THE SHIPWRECKED BODY - SITE INSTALLATION BY CANCER SURVIVORS

Conceived as a temporary installation designed not for, but by cancer survivors, The Shipwrecked Body is an innovative proposal by former graduate school classmates Kari Boeskov (artist), Jen Bostad (landscape architect, LOLA), and Anna Boeschenstein (landscape architect, Grounded). Of 13 classmates in their Harvard Design School class, the three women all experienced and survived early-onset cancer. The Shipwrecked Body was a both deeply personal and collaborative way to allow others to see cancer through patients' eyes and to find beauty in life on the other side.

The proposal follows three common themes that the women addressed, and which cancer survivors experience as a whole: disorientation, invasion and vast uncertainty. Like medical slides or slices of a cat scan, The Shipwrecked Body installation proposes a series of saltwater tanks, laid out like medical slides or slices of a cat scan, in which biocrete would slowly aggregate into new forms. Biocrete is a new technology that uses coral accretions on rebar armatures to create buildable forms. Paralells between the human body that harbors cancer cells and saline tanks that hold slowly growing building blocks create both site sculptures and building blocks for a future site development.

Artist: Kari Boeskov
Landscape Architect: Jennifer Bolstad, LOLA
Landscape Architect: Anna Boeschenstein, Grounded