Skip to content
The University of British Columbia School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
      • Academics
        • Undergraduate Degrees
        • Graduate Degrees
        • Non-degree Programs
        • Enriched Education Experiences
        • Prospective Students
        • New Students
      • Student Life
        • Advising + Help
        • Getting Involved
      • Safety + Wellbeing
        • Health + Wellbeing
      • About SALA
        • The School
        • Faculty
        • Administration
        • Strategic Directions
        • Contact
      • Resources
        • Workshops + Fabrication
        • Library + Resource Collections
        • Media + AV
        • Computing
        • Book Rooms + Devices
        • Online Learning
      • Student Opportunities
        • Mentorship
        • Co-op
        • Student Jobs
        • Professional Development
      • News + Events
        • News
        • Events
        • Lectures
      • Student + Faculty Work
        • Research
        • Projects
      • Margolese National Design for Living Prize Opens in new tab.
  • Research
  • Also in Research
    • Zippered Wood
    • UD Co-Spaces
    • Wesbrook Place: A Case Study
    • Energy and urban form
    • Dam[ned] Landscapes
    • Vermilion Sands
    • See All Research
  • Recently Visited

Blind Nurse

Blair Satterfield

  • This image has an empty alt attribute, its filename is Blind-Nurse2.jpg
  • This image has an empty alt attribute, its filename is Blind-Nurse3.jpg
  • This image has an empty alt attribute, its filename is Blind-Nurse4.jpg
  • This image has an empty alt attribute, its filename is Blind-Nurse5.jpg
  • This image has an empty alt attribute, its filename is Blind-Nurse6.jpg

The Nurse Log

The Blind Nurse explores new ways for architecture to behave at a phase when architects have long abandoned it: its decay. When architects consider this phase as important as the design and construction of a building, we accept that a building is fundamentally part of our larger natural ecosystem, that it is not distinct from nature, but part of it. The Blind Nurse project points to a scenario in which architecture can participate more fundamentally in the natural cycles it often ignores. A building’s obsolescence can be as thoughtfully considered as its construction.

The Blind Box

Modeled after two unique precedents (“blind box” packaged Japanese toys and sacrificial “nurse logs”), the Blind Nurse is a thirty-inch cube of soil enriched with tree seeds and delivered in a thin paper wrapper. When placed outside in the elements, the cube erodes, gradually revealing a hidden object inside. The object is three-dimensionally printed from a mixture of wood pulp and plant nutrients to anticipate the growing needs of the tree species in the soil. The unique shape and properties of the object encourage a sapling to take root in it. The innovation behind Blind Nurse is that it is purposefully temporal. Traditionally, once a building is constructed, it sits, unchanging until it is demolished and placed in a landfill.

A Momento Mori 

Blind Nurse will surprise, puzzle, delight, and even sadden viewers as it evolves over time. Most objects are designed to last forever. Once produced, they exist statically in the world, unresponsive until they are thrown in a landfill. Blind Nurse is purposefully temporal. Like any biological organism, it has a birth and a death. It catalyzes and then yields to future growth. Its full purpose is revealed slowly and its narrative only understood through repeated viewing and continuous monitoring. It is a dynamic, surprising, and ultimately emotional proposition, to which we can uniquely relate because, like architecture and like all of us, it will eventually wilt away.

HouMinn Practice

Jason Heinrich, Yong Gyun Noh (Mir), Neal Qiongyu Li, Robert Thomas Gaudin, HiLo Lab

Follow all things SALA

  • Open SALA Facebook in new tab
  • Open SALA Instagram in new tab
  • Open SALA YouTube in new tab
Join the SALA Newsletter
The University of British Columbia School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture

School of Architecture + Landscape
Architecture

402–6333 Memorial Road
Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z2

+1 604 827 7252

SALA and The University of British Columbia are situated on the the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people.

  • UBC Applied Science
  • UBC Copyright
  • Terms of Use