Explorations

I've begun to explore ways in which the proposed infrastructure might interact with both the landscape below and the sky above, while connecting physically to, and being grounded by a datum line (the skyway) floating in the in-between.

One scheme explores how the built structure only lightly touches the landscape below, emphasizing its place in the in-between along the elevated highway - an intermediate zone between earth and sky.

The second scheme plays more with ways in which the built forms may more intensively interact with and shape the environment below. This offers interesting possibilities of land-making through deposition, erosion, and accretion over time as a direct result of placing stable forms within an unstable and fluid environment.

Over time, highs and lows would form as a result of water flow, creating streams and islands below and south of the site. These forms could then be brought up to interact with the structure that helped form them.

More explorations to come....

Elevating the Tamiami Trail

Since its completion in 1928, the Tamiami Trail (US-90) has acted as a dam, blocking water flowing from Lake Okeechobee down into Florida Bay. This led to the dehydration of the southern portion of the Everglades and the subsequent depletion of topsoil. Essentially, the Everglades is sinking as sea levels are rising, a potentially devastating situation for the aquifers that supply our drinking water and keep all of Florida's ecosystems in balance. According to a study conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency, the areas south of the Tamiami Trail has lost as much of 3 feet of soil since the road was built in 1928. That doesn't seem like much until you consider the fact that it takes about 100 years for just a 1 inch layer of soil to form, and some areas of the Everglades only have about 2 feet of soil to spare.

The Everglades Skyway is an interesting project proposal on elevating 11 miles of the Tamiami Trail. This uplift would allow sheet flow to pass naturally underneath the highway, allowing the slow water filtration processes that once occurred here to once again take place. Wildlife would also be able to safely pass from north to south without having to cross dangerous roadways (something that has proved devastating to the Florida Panther population).

With a 300 million dollar price tag, the project, although supported by many community groups and government agencies, has been altered by US ARMY Corps of Engineers to a series of bridges, one of which is already under construction. These bridges, once complete, will total 6.5-miles in combined length. The Corp's current plan is a compromise between the original 11-mile Skyway proposal and the Corps 3-mile version, and although it is not what was hoped for by the Skyway's supporters like the Sierra Club, it is still a step in the right direction. The more of the highway that becomes elevated, the more we will be able to restore the Everglade's original hydrological flow, protecting south Florida's aquifers from salt water intrusion.

East Coast Hydrology + Biscayne Bay

The Atlantic Coastal Ridge (shown towards the right in light green) is an area of slight uplift that runs parallel with the Atlantic coast line and through the city of Miami. Before the canalization of South Florida, water flowed through low valleys that intersected this ridge system, and made its way into the Biscayne Estuary.

This Estuary was once predominanlty fresh water, fed by gushing springs which were supplied by groundwater that had been filtered for years as it passed through the Everglade ecosystem. As the area grew, the need to control flooding and create more usable land led to the development of the canal system we still see today. These canals lowered the water table, causing salt water intrusion into the aquifer system, corrupting the area’s main source of water, as well as increasing salinity levels in the bay.

Christian Langevin writes,

“tidal canals are focal points for ground water discharge, intercepting fresh ground water that would have discharged directly to Biscayne Bay.” He goes on to say,

“Field observations suggest that Biscayne Bay has changed from a system controlled by widespread and continuous submarine discharge and overland sheetflow to one controlled by episodic releases of surface water at the mouths of canals. The sole explanation for this change has always been that canals lowered the water table, and thus, submarine ground water discharge has decreased. Results from the numerical model, however, suggest that the interception ability of tidal canals is also an explanation for the decrease in submarine ground water discharge directly to Biscayne Bay and the redistribution of discharge to point locations.”

The impacts created by canals on the hydrologic cycle have impoverished the bay’s natural ecosystem as a marine estuary. By implementing new strategies to mitigate flooding while maintaining proper water flow into the bay, we may be able to reconnect the lowland everglades to the bay while creating public and ecological infrastructure that can act as a springboard for future development in coastal zone regions.

These strands will pose as environmental data collection sites, as well as gathering spaces for citizens, breeding grounds for fish and bird life, and water filtration systems.

The Atlantic Coastal Ridge is made up of upland pine and hardwood hammock communities, interspersed with wet praries and cypress domes which are dissected by finger glades (water courses that flowed from the Everglades to the coast). These finger glades now remain only in small and isolated patches that have been protected from urban development.

Quotes taken from GROUND WATER: Simulation of Submarine Ground Water Discharge to a Marine Estuary; Biscayne Bay, Florida.

The Desaturation of South Florida's Landscapes

Over the past century south Florida has seen a dramatic change in its ecological and hydrological cycles through the development of water management systems, leading to drought, dust storms, habitat loss, and dramatically reduced populations of various fish, plant, and bird species.

It began in the early part of the century, when prospectors and planners began to develop south Florida for residential and agricultural uses. After a series of catastrophic floods and hurricanes, the US Corps of Engineers stepped in and began construction on one of the world's most "successful" water management systems, made up of a series of canals, levees, flood gates and pumping stations. This system ultimately created a fragmented, piece-meal version of the wetlands that once freely flowed over 200 miles from central Florida all the way down into Florida Bay. With the canals diverting water from the Everglades into the cities, along with the disruption of sheet flow by the highways and roads that now sever east from west, and north from south, the Everglades ecosystem has become a crippled version of its former self.

Poster

Here is my first stab at the poster we need to make for our thesis project. I tried to keep it simple while still beginning to tell the story of the analysis and dissemination of a site. This begins to talk about the interconnectivity of a wetland system (the site). The branching waterways begin to function in a similar manner as a neural network, transporting materials and information along its pathways...

If a site similar to this were chosen, these initial layers of information may come to inform the built design in both form and function. However, keep in mind, this is just a poster :)