PORTALS
Oregon, USA
2019
The Portals are three pavilions installed along proposed routes of the Pacific Connector Pipeline, a major natural gas pipeline planned for construction across the Pacific Northwest of North America.
Each of the three pavilions is constructed to challenge the expropriation of land for pipeline construction. Each of the sites is ecologically rich—one is estuarian, one is wetland, one is riparian. Each site has been stewarded, in different ways, for biodiversity and for co-habitation with other species. The Portals are intended as direct action pipeline resistance as they visibly place something of value in the path of potential destruction.
The Portals are intended to transform perception of these places by demonstrating their value in terms of ecological holism, nutrient cycling, multi-species sheltering, and habitat biodiversity rather than in terms of extraction and profit. In this way, and as they subvert extraction-based power structures, the installations are meant to embody an ecofeminist ethic and to build on dialogues in new materialisms, speculative design, critical spatial practices, and the environmental humanities.
The loose thatch that spirals around each of the Portals sheds rainwater down one side of the pavilions and provides some shelter for humans. On the other side, the thatch collects water and nutrients and so is very terrible shelter for humans but very active habitat for other species at all scales. This is a purposeful subversion of human supremacy in architectural space. The thatch is locally-harvested soft rush (Juncus effuses) and tule (Schoenoplectus acutus).
The Portals are intended to choreograph human experience of time as cyclical—in weather, tides, water levels, and planetary movement, and as material decays and accumulates. In this way, the pavilions draw attention to the simultaneous ecological past and future of these lands.
The Portals are located on land that is within the traditional homelands of the Coos, Coquille and Upper Umpqua peoples who were forcibly removed from these lands by the United States government. Today, descendants are citizens of the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua & Siuslaw Indians, the Coquille Indian Tribe, and the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe.
The Portals were designed by Erin E. Moore and were constructed by members of Moore’s research practice FLOAT (Construction project management: Chris White; Fabrication and installation: Mike Kwilos (lead), Serena Lim, Andrew Loia, Zach Bradby, Molly Winter).
The Portals are located in Southern Oregon. Each are about 2 hours by car from the Eugene, Oregon airport. Hosted site visits are welcome with prior arrangement.