The Path Between the Seas: Challenging the Legacy of the Panama Canal

The Panama Canal is one of the world’s greatest works of economic, environmental, and social infrastructure. In his book, The Path Between the Seas. The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914, David McCullough describes the feat of its construction and its multiple impacts. At the top of the list was the creation of the Republic of Panama itself. Globally, the canal shortened the route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from 21 days to less than 24 hours, driving international commerce. The canal sustained and continues to sustain the nation’s economy.

However, there is another–and less well-known–history of the Panama Canal, one of human displacement and suffering, unmitigated colonialism, and radical environmental transformation, all captured poignantly in Marixa Lasso’s Erased. The Untold Story of the Panama Canal. According to Lasso, the landscape of the canal zone is as much a creation as the canal itself, an introduced tropical-style jungle that “erased 400 years of local urban and agricultural history.”

These conflicting narratives are legible today in the canal zone, a ten-mile-wide swath of land that spans the isthmus of Panama and contains a series of repurposed military bases, residential compounds, warehouses, administrative offices, parks, and conservation lands. Connectivity between the canal zone, the city, and the surrounding landscapes is disjointed and hazardous. Water scarcity due to climate change places the population’s needs in direct conflict with the requirements of the canal for its normal operations.

As a speculative yet grounded exercise, the studio has broad applicability. Legacies of colonial occupation remain permanent unless challenged through alternative visions. While we will be working specifically with the conditions of Panama’s Canal Zone, the studio’s ambition is to provide a method for similar cases worldwide. Specifically, the studio will explore how a 19th-century symbol of “technological triumph” can be transformed into a 21st-century landscape that repairs, reconciles, and reconnects, safeguarding local conditions and aspirations from mounting pressures from ongoing global interests and climate uncertainty.