Decade Plant

For centuries, the desert has been the origin of profound thought, revolutionary creativity, as well as intense violence, all under the aegis of utopian fantasy. Perhaps it was the expansive and hypnotizing lifelessness that stirs the imagination of mathematicians, scientists, artists, industrialists. Far from being neutral, the Texan desert has always been a site for pilgrimage, layered in stories. Far from being sterile, its latent resources have much to offer our metropolitan life.

Agave, a plant native to deserts in the region, is a miraculous bio-resource which encapsulates in its compact form materials for food, drink, clothing, and architecture. Its cores can be fermented to produce alcohol, and leaf fibers whose durability and flexibility make it versatile to textiles and thatch walls.

In recent years, fascination with this unassuming succulent is rekindled in the arid American west, slowly gaining recognition as its ideal crop. While only requiring one twentieth the water needed to grow tomatoes, agave is the engine for its rapidly growing spirits industry, with quality rivalling Mexican tequila. Agave syrup, as replacement to the pernicious high fructose corn syrup, is on the tongue of every health-savvy Californian. The by-products of these food items are fibers and textiles, whose applications are being studied and expanded, ranging from fashion to reinforced plastic products. It is even speculated that the water retention capability of large agave farms holds the solution to drought and extreme climates on the west coast.

This proposal is a gathering place, and more importantly, an instrument for the propagation of agave through the vast Texan desert. Its lifecycle echoes that of the agave plant. Agave requires 10 years to mature into resources fit for tequila production. Similarly, the first ten years of the amphitheater functions as a farm, with all farming programs housed under the bleachers. By the end of the ten-year cycle, the agave is harvested. While the agave cores are used to produce tequila, the leaves, largely a by-product, is upcycled to produce the sisal textile that makes up the tent. When the tequila is distilled and the tent is erected, city dwellers travelling afar will come together in the tent to enjoy the fruits of their labor, celebrating the end of the cycle. After the celebration, the fabric from the tent is cut up and repurposed. Then a new cycle begins.

The tent evokes misreading of the architectural origin. In this moment of crisis, where centuries of overextraction is being solved by doing more: more insulation, more mass, more sealed – this proposal would like to return to architecture’s most basic form – a tent. It remains the quickest and lightest form of construction. It disguises as the minimal dwelling, yet ceremonial and universal to royalties, celebrations, festivals.

This amphitheater may be analogous to the agave plant – hidden away in a state of desertion, soft, ephemeral, fragile, and requiring extreme care, but also strong, inventive, resourceful, and capable of extraordinary good. Ultimately, its primary goal is about people: coming together and reconstituting the idea of community. The 70’s attitude toward utopia was a concrete one, one which could someday take a constructed form. Nowadays, the term “utopian” has all but become synonymous with fantastical and unrealistic. It is especially now that a revisit to the 70s is a crucial one.