Productive spoils : retooling Detroit's waterfront

Abstract

With the recent strain of environmental disasters associated with poor environmental planning and the crash of the economic system that had propped up this type of development, it is clear that architecture's relationship to nature needs to be rethought. The thesis uses the waterfront of Detroit as a test site for an integrated system based on ecological principles of interdependency, indeterminacy and time-based processes. The proposal situates itself in opposition to the urban development laid on top of the land and its application in current form to a new, so called "green" recreational riverwalk, which still relies on the hard engineering that has destroyed Detroit's native wetlands. Instead, this thesis proposes a soft infrastructure which synthesizes solutions for water retention and environmental enrichment along the coastline, based on the natural patterns of drainage landforms, and with human development tightly integrated within the system. This system is modulated to balance different degrees of environmental, technical and economic priorities, layered throughout the waterfront to not only create a comprehensive storm defense system but also to provide new places for recreation, urban farming and urban development.