ARCH-4980.6 | Chris Perry, Assistant Professor

URBAN MULTIPLEXIFORM RIVERSCAPE
Hybrid Processes in 21st Century Energy

ANGELA OHMAN

The current riverscape is a complex layering of history, culture and ecological events. Post-industrial river sites have been subject to two clashing histories: the natural/ecological development and the artificial/industrial development. During the past centuries, industry overpowered the natural, rendering much of the landscape marred, polluted, and lacking in its former picturesque aesthetic. Contemporary river cities are looking to environmental, technological, and cultural development as a way of reengaging the river resource.

In a parallel narrative of multivalence and cohabitating systems, Reyner Banham developed his alternative history of architecture through the lens of the building system in his book, The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment. He criticized the creative discipline of architecture for being so form-biased and treating systems as an afterthought, and put forth examples of fully designed architecture of corrugated systems – those which occupy the same space, provide form, and create the aesthetic. The future of architecture integrates form and function, served and serving, structure and infrastructure, designed multivalence in all parts.

The future riverscape deploys multivalent infrastructure and cultural systems, designing within the blurred boundary between natural/artificial and formal/functional. The PotamoPaseo Intermunicipal Park connects Minneapolis and St. Paul through their mutual boundary, the Mississippi River.  This previously-vacated corridor of shipping routes and industry serves as a platform for a new juncture of cohabitating ecological and infrastructural interventions. This prototypical post-industrial riverscape is simultaneously active in metropolitan culture, environmental intervention, and experiential atmosphere.