For an on-going master planning project on a hilly site in Sullivan County, NY we’ve adopted a strategy from children’s literature: the bread crumb trail.

In order to encourage wandering and discovery across the large site, a series of points loosely describing paths has been proposed over the agricultural and natural landscape.

Oscar Wilde accused us of thinking too much of nature, while experiencing it too little. How – we wonder – can one property allow for greater experience, for more interaction and discovery, for more reality and less idealization, while respecting the use of the land as a place of work, a place where livelihoods are sustained, where people gather, and where community is formed.

The primary goal of the master plan is to open up the landscape in ways that conserve and build up its natural elements so that they might be experienced more robustly, while preserving the complex of existing uses over the long run.

Within the scope of the master plan, buildings will be renovated and preserved and new structures will be delicately set within the existing natural and manmade landscape.