“A Landscape of Reciprocity” - PRISMID Sanctuary is a community-led cultural and ecological space in Portland's St. Johns neighborhood, envisioned as a place for Black and Indigenous artists and cultural workers to gather, create, restore, and deepen their relationships with one another and the land.
Working as part of the PRISMID Land Design Collective, Ground Workshop is helping translate a shared community vision into a landscape that supports ceremony, creative expression, food sovereignty, and ecological stewardship. The design process centers the knowledge and lived experiences of community members, allowing cultural practices, relationships, and the needs of the land to inform the evolving design.
The landscape brings together intimate gardens, communal gathering spaces, meandering pathways, and areas for cultivation and reflection. Native and culturally significant plants offer opportunities for food, medicine, making, and ceremony, while thoughtful attention to water, habitat, and seasonal change encourages a reciprocal relationship with the site's living systems.
More than a setting for the Sanctuary's buildings, the landscape is conceived as a living place of belonging, where community, culture, and ecology can continue to grow together.