extraction, production and waste.
Phantom Ecology is a collection of ten design proposals for a tourist circuit in the Bituminous Sands extraction area.