Wind Grid

^{Journal of Landscape Architecture, 16:2, 54-60, 2021
Related: Limekiln Grid
Link to Article}


Designers often represent wind on a site as a field of vectors. This representation of wind presents a simultaneity and totality that is inconsistent with how we experience it as a dispersed, variable, fleeting phenomenon. Was it possible to align the two? This question prompted a series of studies, including full-scale site installations, surveys, paintings, and physical models. Each imposed one fixed measure—a grid tidily subdividing the property into equal parcels—to reveal other measures of air movement patterns and intensities across the totality of the site. The studies revealed that like many complex environmental systems, wind doesn’t reveal itself as a single, big exclamation suggested by the swirling arrows on a map, but instead as a series of episodic whispers learned subtly over time.