Mariel Collard

Landscape and architecture
design | research | teaching

Paisaje y arquitectura
diseño | investigación | enseñanza



About



 
Selected work from 2020 and earlier
lives in this website. 

The Bali Studio 1
Hispanic/Latino Non-resident Alien
Trading on Terroir
Avocado Toast: A Natural History
For Holly
The Valley: A Journey
Umbral
Feria de las Culturas Amigas
Casa Mazatlán


Mariel Collard

Landscape and architecture
design, research, pedagogy.

Paisaje y arquitectura
diseño, investigación, enseñanza.


About
Contact



Trading on Terroir

In collaboration with Stefan Norgaard.

We conceptually interrogate the Specialized Agrarian Industrial District (SAID), a bounded zone producing specialized agricultural products that resist international divisions of capital and labor. Three critical characteristics enable SAIDs: (1) regulatory and institutional arrangements, including regulations and specific “denominations of origin,” allowing producers to develop and exchange localized knowledges; (2) landed property regimes and regimes’ recombinant legacies of agrarian reform, collective ownership, protected nature, or cultural/ touristic heritage; (3) specific terroir, or biophysical geographies, with climate, topography, and soil features suited for thematerial properties of specific commodities. Our research engages four commodities and geographies: cheese in the Franche-Comté, France and Minas-Gerais, Brazil; and alcohol in South Africa’s Cape (wine) and Jalisco, Mexico(mezcal). Alcohol and cheese’s material and biophysical properties lend themselves to SAIDs’ political/institutional construction.

This project originated in the seminar “Emergent Urbanizations: New Territories of Urban/Agrarian Transformation in The Global South” led by Sai Balakrishnan and Neil Brenner at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. To know more about our research and to read our paper go to The Urban Theory Lab.
2019-ongoing | Research