Color Blind is a collaborative rural installation designed and built by Scottie McDaniel, an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, and Marshall Prado, an Associate Professor of Design and Structural Technology at the University of Tennessee’s College of Architecture and Design. The project connects culture, landscape, and technology, extending McDaniel’s investigation of rural relationships while incorporating Prado’s skills in digital fabrication. The installation questions views of rural landscapes as fixed or solely agricultural, revealing them as lively, technological, and culturally meaningful areas shaped by both historical methods and contemporary innovations.
At its core, Color Blind engages with the landscape as site and subject. Designed to be climbed and occupied, the structure encourages visitors to experience the land beyond visual appreciation. Elevated above the ground, it prompts embodied engagement with terrain, highlighting shifts in soil composition, moisture levels, topographic variations, and traces of past agricultural activity. Apertures frame landscape views, drawing attention to the ecological and cultural layers shaping rural places.
Formally, Color Blind is both familiar and strange — a folly, a landmark, an observation tower, a monument, a shed, a lifeguard post, and a deer stand or duck blind all at once. Created through 3D modelling and a deconstruction of various typologies, the structure encourages a broader understanding of how built forms interact with rural landscapes. It is not just a reimagining of a hunting structure but a hybrid artefact that promotes new perspectives on human intervention and the landscape.
One of the project’s most eye-catching features is its hot-pink colour—an intentional break from rural aesthetic norms. In landscapes where camouflage and muted earth tones are common, this bold hue stands out visually, challenging traditional ideas of blending in. While deer have ultraviolet vision and cannot tell the difference between green and red spectrums (hence the neon orange safety vests), hunting structures remain hidden within greens and browns. By choosing hot-pink, Color Blind highlights camouflage as a cultural choice rather than just a practical one, sparking discussions about visibility, safety, and rural visual language.
Through its shared bench, Color Blind encourages spontaneous interactions among visitors. The intimate interior space promotes environmental observation and conversation, bringing together friends, neighbours, political counterparts, and both rural and urban dwellers. By utilising spatial intimacy, the project transforms the landscape into a site of exchange, emphasising that land is not merely a backdrop but a medium through which human connections develop.
McDaniel and Prado used AR workflows during construction to visualize and assemble the installation in real time. AR was both a design tool and educational medium, enabling students to engage with digital fabrication while building the structure. This showcases how emerging technologies are integrated into rural design, revealing often unnoticed layers of precision and adaptation.
Sponsored by the Wormfarm Institute, the project aims to bridge the rural-urban divide through art and design. The biannual Farm/Art DTour turns Sauk County’s Driftless landscape into a living gallery, where rural lands become exhibition spaces with site-responsive installations. Local farmers offer their fields between harvests, highlighting the rural landscape as an active part of cultural dialogue.
Color Blind
Location: Sauk County, Wisconsin, USA
Designers: Scottie McDaniel and Marshall Prado Project Sponsor: Wormfarm Institute
Host Farm: Ed and Carol Patterson
Student Assistants: Dustin Del Moro, John Hamilton, Jack McCausland, Erin Woolard, Hina Firdaus, Shadman Mahtab
Facilities/Equipment: University of Tenneessee College of Architecture and Design
Image Credits:
Steven Bridges, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
John Hamilton – MLA Candidate, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Matthew Vivirito, artist based in Milwaukee, WI
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