The watershed of the Riachuelo river overlaid on the footprint of Buenos Aires. The blue shapes are the newly constructed reservoirs intended to minimize flooding downstream as part of the new drainage strategy for the basin implemented by ACUMAR. In the urbanized areas where space for reservoirs is not available a similar strategy is called for on a micro scale. The project site is indicated by the red circle and is in the most densely urbanized zone.
These sections are to-scale through the Riachuelo in the project zone. The labels on the left indicate the historical depths of the canal as achieved by different port dredging initiatives, with the white layer indicating sediment that has accumulated since cessation of dredging operations. On the right the labels indicate the water levels due to tidal and sudestada events.
Actual and estimated future shipping for Dock Sud Port, by tonnage. The port is the largest by tonnage in Argentina and its major product is petrochemicals. Most future growth is expected to come in containerized shipping.
This image indicates the different salinity zones of the Rio de la Plata estuary. The water is considered fresh at the city of Buenos Aires. However, during sudestada weather events southeasterly winds push a wall of ocean water up the estuary, backing up the rivers and flooding saltwater into the waterways.
This map shows how the Riachuelo and the port are related through contaminated sediment.
This diagram shows the progression of the delta of the Rio de la Plata over the last 7,500 years. In the last 300 years the city and the modern delta have begun to grow together.
above diagram illustrates annual dredge volumes for the Port Authority of Dock Sud, including contaminated dredge spoils coming from the Riachuelo and the port itself. Diagram below show different possible confined disposal facilities for confining the contaminated sediments within the port, with the chosen structure highlighted.
Program: This diagram is an attempt to map out possible uses and activities by the canal and categorize them according the instruments they necessitate. There is an effort to couple recreations and industrial operations of various scales, such as bicycle repair and fabrication alongside bicycling. Of special note is the sediment dredging and water hyacinth operations which would both use the tram dredge.
There is an interest to find instruments and corresponding activities that can work together. Instruments can drive the activities- if we already have a soccer field there, or a monitoring system, what activity can fill that space when the primary operation is dormant? This is a sort of ecosystem programming approach to the canal landscape.
This diagram series is a more elaborate and analytical version of the earlier infrastructure diagram examining how different infrastructures make the Argentine national territory, with Buenos Aires as the center in multiple ways.
Landscapes of Dredge: Considered from a materialist perspective dredging can be a generative act; the machines, equipments and specialized knowledge of the operator enter into a sort of duel or partnership with the water- its currents, chemicals, and biologies- and the sediments with its silica, organic matter, and toxic compounds. Dredgers are typically imagined as landscape-building machines, used for beach nourishment and building new islands, cutting deeper channels and widening shipping ports. Landscape instrumentalism is interested in the ways that the act of dredging itself generates landscapes- the movement of the dredger, sediments, the knowledge of operators and fleeing of local schools of fish all swirl together to create a violent and dynamic processual landscape.
This image conveys the idea of a mechanical dredge operation landscape- each object is labeled and the four main relations between objects are represented as actions that are numbered; the primary characters or instruments work to create a dynamic landscape-in-process.
Sketches and Questions: To start the project; a speculation on the potentiality of the canalized portion of the Riachuelo in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The project proposes that the environmental remediation operations necessitated by the federal court “Mendoza” decision of 2008. The operations are to intended to be carried out by the river basin authority, ACUMAR.
This speculation proposes the humble water hyacinth and the rumbling dredge to generate a series of ephemeral landscapes in the canal and at the mouth of the river. The intent is to use the speculation as a method for bringing up the right questions.
The operations would happen at various scales- picking hyacinth, operating a dredger, conveyor belt systems, sedimentation- over decades. The plan set would necessarily be secondary to continual maintenance and construction processes.
This image is imagined as the year 2100. The manufactured soils created from the spoiled industrial residue of the canal combines with the rich biome of the estuary to create a new urban nursery for reforesting the city; new public-industrial landscapes are created through continual remediation, recreation, and industrial operation along the canal
This brings up several key questions useful to the current thesis regarding the material practice of instrumentality (a list in the thick of the editing process):
1. How would people (workers and recreational users) access the canal?
2. What instruments are needed to tend, harvest, transport, and compost the hyacinth?
3. What are the instruments used in dredging? a) How frequently are they operating? b) how is the loading and unloading best achieved? c) what is the best way to stockpile the volume? d) how is the contaminated sediment treated and what are the necessary instruments in this process?
4) What are the space and machine requirements needed to produce manufactured soil?
Instrumentality as a material practice: is interested in the ways that operating tools engaged with the landscape medium can generate the conditions for recreation and industry. For field research this project is undertaking two studies of wildly different scales- the operation of earthmovers and backhoes for constructing a major new strip mall near the suburban office headquarters of the Northrop Grunman facility on highway 29 near Charlottesville, Virginia, and pruning a hedge with a pair of Felco pruning shears.
The method here is one of collage; aligning and overlaying a photo series, with some transparency, and color focus on the major operable parts that seems to be forming spaces, altering the material, changing the behavior of adjacent humans- in short, making landscape.
These images are then overlaid with a layer of data- dimensions and lists- which are more typically reserved for the spatial orthographic drawings such as plan and section. The intent is to lend some specificity and immediacy to the operation of the tools visibly at work.
Argentina’s Transit Infrastructure: Buenos Aires is the hub in the highway and rail networks that span the agriculture-producing regions and connect the entire country. As the nation’s main port city, the federal capital, and the historical center of the rail network for an agricultural surplus nation, the city in some ways is like New York, Washington DC, and Chicago in one, though at a much smaller scale. In this way, it might be considered the great American city and a test case for the other major cities of North and South America.
Sediment deposition: This image highlights the depositional characteristics of the Rio de la Plata estuary with regards to the shoreline of Buenos Aires. The estuary transports nearly 80,000,000 metric tons of sediment per year, 90% of which is suspended sediment and 10% of which is bed load. One result of this incredible load is that nearly 20% of the landmass of contemporary Buenos Aires has been added in just the last 130 years. This littoral zone contains many of the infrastructural hubs of the city and nation, including a main train depot, the new port (puerto nuevo), the petrochemical port (dock sud), the national airport, and two ecological reserves. This zone is contested- prime new territory for both the rich biome flooding down the river from the South American heartland as well as the new infrastructures needed to serve the expanding megacity of Buenos Aires.
Dredge Instrument: This instrument is proposed as a response to the issues of dredge and sedimentation in the Riachuelo Canal landscape. Given the sectional dimensions of the canal, the relatively shallow depths (and considering that a new design depth closer to 12 feet will likely be maintained in the future), the proximity of residences in some zones necessitated a quieter dredge, and the possibility of using a backhoe as both a dredge and for hyacinth harvesting programs in different seasons, the use of the backhoe dredge is ideal.
It is assumed that because the tram-dredge can be used for hyacinth harvesting and dredging throughout the year, the cost-benefit analysis yields a favorable result to building a special dredge of renting one and bringing it in sporadically.
If the path of the dredge can be fixed like a cable tram, then other transit, industrial and recreation instruments can operate alongside the backhoe. The cable tram circuit is known, allowing for simpler operation and reduction of costs because a tug is not needed to guide a barge-mounted tram on operating days.
take a park. excavate a ragged trench in the middle of the pretty lawn. the rocks and pipes and mud that's left and the backhoe ripping in to them? that is landscape instrumentalism.
