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Hugh Smith

STAGE 2 Tiber River, Rome

ladn 412 2006

HUGH SMITH blog


Contents

FIRST STAGE

Design Position

An Urban re-connection project for Tiber River. A new Program for Public use, connection and historical context

The Tiber river is one of the four great rivers of the world, at it is today, it does not read as this. The Tiber River was the origin of Rome; it was the essence of life for Rome. I intend to reinforce this idea by reconnecting the river back into the city of Rome by celebrating the unique spatial qualities existing on the site today. Through the analysis of previous designs and historic visions of the great city, water and shadow will be a main emphasis for creating a new function and connection for the river and the city of Rome. Massive Flood banks now retained the river, almost segregating the city through the rivers natural division. Both sides of the city are connected through a series of transport and historical bridges. Each area between these bridges having its own unique function. The design intent is to use these zones to create a program of spatial use for the Tiber River and Ancient Rome, a program that is giving the river back to the city.

Site Analysis

Existing program

1 Entrance on ramps

Ponte industria

2 Train, river opens into a more natural area, wider parks etc No access on new city side

Ponte testaccio

3 Old city ends. No access from road Fountain on street Ancient ruins Access limited

Ponte sublicio

4. Very dense Dodgy No constructed path Different wall detail

Ponte Palatino

5 Island hospital, More vegetation. Rapids in river

Ponte Cestio/ Ponte Fabricio

6 Hospital Island Serpent steps Markets Sloping step access

Ponte Gambaldi

7. Filthy, drugs - Restaurant and markets. No access at island end

Ponte Sisto

8 Performance

Ponte Mazzinni

9 Wetland growth, empty space

Ponte Prince Amedeo

10 Open Spaces

Vittorio Emmanuelle Bridge

11 Fort – Castle Santa Angelo

Ponte Sant Angelo

12. - Performance - Fake Beach set up e.g. Pool, sand and gym

Ponte Umberto

13 Open space, gothic Church

Ponte Cavour

14. P. Augusto, Richard Myer Buildings Open space

Ponte Regina Margherita

15. New City begins Rowing clubs and house boats

Ponte P. Nana

16. Train, Transport Bridge. Terrace steps park, rowing clubs Exit/ access to river

Ponte G.Matteotti

17 Tennis courts

Ponte Risorgimento

18. up top sculpture -Resorts -House boats - River gets open and less developed


Site conditions

Positives

  • It is a very wide open space
  • it has been used for exhibitions and art installation
  • it is used as ferry route
  • Surronded by historial context
  • It is a whole new relaxing environment compared to the city
  • floods are a highlight
  • programs can be develeloped

-Water Sports

-Performanc/Exhibiton Space

-wetland

-water connection to city

-flood barrier


Negatives

  • loss of identity
  • pollution
  • Area is isolated.
  • Access is limedted
  • stairs are dated.

-too narrow

-Riser too high

-no wheel chair access

  • Areas are intimidating, dark not well litten
  • There is no visual connection for the river and street level.
  • There is no Program concerning ciivc and public use.
  • There is no conncetion the otherside of the river at water level
  • Area promotes unhealthy behaviour
  • mulitple ownership has caused development problems
  • Area surronding the river cannot be developed much at all.
  • the idea of having underground transport is minmal due to aquaducts and complicated undeground systems
  • politics is a big issue
  • historical context is very sensitve
  • floods is an issue

Literature Review

Berrizbeitia, Anita & Pollak, Linda (1999 ) Inside outside between architecture and landscape © Rockport publishers

Inside outside between architecture and landscape constructs a framework of interpretation in order to disclose relations between design disciplines. It defines the interconnections between landscape and architecture by dividing up these relations into five terms.

  • Reciprocity - it is dependent on structural relations that often begin with one or more large-scale decisions that forecast and support more visibly apparent local strategies. A reciprocal relationship is between architecture and landscape that is less dependent on form, and more particular to the contingencies of program and site

The siting of a building disrupts a landscape. This disruption offers the opportunity for architecture to be an agent of the physical and conceptual reconstruction of the environment it has disrupted, and, in doing so, to establish a reciprocal relationship with it. Reciprocity often depends on architecture that is made up of, or broken down into, multiple elements. This combination of fragmentation and multiplicity serves to open the architectural work in such a way as to be able to engage the landscape not as opposite but as elements of connection and use, similar in kind to elements of architecture.

  • Materiality - materiality "disprivileges" form but does not necessarily deny. Because architecture and landscape architecture explicitly share the operation of reconfiguring matter, it is worthwhile to explore how this commonality affects their inter relation. This display represents a kind of abstraction that is not formal, but instead operates through the displacement of elements from their native contexts. It means that the subject focuses on the physical reality of the work, rather than trying to discern some hidden meaning within it. This conceptual shift allows nature to play an active role, rather than to be the passive means of a program of representation.
  • Threshold -a threshold is the point at which a stimulus is of sufficient intensity to begin to produce an effect, as in "threshold of consciousness" or "threshold of pain:’ a threshold values the edge between two ecosystems as the zone of highest exchange and diversity. In ecological terms, thresholds are the most important parts of a system. The place where field meets forest is more important than either the field or the forest itself. Thresholds are where transformations begin, where exchanges between unlikely things occur, and where identities are declared. The operation of threshold also provides a way to represent the identity of an institution or place in spatial terms
  • Insertion initiates cycles of activity and reactivity between an existing urban context and a new, inserted, space. This operation stands against the modernist notion of undifferentiated open space, and also rejects historicized contextualism, in which new architectural and landscape architectural projects are designed to blend in seamlessly with their surroundings.

Insertion engages a space with its surroundings, such that it becomes part of an urban continuum, but also initiates a break in that continuum. The interface between the space and its context is not smooth or invisible: insertion depends on activating boundaries to construct identity. Part of a space's identity is its relations with surrounding spaces. Its edges define a space as different from but also related to the spaces around it. As one space is introduced into another it comes into transformative, sometimes uncomfortable, contact with existing orders. Insertion can operate by importing something foreign into a site, or by foregrounding some quality that was already present but not apparent.

  • Infrastructure - Infrastructure is an operation that combines different kinds of spaces and activities-a park, a road, a building-within its domain and is able to sustain program beyond its own logistical requirements. As an operation it works strategically to create conditions for future events, as opposed to a conventional understanding of infrastructure as an artefact that exists for the sake of a technical program. It is through this combinatorial role that the operation of infrastructure has the potential to mediate between architecture and landscape in order to contribute to the re-conceptualization of the urban realm. Its seams reveal the presence of the operation by allowing different elements to come together and at the same time retain their separate identities. It has capacity to reveal unsuspected kinship between elements long known, but assumed to be incompatible with one another, such as a park or public square with a highway. The introduction of additional program, whether functional, artistic, or phenomenological, also displaces the expected predominance of the technological aspects of infrastructure, and reveals the inherent flexibility of the operation to include multiple agendas, authors, and unforeseen events. The operation of infrastructure disrupts the opposition between culture and nature, which posits landscape as an un-built, original condition upon which architecture, as part of culture, is built. Infrastructure goes beyond making connections to establish communication between elements. Rather than segregating activities, it intertwines them.


Raxworthy, Julian and Blood, Jessica (2004) . The MESH book : Landscape/ infrastructure / edited by Julian Raxworthy and Jessica Blood. RMIT Publishing.

This introduction to the Mesh Book states what infrastructure can be used for, I the sense of figuring out a concept of function. The notion of function must be of critical importance, beciluse without function, there can be no such thing as infrastructure. Infrastructure is only infrastructure if it supports something else, and this type of relationship is a structural or functional one. In the context of architectural disciplines, infrastructure has long been the basic exemplar for characterising function in its purest sense, the engineer becoming the heroic modern design figure.

  • Such a characterisation goes a long way to describe the attractiveness of an infrastructural aesthetic for landscape architects, in the context of the programmatic uncertainty of the park, and public space generally. Infrastructure seems to offer the possibility for importance that landscape architecture is searching for.
  • As these metaphors take on new meanings in tandem with the institutionalisation of sustainability in the past ten years, ecology has been an important analogy for landscape architecture. However its pragmatic limitation to hydrological systems has finitely limited the potential of landscape architecture's contribution to the sustainability debate, even while wetland and water-based solutions have become more integrated into urban design generally, and become much more formalIy and technically sophisticated.
  • The adherence to water landscape architects and the main point of its agency in infrastructure has also reduced its functional relevance, which is an important notion for infrastructure because its root is nothing more than function. In becoming more sophisticated, it is doing so by somehow demonstrating or interpreting this function, putting landscape architecture into a formal or perhaps ornamental role, thereby disengaging itself again from the substance, the very concrete, of the infrastructure.


Sawyer, Chris 2004 Territorial Infrastructure. The MESH book: Landscape/ infrastructure / edited by Julian Raxworthy and Jessica Blood. RMIT Publishing.

Territories are about seeing things that are too big to see. Infrastructure should be seen as extending across (or beyond) the landscape as a type of super structure.

  • Landscape is outside the boundary of architecture, and then infrastructure is outside the boundary of landscape. Infrastructure is, then, paradoxically too big to see.’ The landscape becomes the vital ingredient for the new identity to take root. It is far easier to 'read' landscapes non-pictorially because of the scale - entire countries can be crossed in relatively short periods of time by vehicle, allowing a conception of the countryside as a continuous, interwoven fabric. Blank spaces rarely exist. Yet space is a relative concept, and a surfeit of space and a lack of people in a context make the need to imagine rather than see what is there all the more difficult and important.
  • Furthermore, there has been a growing awareness that the city occupies an important realm within the larger territory, irrespective of evolution. Cities open onto the territory. Understanding space requires the dismantling of traditional boundaries between city and country. A genuine engagement with the effect of infrastructure requires a willingness to acknowledge the contested histories of this country and the inevitable need for negotiation and compromise.
  • Landscape architects must promote negotiation and reinvention
  • Landscape architects must invent the representational and procedural strategies that more effectively describe these conditions of excessive and contested space. Such strategies attempt to fill the 'empty' spaces that we have historically left blank, either because they lie over the horizon or are no longer within our field of vision. Because territories cannot be wholly or completely 'seen' in a single glance, they depend on conventions and structures to make them observable and understandable. Infrastructure becomes one of these strategies, and appropriate methods need to be developed to explain its operational and formal presence within the landscape.’
  • Landscape production can enter into the realm of territory by subjecting physical form to alternative forces, with the aim of introducing the intangible and non-spatial into the final, built form. New technologies have also offered possibilities in the dismantling of the traditional image frame through the exploration of non-linear, dynamic and heterogeneous solutions that become more representative of today's complex situation.
  • The cosmopolitan cities have continued to expand beyond their effective operational bounds to a point where the infrastructure can no longer support them. Limits to growth are not a new idea, but it is one which has taken a long time for designers to integrate into a conceptual understanding of landscape. It represents a dynamic, territorial understanding that incorporates both time and change. As a strategy it is also more accepting of the inevitable visibility of infrastructure and the need to deal creatively with its formal qualities.
  • The traditional separation between private and public is replaced by a more useful interplay between interested stakeholders, a territorial discussion that recognises rather than denies multiple and contested claims to the land.
  • The notion of access across time helps to dismantle readings of the landscape which are momentary 'snapshots' of space, replacing these with longer term, and far more comprehensive/inclusive readings of territory.

Much of the recent interest amongst designers in 'programming' alludes to these more complex notions of access and experience and the inability for existing zoning ordinances to provide for the types of multi-dimensional experiences we now expect.


Wall, Alex (1999) Programming the Urban Surface. Recovering Landscape Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture © Princeton Architectural Press.

Landscape is an active surface, structuring the conditions for new relationships and interactions among the things it supports. Alex wall describes the process that goes on the surfaces around the civic environment and how they can set up future activities. In describing landscape as urban surface, Wall refers to the extensive and inclusive ground-plane of the city, to the "field" that accommodates buildings, roads, utilities, open spaces, neighbourhoods, and natural habitats. This is the ground structure that organizes and supports a broad range of fixed and changing activities in the city. As such, the urban surface is dynamic and responsive; like a catalytic emulsion, the surface literally unfolds events in time.

  • It is similar to a dynamic agricultural field, assuming different functions, geometries, distributive arrangements, and appearances as changing circumstance demands. This adaptability derives in part from the planar character of the surface, to its smooth and uninterrupted continuity, but also from the equipment and services embedded within it.
  • The effects of urbanization today are multiple and complex, these might be called peripheral sites, middle landscapes that are neither here nor there, and yet are so pervasive as to now characterize the dominant environment in which most people actually live. In contrast, the old city centres are becoming increasingly themed around tourist and entertainment functions. A second effect of modem urbanization is a remarkable increase in mobility and access. The importance of mobility and access in the contemporary metropolis brings to infrastructure the character of collective space. Transportation infrastructure is less a self-sufficient service element than an extremely visible and effective instrument in creating new networks and relationships.
  • The space of mobility may also be a collective space.
  • The tramline is, literally, a link that provides a coherent system across an otherwise fragmented field. It comprises three series: the material of the surface; the vegetation structure of hedges, trees, and plantings; and furnishings. These produce a contrapuntal effect in relation to the untidy irregularity of the surrounding fabric. The integrity and continuity of these elements produces not only an image of public space but also the necessary environmental conditions to support public activities. Infrastructure engages social and imaginative dimensions as much as it does engineering concerns. It effectively integrates pans of the city, reduces the marginalization and segregation of certain social groups, and stimulates new forms of interaction.
  • New urban consumers may create and find their own meaning in the environments they use. As Geuze writes:The urbanite is self-assured and well-informed, finds his freedom and chooses his own subcultures. The city is his domain, exciting and seductive. He has proved himself capable of finding his way around the new landscape and of making places his own.
  • To maximize the use of the site over longer periods of time, design can address the problem of inventing new programs and pro-visions. Thus, the surface is itself folded or warped in order to create a continuous field that is then impregnated with new elements and structures. This concept enabled a mix of functions and activities throughout the day. The space of form is here replaced by the space of events in time.
  • Rebuilding, incorporating, connecting, intensifying- these words describe not only the physical character of these projects but also their programmatic function. They are instruments, or agents, for unfolding new urban realities, designed not so much for appearances and aesthetics as for their instigative and structuring potential. Their strategies are targeted not only toward physical but also social and cultural transformations, functioning as social and ecological agents
  • The instruments and spaces of mobility--especially the automobile and the freeway-have provided new sites of collective life. A real challenge to urban design is to accept that infrastructure is as important to the vitality and experience of the contemporary metropolis as the town hall or square once was as we move into the twenty-first century, one of the primary roles of urban design will be the reworking of movement corridors as new vessels of collective life. In either case, the surface becomes a staging ground for the unfolding of future events. The surface is not merely the venue for formal experiments but the agent for evolving new forms of social life.

Anuradha Mathur/ Dilip Da cun. (2001) Mississippi floods. Designing a shifting landscape New Haven: Yale University Press

This book is an attempt to bring into public discourse the images instrumental in the design of the Lower Mississippi by broadening appreciation for the life of a wondrous landscape. It is the landscape of the River king that is the focus of this book. It may not shift as regularly and visibly as it once did. But looking beyond the confinements of levees, locks, gates, and so on, to the representations employed in their design-maps, hydrographs, and photographs-one clearly discerns a shifting landscape. The public rarely gets to experience this shifting landscape, except perhaps in flood. The book Expresses research through an in depth study of everything that is concerned with fluvial and time movements

  • The landscape of conflict, the result of efforts to prevent floods while exploiting the Mississippi unrivalled navigational potential and, importantly today, valuing its ecological role, is itself the subject of much dispute. The sense of permanence, security and prosperity that designed the interventions has promised is being increasingly questioned in academia and popular press. While some believe that the Mississippi can be harnessed ands controlled, others notably radical environmentalists, advocate that it can be released into some natural state.

Little attention is paid to the representations that play a significant role in constructing the Mississippi that is the subject of these views. Representation such as maps, hydrographs, cross sections, working drawings and models used by professional in the process of designing a landscape.

  • The capture of the Mississippi goes back to early maps that plotted the river, beginning perhaps with the one drawn by Monk Ptolemy, a member of Hernando de Soto's expedition that came upon the Mississippi in 1541.
  • Map followed map for the Mississippi. But it was not until the professional surveys beginning in 1820, commissioned by the United States Congress for the purposes of navigation and performed by Engineers, that the Mississippi began to take a definitive form with regard to shape, depth, slope, discharge, material, and hydraulics.
  • This book Mississippi floods is a great example to follow in researching the Tiber River of Rome. Its in Depth study of processes and importance can be applied to the sight of the Tiber in Rome. The Mississippi carries a design agency- the constructions conceived on the professional's drawing board, where images of the landscape in the process of design play a determining role in the outcome. To portray a working landscape, we bring forth from behind the scenes the body of a nation, the everyday human practices that contribute to the construction of the Lower Mississippi, and, more specifically, the images that playa role in the process of designing this landscape

The panorama of the Lower Mississippi that we are trying to paint here recognizes a river that is itself boundless, carrying I the diversity of a basin, its soils, seasons, peoples, histories, I technologies, connections, and conflicts,.

Research

Plato, Republic, 4th Cent. BC Allegory of the Cave

“Imagine people living in a cavernous cell down under the ground; at the far end of the cave, a long way off, there’s an entrance open to the outside world. They’ve been there since childhood, with their legs and necks tied up in a way which keeps them in one place and allows them to look only straight ahead, but not to turn their heads. There’s firelight burning a long way further up the cave behind them, and up the slope between the fire and the prisoners there’s a road, beside which you should imagine a low wall has been built – like the partition which [puppeteers] place between themselves and their audience and above which they show their [puppets]. . . Imagine also that there are people on the other side of this wall who are carrying all sorts of artefacts. These artefacts, human statuettes, and animal models carved in stone and wood and all kinds of materials stick out over the wall; and as you’d expect, some of the people talk as they carry these objects along, while others are silent. . . [They see nothing] of themselves and one another except the shadows cast by the fire on to the cave wall directly opposite them. . . And. . . the objects which were being carried along,. . . they only see their shadows as well. . . And what if sound echoed off the prison wall opposite them? When any of the passers-by spoke, don’t you think they’d be bound to assume that the sound came from a passing shadow? . . . All in all, then, the shadows of artefacts would constitute the only reality people in this situation would recognize. What do you think would happen, then, if they were set free from their bonds. . . What would it be like if they found that happening to them? Imagine that one of them has been set free and is suddenly made to stand up, to turn his head and walk, and to look towards the firelight. . . And what do you think he’d say if he were shown any of the passing objects and had to respond to being asked what it was? Don’t you think he’d be bewildered and would think that there was more reality in what he’d been seeing before than in what he was being shown now?”


Mircea Eliade 1986 The Return to Shadows Symbolism, the Sacred, & the Arts p7, 12-13

"... a 'form' rising from Shadows can signify not only the manifestation of a World, but also the appearance of a 'humanity' (a race, a people)... In effect, we retrieve in the symbolism of Shadows the note of atemporality, of 'eternity,' of the suspension of becoming. Time begins with the apparition of Forms, thus with the Light... The return to Shadows implies then the immersion into the pre-formed, contact with that which was not worn away by Time."

Berendt, John. The City of Falling Angels, New York: Penguin Press. 1995. pp1-2

'The rhythm in Venice is like breathing,' he said. 'High water, high pressure: tense. Low water, low pressure: relaxed. Venetians are not at all attuned to the rhythm of the wheel. That is for other places, places with motor vehicles. Ours is the rhythm of the Adriatic. The rhythm of the sea. In Venice the rhythm flows along with the tide, and the tide changes every six hours.' Count Marcello inhaled deeply. 'How do you see a bridge?' 'Pardon me?' I. Asked. ‘A bridge?' 'Do you see a bridge as an obstacle - as just another set of steps to climb to get from one side of a canal to the other? We Venetians do not see bridges as obstacles. To us bridges are transitions. We go over them very slowly. They are part of the rhythm. They are the links between two parts of a theatre, like changes in scenery, or like the progression from Act One of a play to Act Two. Our role changes as we go over bridges. We cross from one reality. . . to another reality. From one street. . . to another street. From one setting. . . to another setting.'

Via 11 Shadow. Journal of the grof fine arts University of Pennsylvania © Rizzoli (1991)

Articulating the surfaces on which they fall, shadows. Difference and Repetition. At their most abstract relieve objects of the blank tedium of the endlessly visible. Shadows signify both repetition and difference. By definition a shadow reiterates the body that casts it. It is "an Imitation

The architecture and shadows automatically means to talk Great Pyramid by the shadows they throw. As echo is to about solidity and vacuity, or presence and absence. But in sound, shadow is to sight, except that the echo's temporal.

Difference: "something of opposite character that necessary- The other shapely accompanies or follows from something else" If shape it might be called that shape had none, dark where a building may be illuminated, and penetrable Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, where a structure is solid. Indeed, "shade" can be called that shadow seemed, for difference itself: "a slight variation of degree: ashade

A shadow is a "dark figure which a shadows carry us the distance from the obscure to the body 'casts' or 'throws' upon a surface. . . - as if that visible, or vice versa. In architectural terms, shadows shadow, like a thing, could actually be thrown or cast. inscribe difference across the unvarying surfaces of build- Ruskin's shadow similarly takes on a weird life of its owning's (both interior and exterior), a motion repeated daily but always shifting, and so animating the structures it plays

Shadows can create the illusion of the thing that casts it, nor of that it is cast upon, space by suggesting a depth of field behind an object, the but an extraordinary, stretched, flattened, fractured, way that shading introduces a third dimension into a ill-jointed autonomy of its own, - cannot be drawing. More complexly, shadows can also imagined unless one is actually engaged in shadow signify the passing of time. The first meaning of "shadowy" hunting is given in the "transitory, fleeting." In a sundial shadows literally mark the passing of the day,

Less metaphorically, its shadow can either anticipate a building we have yet to reach or trace the memory of one we have left.,

Precedent Study

River in the city: new public spaces on Portland's waterfront blend ecology and urbanity [Portland, Oregon] Zimmer Gunsal Frasca Architects

Initiated an effort to look at the potential for reclaiming Portland's downtown waterfront, resulting in a master plan for Waterfront Park and transforming Front Avenue from a four-lane thoroughfare into a tree-lined boulevard. since then, ZGF has planned and designed more than 50 projects in neighborhoods and on the streets abutting the waterfront. The projects have included vision framework plans for waterfront districts south and north of the city, with complementary development regulations, strategies, design guidelines and infrastructure standards that have shaped subsequent development of these districts. They have designed parks, streets and transit improvements that link these districts together and to the heart of the downtown. They also designed new buildings and historic renovations that house an expanding population in the center city. The value of this experience has been to build, test and modify the focus of a region, and its ability to attract and accommodate a diverse and growing population, while inviting and enabling many others to do so.


www.zgf.com/[1]

Alleghney Riverfront Park PittsBurgh, Pennsyvania. 1995 – 1998 Miochael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc.

The study for the extensions of the existing Allegheny Riverfront Park explores the possibility of transforming several river edge sites in downtown Pittsburgh from industrial leftovers into a system of parks. The idea for a riverside park at the convergence of the Monongahela and the Allegheny Rivers originated in a master plan proposed by Frederick L. Olmsted Jr. in 1911, but the sites for this potential public amenity were ultimately developed as corridors for highway and civil engineering infrastructure. The proposal outlines a planning and analysis approach that seeks to strategically transform contemporary complications into urban assets. The eventual result will be a park system that demonstrates multiple solutions to a variety of circumstances rather than a single plan that attempts to unify circumstances to meet an imposed design ideal.

The study for the extensions of the existing Allegheny Riverfront Park explores the possibility of transforming several river edge sites in downtown Pittsburgh from industrial leftovers into a system of parks. The idea for a riverside park at the convergence of the Monongahela and the Allegheny Rivers originated in a master plan proposed by Frederick L. Olmsted Jr. in 1911, but the sites for this potential public amenity were ultimately developed as corridors for highway and civil engineering infrastructure. The proposal outlines a planning and analysis approach that seeks to strategically transform contemporary complications into urban assets. The eventual result will be a park system that demonstrates multiple solutions to a variety of circumstances rather than a single plan that attempts to unify circumstances to meet an imposed design ideal.

www.mvvainc.com[2]

Rotterdam Waterwalk Hamburg - Jan Stormer Architeken, Andre Poitiers Archtekten and renner Hainke Wirth Architeken

Point of proposal is to attempt to reconnect the city and the water, to create a unique urban space. The water walk will give Rotterdam a floating boulevard, integrating the maas in the fabric of the city and transforming De Bommpjes, the plan proposes moving the axis of a major traffic area, creating anew green public area, creating a new open link, constructing a new building cluster east of the new open entrance., laying in a new open entrance, laying a new water walk that’s runs along the bank., inserting new floating islands that work with the new water walk track and constructing a new multifunctional high rise building. These changes will improve the traffic route. Having the bridge moved will also open up wasted land; these bits of land can potentially be linked up again, creating a new park along the water edge. This green corridor will create a spatial recess, allowing the charm of the river to permeate the city and making its historic structure visible once more.


NorthBank Yarra River Melbourne

Purpose is to reconnect the central city back to the Yarra River

Issues – road and rail infrastructure had since the late nineteenth century, increasingly isolated the central business district from the river. Underground infrastructure was not a problem. The land was multi ownership. The river is one of Melbourne’s main topographic features.

In 1987 the city produced a plan based on a historical layout of the site. They addressed issues such as the railway, which needs to stay to be incorporated within the built form of the site. This would limit the impact as a physical barrier and allow for street frontages alongside major roads and park frontages. The roads would be taken back down to a grade. This was done by - the use of lights to transform negative spaces into sculptural spaces - River to be widen to allow for a more positive relationship with the city and viaduct - Ground level was lowered around new viaduct and the ground plane was sloped to provide better views of the water, this also provided seating and gave the site greater height and elegance - Artwork and simple nautical detailing were used to enhance the character of the area.

Twenty years on the incrementally staged process has seen the Turning basin excavated and the roads and parking has been transformed into parks. Proposals are now exist to remove bridges and build a mixed use development to enclose the rail viaduct still

River vision Davenport, IA, and Rock Island by Hargreaves Associates

Hargreaves Associates is working with the cities of Davenport, IA, and Rock Island, IL, on RiverVision, a joint project to develop design strategies for the cities’ shared Mississippi riverfront. RiverVision proposes linking the cities’ downtown development strategies and promoting economic and design connections between their two shorelines. Through careful strategic development of the shared riverfront and the addition of dynamic new program elements and area icons, RiverVision will improve vistas and amenities for area residents, workers, and visitors, creating a spectacular riverfront and serving as a catalyst for downtown economic development.

RiverVision is unique in drawing together two distinct cities in an effort to improve their shared riverfront property. Ultimately, RiverVision aims to improve downtown quality of life, spur development and tourism for the two cities, and to reconnect the two cities to their riverfronts

www.hargreaves.com[3]

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