ARCH-4980.1 | Chris Perry, Assistant Professor

NETWORK(ED) FUTURISM
Re-integrating the Post-War Industrial Waterfront

SEAN DEMPSEY

Not immune to the monumental economic shifts of the Twentieth Century, the cities of the Hudson River Valley witnessed a rapid decline and disuse of their once-thriving industrial riverfronts.  In response to the current population rise and cultural transformations within the Valley, this proposal offers a flexible industrial-cultural waterfront to replace the decaying – and often polluted – artificial shoreline.  Acting first and foremost as a factory for a new biofuel industry, the project satisfies an immediate need for job creation while providing a clean infrastructural urban landscape for future public and private use.

Drawing from research on networks in postwar futurism, a multi-scalar system of both fixed and re-distributable units creates a ‘kit of parts,’ allowing for maximum programmatic flexibility within a specified infrastructural network of fuel and energy exchange.  At the scale of the platforms, a layering of programmable elements – between hydrogen production and storage membranes – suggests a non-hierarchical urbanscape which responds in real time to both the physical and metaphysical needs of the system.  While an initial catalogue of landscape and rentable, multi-use units is proposed, the modular nature of the platforms and the ability to reduce them to a basic shell allows for future design of additional insertable spaces.  The large-scale organization of the platforms is adjustable according to both environmental and programmatic needs, creating a shoreline constantly in flux and in tune with its local and regional conditions.

The artificial shoreline need no longer flatly defy nature nor slight cultural activity, but rather invite these previously-external forces as important engaging factors acting in concert with industry.  Through a layering of clean infrastructure, industry, and cultural activity, the flexible shoreline system now acts as a catalyst for waterfront reuse and repopulation.  This new infrastructural waterfront distinguishes itself from its predecessors through its adaptability over time, utilizing emerging technologies to establish a dynamic, synthetic waterfront ecology.