Over the past two summers, Commonstudio founders Daniel and Kim have been busy developing and facilitating OVERLOOK(ed), an interdisciplinary field school, research initiative, and public exhibition exploring the ecological and cultural significance of Spontaneous Urban Plants (SUP)—the resilient species that quietly inhabit the cracks, edges, vacant lots, infrastructure corridors, and forgotten spaces of our cities.
The Mobile Urbarium’s inaugural installation occurred on 7.8.26 at Fuller’s Overlook in Waverly, PA. This small event brought a small group of students, jurors, and donors into a wooded area of the Fuller’s Overlook property at dusk.
In partnership with the University of Oregon College of Design and the Fuller Initiative for Productive Landscapes, students and collaborators spent two immersive field seasons working across Eugene, Portland, Philadelphia, and Scranton before convening at Fuller’s Overlook in northeastern Pennsylvania. Through quadrat sampling, botanical collection, photography, geolocation, and community science platforms such as iNaturalist, participants documented recurring urban habitat types while asking a deceptively simple question: What might these overlooked plants teach us about the future of cities?
The project intentionally blurred the boundaries between science, design, and artistic practice. Field collections became high-resolution digital herbarium scans, microscopic imagery, architectural models, functional trait studies, graphics, films, and social media narratives that translated ecological research to a broader public audience. Alongside this work, students participated in a series of workshops led by invited artists, designers, and musicians whose practices similarly reveal hidden dimensions of landscape. Firat Erdim introduced Walking Harps, handcrafted instruments that transformed wind into sound and encouraged participants to experience the landscape through movement and atmosphere. Ellie Irons led her acclaimed Feral Hues workshop, producing watercolors from spontaneous urban vegetation collected on site. Composer Paula Matthusen's Umbrella Etudes explored memory and place through experimental FM radio transmission, while visits to OLIN, Knot Studio, Snøhetta, the Gowanus Canal, Freshkills Park, Floyd Bennett Field, Governors Island, and an urban sketching workshop with Richard Alomar expanded the conversation through contemporary landscape practice, ecological restoration, and careful observation.
The field school culminated in the public debut of the Mobile Urbarium, a traveling exhibition synthesizing research, design, and storytelling into an immersive, multi-sensory experience. Monumental digital herbarium projections, architectural models, field recordings, and interpretive graphics invited visitors to reconsider the ecological agency of the plants that so often escape our notice. More importantly, the exhibition served as a platform for dialogue, bringing together students, artists, scientists, designers, and the public around questions of ecological resilience, maintenance, beauty, and belonging.
OVERLOOK(ed) is not simply about “weeds”. It is an ongoing investigation into how acts of attention can reshape our understanding of urban landscapes. At a moment when cities face accelerating ecological and climatic change, spontaneous vegetation offers more than botanical curiosity, it provides a living record of adaptation, disturbance, and possibility. Through the Global Urbarium project, The Commonstudio continues to document these emerging ecologies while developing new ways to communicate their value through exhibitions, publications, field schools, and public engagement. The work is ultimately less about discovering new landscapes than about learning to see the remarkable ones that have been growing around us all along.
For more on this work, feel free to download/view a curated PDF Slide Deck that provides more detail on the ideas and process driving the project. Also feel free to check out the Post Wild Pod, a podcast series exploring the complexities and contradictions of so-called “Novel Ecosystems” in the contested era of the “Antropocene”. Commonstudio co-founder Daniel Phillips along with student co-hosts engage in long-form conversation with leading practitioners and researchers across a range of disciplines.
Thanks to all the Students, Colleagues, and Invited Jurors who brought this to life in the Summer of 2026!
FABRICATION:
Robert Lepiz
COORDINATOR:
Nancy Silvers
DEVELOPED AND FACILITATED BY:
Daniel Phillips (PhD, Assistant Professor @ UofO)
Kim Karlsrud (MFA, Visiting Assistant Professsor @ UofO)
INVITED JURORS:
Firat Erdim- Artist + Architect
Iowa State Univ.
Paula Matthusen- Experimental Composer,
Wesleyan University
Ellie Irons- Artist and educator,
NATURE Lab (Troy, NY)
Pia von Barby– Landscape Architect + researcher
OLIN (Philadelphia, PA)
STUDENT PARTICIPANTS:
Sara Fernandes– MARC candidate
Leo Frampton- MLA candidate
Cora Messer- BFA candidate
Michael Mitchell- MLA candidate
Josephine Paik- BLA candidate
Taylor Ward- BFA (Art & Tech)
