The Great River Road

The Great River Road holds within it many different possibilities for a designer to follow.  It presents possibilities from a variety of angles, but the elements that I chose to analyze included the systems, history, narrative memories generated through the landscape, hydrology, and geomorphology of the site.

I began researching the historic memories that originated throughout the River Road extents.   On the initial site visit, my observations of the landscape began to focus on the Hanson’s Disease Medical Clinic that was founded in Carville, LA along the road.  The Hanson’s Center was a clinic that treated leprosy.  This clinic became the focus of study in producing a model derived through memories captured or experienced in a landscape.  The crux of the project was to determine if a model could represent a landscape through memories expressed in a narrative form.   The model itself would be constructed in the expression of a memory box of the landscape.  During the site visit, I collected a series of objects from the Hanson’s Clinic.  These objects were used in the narration process of the model construction.  Each object collected from the site held with it a story of its own that was based on a personal experience from the Hanson’s Medical Clinic patients. The crux of the model was to generate a story that could be interpreted many different ways depending on how the viewing elements were arranged within the memory box.  The memory box contained a single object recovered from the clinic that remained constant throughout the viewing.  The objects cast in resin could be arranged in any way, with all or only two, with undetermined placement, each interchangeable.  The object located as the final piece remaining constant resulted in the story ending the same each time viewed.  The model represented the history and experiences within the Hanson’s Disease Clinic.  The historic stories and interpretations of the clinic are a direct connection to the experiences undergone by all the individuals in and around the facility.  However, the past will ultimately hold and present the same conclusion regardless of the personal events and experiences within any landscape.

I chose three of the objects from the first model to carry into the second analysis model.  The overall goal of this project was to determine how these elements became detached from the structure in which they were previously attached.  The elements carried forward included the railroad stake, the cabinet knob with broken glass, and the barb from a strand of barbwire.  Each model consisted of a series of study models, which projected the detachment of the element from its greater structure.  The railroad stake focused on the compaction of the infrastructure; the cabinet knob and broken glass focused on erosion on a residential home, and the barb focused on decay of objects in the landscape through the impact of the natural elements over time.  Through the construction and process of the models, an interpretation of the landscape developed in areas such as geomorphology, history, inhabitants, and land use of the landscape.

I chose a precedent museum to study and disembody as one final analysis study.  I chose the Kimball Arts Museum located in Fort Worth, TX.  The research of the facility revealed that the architect Louis Kahn utilized the arch form throughout the layout of the design of the building.  The idea of compression and tension was the focus of the infrastructure.  He also designed contrasting materials in the building such as concrete and aluminum.  The materials he chose juxtaposed through density and flexibility.  Kahn also designed museum structure to capture, project and reflect the natural light throughout.  The layout of the rooms and placement of exhibits are determined by the light illumination inside the structure.  The compression and tension, juxtaposed or contrasting materials, and the manipulation of natural lighting are the elements extracted from the disembodiment of the Kimball Museum that were carried forward into the design process of River Road.

Plaquemine Point was chosen as a site along River Road to begin the designing process.  The extracted elements of natural lighting manipulation and the compression and tension of structure experienced from the Kimball Museum were incorporated in the site design.  The purpose of this model construction was to grasp a perception of the scale in the overall site, and to progress in the design process through numerous iterations of model construction.  The Plaquemine site design included a series of structures that were mounted over the bike path on the levee in the form of an inverted “L”.  The inverted “L” structure was set in the landscape as groupings, which generated a defined space.  Together the groups determined the single structure.  The structural groups were designed to compress the space it enclosed by shifting in height.  Each of the individual structures are constructed out of a variety of materials, such as:  concrete, wood, aluminum, metal, steal, and glass.  This strategy was incorporated to generate different light reflections and projections in the spaces created with the “L” form structures.  There were five series of these structures accompanied with planting material to highlight the spaces by casting shadows and again compressing the pathways leading from River Road to the bike path at the top of the levee.  Each space was designed to introduce a degree of experiences with the use of lighting and compression.  When these series of individual experiences were encountered sequentially the entire site of Plaquemine Point revealed a new interpretation in the landscape.

Old Airline Highway Bridge Site:

Port Allen Across the Mississippii River into downtown Baton Rouge Site:

I was drawn to two specific sites.  The sites experienced a series of rhythms introduced by systems. The sites transitioned from more agrarian landscapes that seemed more open and vast into commercial or urban landscape that contains railroads, shipping, roadways, and infrastructures. The first site reached from Port Allen across the Mississippi to downtown Baton Rouge and continuing into the industrial portion.  The second, was the kick back just North of the old Mississippi Bridge on Airline Highway.  I constructed models for each of these sites concentrating on two areas of interests within each.  The Port Allen site studied the history and land use that occurred, and the Old Bridge study concentrated on the geomorphology and the hydrology.

The Great River Road design incorporates the historic, hydrologic, geomorphologic, and present land use.  Each of these elements converges and emerges into the landscape as one form generating two experiences; one being designed for the passerby and the other for the occupant within the site.  The historic river courses emerge out of the landscape marking the impact of flood years resulting in devastation to the surrounding landscape.  The four years extracted from history is 1543, 1882, 1927, and 1973.  The individual years are represented separately in the design.  The year 1927 is the most dominate of the courses due to the nation wide impact of the flood, and is represented with a wall at the course edge and the surface is plant in wildflowers to be the most dominate when viewed distantly.  The 1882 course, being the second most dramatic impact, is defined by a row of Live Oak plantings at the edge with a rapid slope that inclines to the leveled space of the course.  The 1882 river course is remembered by its very localized impact to specific locations along the river, not the National impact that defines the 1927 course.  The course of 1543 that is represented by an invert wall at the edge of the course, and the surface is planted in a low growing grass species.  This course of the river is remembered in history as a period of another major flood where the river breached many landscapes while the water consumed homes and lives.  The chosen edge of this course leads an occupant of the space to grasp a sense that the land is pushing and the wall is collapsing much like the experience in the 1543 flood.  A gradual slope marks the final course of 1973 and the surface is not altered leaving a sense of the present land use incorporated into the design.  Each of these courses relays the idea of the inverse movement of the river.  Where the river dredged out its courses in history, these constructed landforms build up.  They also represent the transformation, which came through man constructing and controlling the river movement and annual flooding.  Historically, the river was wider and covered a broader span of land, and when the width was not controlled the depth of the river was not as extensive.  Therefore, these levels also relate to the landscape that was untouched and uncontrolled in history.  These design moves creates a series of corridors that can be experienced both in an automobile and for the occupant contained inside the defined river course spaces of the landscape.  The incorporation of this experience is determined by the two speeds, which the landscape is experienced.  It introduces new experiences to River Road one being focused on the movement in a vehicle, and the second being the occupants moving through the landscape.  Two momentums of speeds, two experiences, one landscape; reconnecting to the history, the geomorphology, the hydrology, and land use of spaces along the Great Mississippi River emerge the River Course Design.