A travel grant yields walking as art and research.
Interview By Timothy A. Schuler
Rachel Valenziano, ASLA, holds a piece of Platteville limestone, her favorite rock.
TEN x TEN Studio
Rachel Valenziano, ASLA, an associate at TEN x TEN Landscape Architecture and Urbanism, is the inaugural recipient of the Roger Bond Martin Travel Prize, a $10,000 fellowship established by the ASLA Minnesota Chapter and the University of Minnesota that is awarded to one emerging landscape architect per year. Valenziano recently returned from Rome, where her project focused on the ?everyday and the in-between.?
Connecting a mode of drawing to the experience of walking was a core part of Rachel Valenziano?s project.

Why Rome" 
I [chose Rome] because every inch of the city has such a rich sort of??lasagna? is what they call it, unironically?history, and of politics, and of change. I wasn?t taking any transportation; I wasn?t riding a bike or taking a bus. I was only looking at things within walking distance, and I knew that anywhere I went there would be a meaningful story that I could start to investigate through walking.  What did you do to prepare for the experience"
I read a lot of books and spoke with people who were interested in walking. The biggest piece of preparing was to experiment in ways of drawing. I had an idea about making these long, linear drawings to capture the walks, but I needed to experiment a little bit more to hone the ways that I was drawing. 
A map of the...