Staging Relationships With History: The Cultural, Natural, and Eternal Ruins of Bears Ears National Monument
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Abstract
How can we, as designers of the built environment, use
history as a means of transforming the future, here and
now? Rooted deeply within the canyons and mesas of the
1.3-million-acre monument in southeastern Utah, the
endangered ruins of Bears Ears hold ancient stories of
human interconnectivity with the environment – narratives
central to Native American spirituality that unfold the
earth as a living, breathing entity with an eternal pulse. In
reinterpreting and transforming these stories, can modern
visitors reimagine a different place in nature that might even
inform the survival of humankind into the future?
In response to the current treatment of history as something
in the past, this project aims to create a threshold between
the distant past and the untold future by framing present
experiences with additions to the Bears Ears National
Monument. Standing as an architectural repository of many
mythologies and narratives about the world, this interpretive
center and corresponding observation platforms aim to
direct us back to the core narratives and structures of
feeling in the universe. The central intention focuses on the
visitors’ participation with the history that carries us forward
in ways that may benefit us all.