Ecological Design Studio
Re-imagining Walnut Creek, California
Repairing Walnut Creek
Survival experts tell us that if we become lost in a dendritic landscape we should simply follow the water and head down hill – soon our rivulet will merge with a creek, then a brook, a river, and finally an estuarine or oceanic coast. Humans build their settlements by water, so at some point in one’s fluvial tracking journey one will stumble upon a settlement and safety. And yet in cities and towns all over the US, if we were to attempt to orient ourselves within the familiar structure of a riparian system, we would most likely become lost further still; such is the degree of modification and obfuscation of urban hydrological systems – often in the name of flood control efficiency, rationalized land use practices and a prevailing culture of detachment from natural systems.
This is no truer than for the Walnut Creek hydrological system in Contra Costa County. Here, suburban developments aligned to abstract Cartesian coordinates and strong impulses for flood control, make the present ‘Walnut Creek’ virtually impossible to follow in an intuitive sense. But along the lower reaches of Walnut Creek, a Contra Costa County initiative aims to unwind the restrictive mechanics of Army Corps engineering and recalibrate the brackish and silted levee system to a new set of more inclusive rules. Within this emerging atmosphere of change, this design studio explored new languages for rebalancing urban rivers.
Survival experts tell us that if we become lost in a dendritic landscape we should simply follow the water and head down hill – soon our rivulet will merge with a creek, then a brook, a river, and finally an estuarine or oceanic coast. Humans build their settlements by water, so at some point in one’s fluvial tracking journey one will stumble upon a settlement and safety. And yet in cities and towns all over the US, if we were to attempt to orient ourselves within the familiar structure of a riparian system, we would most likely become lost further still; such is the degree of modification and obfuscation of urban hydrological systems – often in the name of flood control efficiency, rationalized land use practices and a prevailing culture of detachment from natural systems.
This is no truer than for the Walnut Creek hydrological system in Contra Costa County. Here, suburban developments aligned to abstract Cartesian coordinates and strong impulses for flood control, make the present ‘Walnut Creek’ virtually impossible to follow in an intuitive sense. But along the lower reaches of Walnut Creek, a Contra Costa County initiative aims to unwind the restrictive mechanics of Army Corps engineering and recalibrate the brackish and silted levee system to a new set of more inclusive rules. Within this emerging atmosphere of change, this design studio explored new languages for rebalancing urban rivers.
Kenjiro Kito
Daniela Pena Corvillion
Michal Kapitulnik
Catherine McDonald