193 10 Landscapes of Variance Working the Gap between Design and Nature Ed Wall and Mike Dring By drawing a diagram, a ground plan of a house, a street plan to the location of a site, or a topographic map, one draws a “logical two dimensional picture.” A “logical picture” differs from a natural or realistic picture in that it rarely looks like the thing it stands for. Robert Smithson A Provisional Theory of Non-Sites, 1968 10.1 INTRODUCTION Between the abstractions of design and interventions in the land, there are variances, deviations, and gaps. These manifest as a physical interstice between the resistant conditions of the land and conceptualized interventions, and they reveal moments in the design process that refuse the seamless transitions from the schematic to the real- ized. As landscapes are repeatedly transformed through the dynamic relationships between people and the land, these gaps open up questions and spaces of creative possibility. Smithson wrote that between site and non-site, exists “a space of meta- phorical signiicance” (1968). He proposed non-site as an abstraction of a physical geographical site that can come to represent the site but without the need to resemble it, his indoor earthworks constructing a new logic and potentially physical relation- ship between land and occupant. As Smithson’s non-sites were created to represent a physical site, so designed landscapes are formed that represent speciic relationships between people and the CONTENTS 10.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 193 10.2 Variances in Fresh Kills ............................................................................... 195 10.3 Fresh Kill Intervention ................................................................................. 200 10.4 Fresh Kills Residency ................................................................................... 202 10.5 Discussions ................................................................................................... 204 References .............................................................................................................. 206