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The current pattern of human settling and building constitutes the main force responsible for today’s environmental crisis. Changing this pattern requires a tremendous effort in both the political and social areas of life, as well as new practices and models of habitation and building. The need for a new, ecological way of building renders the existing expertise of architects and planners as obsolete. Furthermore, focus on sustainability is often [mis]placed on new constructions instead of addressing the highly damaging existing built environment.

This project aims at starting the process of urban repair by transforming Atlanta’s Gulch into an inhabitable wetland. Located in the heart of downtown, the Gulch stands today as a vast, desolate area, covered with surface parking, rail tracks and host to an ever-increasing homeless population. Its surface - the city’s original ground level - fell underground along with the construction of vehicular viaducts and with the decline of the railroad industry. The current plans envisioned for this area by city officials depict an intermodal transit hub, a project sprinkled with slogans of “sustainability” and “mixed use”, whose rationale is more politically than evidence-based.

The wetland’s main purpose is to rethink the use and management of one of Atlanta’s scarcest resources: water. Forming a new landscape, the wetland is intended as an urban “water facility”, where plants, birds, fish, and humans will cohabitate. The new facility consists of a series of viaduct parasitic constructions designed to collect waste and runoff water, and purify it through processes naturally occurring in a wetland. Given their efficiency in providing clean water, the new constructions will become in time sought-after shelters and grow more complex to offer diverse nesting opportunities. The filtered water will irrigate the adjacent farmland, with any excess returning to the “nests” via advanced processing facilities built in the heart of the marsh. These mountain-like constructions will support a series of recycling related activities, and as the population soars will provide opportunities for becoming socially active spaces. At its full capacity, the Gulch wetland will provide clean recycled water to a population of 12,000.

The construction of the wetland is as important as its function. Here, new ways of building become linked to novel social practices and a redefinition of the relationship between humans and environment. The wetland’s heterotopic presence within the heart of a generically constructed downtown may not only empower its currently disenfranchised population, but may also contribute to a fairer base for social dialogue between groups of a still divided city.

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Downtown Wetlands

Experimental Project
Atlanta, GA. 2012
Exhibited at SP_ARC Gallery, Marietta, GA. 2013
Published in Ampersand, Taubman School of Architecture, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. 2014

Design: M. Razvan Voroneanu

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© M. Razvan Voroneanu. 2014