04 PROTOTYPING THE CHESAPEAKE

Bay Punctuating Dredge

Existing protection and containment measures for dredged materials are crude and unsightly. Facilities like Craney and Poplar Island rely on isolation and armory. These islands are both literal, surrounded by water, and metaphorical, separating themselves from the natural processes of the bay. Large imposing walls create fortress-like dumping grounds, turning dredge into expensive garbage. Is it possible to imagine the beneficial reuse of dredged material to allow for the graceful transition from dredged sediment back to land, and their temporary containment as highly visible markers of this larger process? Using existing technologies of turbidity curtains, fences, and pumping equipments, this project seeks to punctuate this process of beneficial reuse of dredged materials, calling to attention the aesthetic potential of sediment movements. Linear figures in the water articulate a rhythm of placement and maintenance of amorphous dredge as it distributes and settles in the shallow waters of island edges.

Through this project, we want to manifest that sediment can be moved in a desirable way without working against or resisting natural processes. Human intervention and natural forces can correspond to and complement with each other. We also hope that by punctuating dredge through silt curtains and fences, we are able to re-shape public perception of dredged materials and facilitate the connection between massive infrastructural procedures and the body scale / everyday life.