Jackie Brookner Now. Herbert Bayer Then.
The legacy of Herbert Bayer is being maintained and expanded by Jackie Brookner. Like Bayer's Mill Creek Canyon Earthworks, Brookner's Fargo Project will be sited in a stormwater detention basin that prevents flooding from rainstorms. 
In both instances, this basin is transformed into a multifunctional neighborhood commons. However, Brookner's inclusive manner of accomplishing this goal diverges from the singularity of the modernist master's approach. Her method reflects current art practices in which artists invite community involvement in the creative process. Brookner's work is ultimately collaboratory. She has invited representatives of the city of Fargo, its residents, and local artists to help devise a program and design for the site.
As a result, the project is certain to reflect Fargo’s cultural diversity. Its population includes Native Americans from many different nations and immigrants from over 20 countries. Members of all these groups are joining together and pooling their ideas about how to feature stormwater as a shared community resource. Brookner describes this ambitious project by stating, "Over several months our ecological artist team and other volunteers engaged over 400 people of all ages and backgrounds in the initial visioning outreach.
The project team visited nearby residences and businesses, went into churches, had participatory events in the park, with the secondary schools, and in the high school, met individually and in small groups with New Americans from many cultures, with representatives from the Native American Community, and engaged with students and faculty from Fargo/Moorhead academic institutions.Our first public event was a presentation by Linda Different Cloud, a Lakota ethnobotanist who provided insights about how traditional Wisdom can enrich The Fargo Project. Linda toured the site with the project team to share her recommendations about the potentials for establishing culturally important plants and ways in which the site could serve Fargo’s Native American community. In late spring 2012 over 200 people participated in the celebration inaugurating the basin with Native American dancing and drumming and at the WeDesign workshop that followed. At the design workshop people worked out their ideas on maps or with our custom made sand models of the site and tool kit of props prepared by the artist team.”
The plan that emerged will transform 17 acres at Rabanus Park into a restored native prairier meadow, walking trails, natural play areas, and outdoor gathering spaces.This project is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts and ArtPlace.
Bruckner began plant-based water remediation projects in 1995, before threats to the planet’s waters was widely acknowledged. As access to reliable sources of fresh water diminish, her work is becoming ever more timely. This intense and enduring attention to the fragile state of the planet’s waters has led her to another expansion of Herbert Bayer’s principles. She is committed to developing and disseminating the mental attitude that are a pre-requisite for successful, community’based, regeneration initiatives. She refers to it as “the being of human”, which means living according to the maxim that “we are but dependent parts of much larger natural patterns and forces…” By implication, this reverses humanity’s drive to consume resources and assert power.