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Any one interested in attending some lectures on brownfeilds? I know none of use are working on brownfeild sites but I sure it will of value. I have not fully explored the site and who I am interested in seeing but let me know and maybe we can make a group effort.
Margo
Here is a link to artist Buster Simpson, the Seattle Artist Colgate mentioned today
check out the Growing Vine Street Project
My site is Apponaug Village, once the most powerful mill town in Warwick, now mostly suburban housing and traffic jams where route 117 and route 1 meet. The proximity to fresh water and Narragansett Bay was the reason for the villages existence, the link between the two bodies is hidden from the road even burried underground in places. My project creates a recreational corridor following this brook. The path not only provides a recreational amenity for the village, but it provides an understanding of the hydrology and ecology of the village, and physically and emotionally reconnects residents to the water.
Addressing Route 117 in Rhode Island several issue of water arose; point and non-point pollution, old industrial site pollution, accesses and acknowledgment of the waters edge. What most interested me is how it would be possible to look at existing infrastructure and organization of the urban fabric and rework it so that the development on the waters edge acknowledges it existence and provide a multi use of space. Through physically exploration and data research The Shaw’s at 320 Warwick Avenue, Warwick, Rhode Island has been chosen as the site to explore these opportunities.
Through exploration of this site and current technologies I would like to provide a space that works as a system to cleanse the water runoff of the site and that surrounding it, bridge a connection to water in the urban and natural environment, and open the edges of the site to allow for mixed use of space.
Where does the water go when it rains? Typically rainwater is collected in gutter systems of a building where it is released at street level free to pollute the community and eventually water bodies near by. The water wasted is a wasted opportunity for something better. Crossroads Rhode Island Crisis Management moved into its new home in the old YMCA Building at 160 Broad st in 2004. Retrofitted to serve the organizations needs, most of the original structure from 1906 remains. The YMCA still inhabits and uses part of the site for its purposes. On a daily basis the clients of Crossroads come into contact with those of the Y: two different communties of people co-existing.
Across the street from Crossroads is an old Boy Scouts center no longer in use, the building is for lease. The land available provides and opportunity for use. The goal is to design physical and metaphorical connections. The rain water will be drained across the street and incorporated into a public space, where the water is filtered and used for public amenities as well as aesthectic features.
Contamination does not happen in a straight line. Sometimes, especially in the event of Occupessatuxet Cove, pollutants can seep in from several angles. Though effective, often times treatment of water happens at point locations.
Wildlife also requires a faceted buffer strategy in order to thrive. Birds have a history of utilizing the cove and its wetlands as it is a convenient node in the Atlantic Flyway on both the north and south routes, being inland but still near the coast. The cove's important role is threatened by the surrounding human traffic (planes, cars, trains, boats, etc.) and the stress it projects onto the wildlife.
Occupessatuxet Cove has long felt the presence of humans; our occupation of this region will not likely cease. In order to secure its survival as an important hub for waterfowl and drainage of runoff to the sea, a border must be instated. This border however, will be soft: it will allow for viewing of the cove, and slowly filter out pollutants from contributing ponds. The key for its success is in part to educate people through interaction of the process it takes to undo harsh effects of our presence while allowing viewing of the product of this filter: the birds and thriving wetland.
The section of Route 117 stretching from Providence to Route 2 in Warwick has 25 gas stations. Of these 25 gas stations 16 of them are Lust sites. Lust sites are categorized by the DEM to have leaking underground storage tanks, be it in the past or present. Many engineers, law makers and cities have worked hard to help stabilize this problem. In Rhode Island many steps have been made to stop underground pollutants from getting in to the water but what about the above ground pollutants. Above ground pollutants can be anything from leaking cars to gasoline that drips when removing the nozzle from your car. When rain hits these surfaces the pollutants are washed into the gutters mixing them with the runoff and eventually bringing them into the ground polluting soils in their path.
I am proposing a gas station that collects and filters these pollutants while making the user aware. This can occur through the use of new technologies, organization of parts, and purposeful moves through a series of layers that work together making one large collective system. This gas station will be made from a kit of parts that can be placed anywhere, a universal green gas station.
The highly industrialized Pawtuxet River has lost a great deal of its floodzone as well as created a highly polluted edge along the Western portion of the river. The Scituate Reservoir in Northwestern Rhode Island is the drinking water supply for Providence and drains into the polluted western section of the Pawtuxet River. My site is a flood plain which has been industrilized in the past. A flood in the 1960's wiped out the few houses and roads in the area and in the past 50 years the roads have been abanodoned asking for a critical assessment of the risidual space created by the cut of the raiload, the building of RT 117 and an old farm road. The space straddles the river and presently contains a public nursery on the Northern side of the river. The new program of the space builds on the past ecological function of the site, enriches the site with new ecological program, allows agriculture to become an important feature of the space, as well as creates a new type of agriculture by building a space on site for the bioremediation of local contaminated soils. The site is an educational space for the community which contains a nework of paths. Each path describes the ecological function of the space one occupies by the way it is constructed and interacts with the land it is built in. On a larger scale the space begins to make connections between Pawtuxet Village and Roger Williams Park as well as the continues to address human involvement within the river cooridor by passive use of the space. This cooridor begins to make another connection between the Naragansett Bay, a body of salt water used for transportation, and The Scituate Resevour, a body of fresh water used for supplying The City of Providence with drinking water. Finally, the integration between designed floodzones, ecologically specific spaces such as wetlands, meadows and upland forrests, spaces for contained bioremeditaion and the appropriate inustry is crucial for a sustainable economy, healthy rivers, appropriate flood zones and human understanding of the importance of these systems and our involvement in them.
Garden State Green Wave - The Architect's Newspaper - 04.11.2006
New Jersey is passionate about its greenways, so it was a tough, needling crowd at the Paterson Museum that greeted five well-known environmental design teams, all finalists in New Jersey’s Urban Parks Master Plan Competition. They are vying for the commission for the $10 million rehabilitation of Great Falls State Park, currently a 7-acre, post-industrial eyesore that surrounds a natural wonder: a 77-foot waterfall surging from a rocky cliff into the Passaic River, which feeds a vintage hydropower plant.
COMPLETE ARTICLE - www.archpaper.com/news/2006_0411.htm
An intensive international one-day conference focusing on the current state of green technologies at Kean University, Union NJ on Friday, November 17, 2006.
The conference will highlight advancements in the acquisition and transfer of green, eco-friendly technology, both locally and globally, with a particular focus on renewable sources of energy, sustainable development and global leadership in clean technology during this critical time in the history of our nation and the world. Social, economic and geopolitical progress is driven by technological innovation, and Kean University is committed to the proposition that smart, clean, renewable energies and eco-friendly business practices benefit each and every one of us on this planet, and our children.
An article from the New Scientist on road pollution through automobile waste
The National University of Technology in Taipei is slowly being converted into a sustainablie campus including this 1000 foot bioswale designed by Sergio Palleroni....
Read the scanned article here...
Sources:
9/2006 issue of Architecture Magazine,
and more information at Sustainable Taiwan.
Information on some of the more relevant (wetland and bay-dwelling, as well as controversial) kinds of birds inhabiting the site.
Canada Goose: In the 1900’s the goose was only present in Rhode Island during migration periods. A Migratory Bird Treaty in 1918 prohibited the captivation for use of live birds as hunting decoys, causing the captive geese to be unregulated in their release by private owners. This created a small but present population of geese who now call Rhode Island home.
Green-Backed Heron: The most common nesting wading bird in Rhode Island. Protection of wetlands and vegetated buffer zones are necessary to keep their population steady.
Mallard: Now the most common nesting waterfowl in Rhode Island, the Mallard was rarely found in Rhode Island at all in the early 1900’s. In the mid 1900’s accidental and intentional release of pen-reared Mallards resulted in the steady population of today.
Monk Parakeet: (pictured) Accidentally and intentionally introduced to the wild by pet owners in the 1960’s, the Parakeets have adapted (from South American weather) in order to survive New England winters. An increased population could cause agricultural harm however no control has yet been attempted.
Mute Swan: Brought to New York from Europe in the 1900’s, the population has now spread as far north as New England. Control has been attempted by addling eggs, however the numbers continue to slowly climb due to availability of inland freshwater sites, and human nurturing.
Osprey: The “catastrophic” (according to the Audubon Society of Rhode Island) decline in the Rhode Island Osprey population is a result of DDT poisoning over the years since the 1950’s. Since the ban in 1972 of DDT the population has minimally recovered but still not replenished completely. 37 Active nests were recorded in 1992.
Ring-necked Pheasant: Originating in Asia, the birds were introduced to Rhode Island in the 1920’s to supplement scarcity of indigenous wild game populations. It is speculated that human-supplied food sources enables winter survivorship.
Rock Doves: (Pigeons) Initially introduced in the New World from Europe for food and sport, Rock Doves have over the course of history become highly adapted to urbanization, nesting in places too populated, loud, or polluted by humans for other birds to tolerate. This yields several broods per female per year, the resulting population is evidently massive.
For maps of the birds' confirmed sightings in Rhode Island, see the east wall in studio.
References:
Fitch, Gordon. Undergraduate, Dept. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University
Enser, Richard W. "The Atlas of the Breeding Birds of R.I.," 1992
Animation - from a British school portal
Definition - from Merriam-Webster
A crescent-shaped often ephemeral lake formed in the abandoned channel of a meander by the silting up of its ends after the stream has cut through the land within the meander at a narrow point.
Formation - from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
When a river reaches a low-lying plain in its final course to the sea or a lake, it meanders widely. Deposition occurs on the convex bank because of the ‘slack water’, or water at low velocity.
In contrast, both lateral erosion and undercutting occur on the concave bank where the stream’s velocity is the highest. Continuous erosion of a concave bank and deposition on the convex bank of a meandering river cause the formation of a very pronounced meander with two concave banks getting closer. The narrow neck of land between the two neighbouring concave banks is finally cut through, either by lateral erosion of the two concave banks or by the strong currents of a flood. When this happens, a new straighter river channel is created and an abandoned meander loop, called a cut-off, is formed. When deposition finally seals off the cut-off from the river channel, an oxbow lake is formed. Some rivers shift in this way on a time scale from a few years to several decades whereas others are essentially static.
This is a link to the history of the I 95 http://www.bostonroads.com/roads/I-95_RI/
This site is has really useful interactive maps that when you use the i info tool will give you data including people to contact. I got great info from Cynthia Gianfrancesco at RIDEM... very exciting!
http://www.dem.ri.gov/maps/index.htm#GV
Downtown / Civic Zone - James
South Providence - Rob
Roger Williams Park – Dana
Cranston – 117 & 1A @ Norwood Ave - Carolyn
Pawtuxet River Crossing – Margo
117 & 1A @ Post Rd - Carolyn
Posnegansett Pond – Courtney
Spring Green Pond - Courtney
Conimicut – Amy
Warwick Neck & Warwick Cove - James
Veteran's Memorial High School - Courtney
Tuskatucket Brook & Warwick City Park - Margo
Warwick City Hall & Oriental Print Works Mill site - Amy
117 & 95 intersection - Carolyn
117 & Route 2 - Dana
Centerville - Rob
Here is a link for information on Rhode Island's floods and droughts(pdf). I checked out a book on constructed wetlands if anyone wants to look through it this week.
Link for information about the Buzzards Bay Restoration Project
One more link: Here are some examples of storm water management applied in a suburb of Minneapolis
