HIGHLIGHTS from The OVERLOOK(ed) Field School (2025–2026)

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 into forms accessible to broader publics. 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.

Workshop with Firat Erdim

Firat Erdim led students through an embodied exploration of Fuller’s Overlook using handcrafted “Wind Harps” designed to interact with and amplify wind. Moving across the site, the group paid close attention to bodily orientation, atmospheric nuance, and the subtle environmental forces that shape perception. The workshop framed the landscape not as a passive backdrop, but as an active medium — one that can be listened to, moved through, and felt.

Workshop with Ellie Irons

Ellie Irons brought her practice of Feral Hues to Fuller’s Overlook, guiding students in the collection and processing of spontaneous vegetation into handmade pigments and watercolors. Through gathering, grinding, steeping, testing, and painting, participants transformed overlooked plant material into expressive compositions tied to the themes of the practicum. The workshop made visible the chromatic potential of the plants often dismissed as “weeds”.

Workshop with Paula Matthusen

Paula Matthusen’s Umbrella Etudes invited students to record voice memos connected to personal memories, which were then combined, transmitted, and modulated as FM radio signals. Through this experiment, memory became atmospheric: intimate recollections moved through the air as sound, interference, and signal. The workshop connected listening, transmission, and place, making invisible fields of communication temporarily audible.

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.

Project Credits:

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)