A Conversation With Daniella Slowik, 2020 Robert L. Wesley Award Fellow

When you received the 2020 Robert L. Wesley Award, you were a second year Bachelor of Landscape Architecture student at the University of Washington. Please tell us about any milestones that have happened in your life since then.

Thanks to the support of the Robert L. Wesley scholarship, I relocated to Denver for a few months to intern with Design Workshop in 2021, where I contributed to several large-scale ecological restoration projects. While in Denver, I grew more confident in my skills as a young designer and befriended fellow landscape and urban designers, like Tom Klein, who I am honored to now call a lifelong friend and mentor. It was also during this time that I emerged from a COVID-related emotional/mental hardship and was encouraged by Tom and other colleagues to further explore my interests in regenerative agriculture and traditional ecological knowledge at graduate school.

In my last year at UW, my team’s design proposal was selected to be built for the Kline Galland senior care home in Seattle. Thanks to the guidance of our beloved professor Daniel Winterbottom, our graduating class spent five weeks converting a vacant, paved courtyard in the care center into a lushly planted community space with intimate nooks for family visits and a beautiful wooden pavilion to host outdoor exercise events and celebrations.

After completing my first built project, I graduated with honors from the University of Washington and got a scholarship from the Harvard Graduate School of Design to join their MLA II program.

While at Harvard, my interests in the field exploded into larger-scale climate remediation projects. Across the stunning landscapes of Mexico, Portugal, and Morocco (with my inspiring professors Lorena Bello Gomez and Silvia Benedito), I focused on creating adaptive, multi-use designs for the most marginalized wildlife and human communities, many of whom are suffering from extreme droughts and floods, destructive fires, and the loss of traditional agricultural practices. With a strong conviction in using my design skills to support the most under-resourced landscapes and communities, I graduated with distinction and received the Peter Walker & Partner’s Travel Fellowship, which has allowed me to continue my personal exploration of resilient agroforestry practices in rural communities of the Los Tuxtlas Biosphere Reserve in southern Mexico.

Could you share some more details about a few of the projects you have worked on that were particularly meaningful to you?

In my first year at the GSD, I developed a drought-tolerant, soil-regenerative planting strategy in Silvia Benedito’s Canary in the Mine studio to buffer the protected Serra do Acor forest and its surrounding villages from wildfires. Fueled by my interest in utilizing native plants for fire prevention and supported by a travel grant, I had the opportunity to travel to the Serra do Acor protected zone, where I collaborated on a design with the Arganil municipality to retrofit a lavadouro (outdoor washroom) into a fire-fighting water purification and catchment system. Currently, the lavadouro’s discharged water cannot be reused due to the presence of environmentally toxic laundry detergents and decaying organic matter in the tank where it is stored. In our presentation to the president of the village, we proposed to convert four of the eight existing laundry cubicles and the external reservoir into an artificial purification system with native aquatic plants and varying soil types that naturally bind to toxins. After passing slowly through the roots of the plants and soil strata, the purified water can be stored in an external reservoir for use in extinguishing fires. Once we receive the funds to build this project, we envision the lavadouro transforming into a cooling, sensory oasis in the heat of the Portuguese mountains where visitors can seek respite, watch birds bathe, and gain a deeper understanding of the town’s ever-evolving relationship with fire.

After being awarded the GSD Peter Walker & Partners Travel Fellowship, I have also had the opportunity to travel to the majestic, yet heavily deforested, rainforest of the Los Tuxtlas Biosphere Reserve in Veracruz, Mexico, where a handful of local communities are transitioning their cattle ranches into diverse agroforestry systems. I am currently working to document the communities’ existing methods of reforestation, soil remediation, and community stewardship through hand-drawn illustrations and a video, and I am collaborating with one of the chiefs of a local native-plant nursery to explore alternative agricultural models that can strengthen the economic and ecological longevity of these rural communities.

Did the Robert L. Wesley Award have any lasting impacts on your career path?

I was awarded the Robert L. Wesley award at a time in my life where I was severely doubting my capabilities and leadership skills and questioning my role within the field at large. It also came at a moment when my mother and I were questioning how to afford the remainder of my tuition and living costs. Following the shock of winning this prestigious award, I began to feel more secure in my role as a student and as the president of the UWASLA chapter, more confident in my design ideas, and more empowered to seek bigger challenges and learning opportunities for myself. I started to put my chronic self-doubt aside and dream bigger. This award eventually led me to consider graduate school, and, since that moment, an entire world of opportunities has opened up for me. And I’ve had the self-confidence to say yes to them!

That’s fantastic! What are you up to now, post-graduate school?

While I continue to work on the Los Tuxtlas research project, I am involved in an interesting, and quite diverse, collection of other projects at the moment. I moved abroad in March of this year to the Netherlands to work for a small landscape and urban design firm in The Hague, where I am collaborating on a cultural preservation masterplan for the city of Gouda. In my free time, when I am not out biking through the fascinating Dutch landscape, I am continuing to collaborate with Silvia Benedito on an archaeological park in south Portugal and on a vision plan for fire-adaptive interventions across central Portugal.

What do you consider to be the most pressing issue(s) in landscape architecture today?

The most pressing topics for me are climate/social equity for vulnerable communities, regenerative agriculture that nurtures soils, wildlife, and human health, and holistic systems-based thinking. I believe landscape architecture should provide relief for the marginalized communities who have contributed the least to the climate crisis, yet who time and time again suffer the most from its impacts and remain neglected within professional practice. And as rates of food insecurity increase across the globe due in large part to the worsening climate crisis, I think the tools we have as landscape architects should be used in the agricultural sector to produce more resilient and varied yields with methods that improve soil microbial networks, preserve water, support biodiversity, and strengthen stewardship at the local level.

Considering the multifaceted challenges we’ll likely face in the coming decades, I think it is also incredibly important for our field to break out of our siloed domain and become more comfortable experimenting with novel practices and technologies, forming multidisciplinary research partnerships, and collaborating with communities with traditional ecological knowledge.

Do you have any advice for young, aspiring landscape architects?

Take time to teach yourself new skills and test them out whenever you can. If you have curiosities within the field, explore them and start your own research! Form partnerships with friends and colleagues from other areas of knowledge (government, business, tech, agriculture, medical) and apply for grants! Take on a part-time or full-time position related to these interests.

Ask for help! Rely on your classmates, colleagues, mentors—we can all benefit from this communal support and trust.

Get to know your professors! They are full of wisdom and understanding and can offer invaluable support on a personal, academic, and professional level. This is probably the best thing I have ever done throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies.

Go outside, touch some plants, follow a bumblebee, walk barefoot in the soil (watching out for said bumblebee). So much of our work is done from behind a screen… it is important to reconnect with our source of inspiration!

Do not set aside your values and convictions for the pressure of fitting in at school or in an office. You can set healthy boundaries for yourself, you can be an ambitious individual while prioritizing your health and your sleep, and you can always advocate for your needs and the needs of your community.