The Nuclear Chronicles: Design Research on the Landscapes of the U.S. Nuclear Highway

The Nuclear Chronicles: Design Research on the Landscapes of the US Nuclear Highway leverages fictional design narratives as devices for discussing the impact of nuclear technology within the territory of the western United States. Storytelling registers design research in a graphic novel format while promoting the use of such a method to provide insight into speculative design that informs and aids in approaching the contemporary territorial issues that landscape architecture seeks to address. The conflicts and controversies surrounding the landscapes of the “Nuclear Highway” system of the United States are made visible through a graphic novel format. The research visualises alternative realities in which projects actually proposed by the US government that were not carried out are implemented. The narratives provide perspectives from both the landscape and its occupants of how such dramatic infrastructures and policies, if implemented, would play out. Novel economies, infrastructures, and technologies are generated to cope with and adapt to the newly defined realities of the post-atomic age. The work intends to address methods of presenting design research that move beyond written and verbally dominated modes into spatial formats. The nuclear highway ― through its scales, ecologies, economies, technologies, and geographies ― is leveraged to legitimise speculative design and storytelling as modes of operation for furthering research and intervention in the field of landscape architecture.