Altona Sand Spit Reuben Hore-Waterhouse Masters of Landscape Architecture Melbourne, Australia
The Case of Altona The miscreation of Altona’s sand spit.
Memphis
Levee
Levee
Morgan City
Morgan City
Memphis
River
River
New Orleans New Orleans
Drainage
Drainage
The Effects of the Army Corp of Engineer’s Levee System on an Extended Ecology of the Mississippi River.
Landscape architects are commonly viewed as generalists and lateral thinkers. The current practice model already suggests a collaborative role within their work; they have ability to communicate across many different consultants and curate many tasks through expertise, using specification to the ends of a final output. However, common practice and equally landscape architectural practice generally places actions into straight lines, bounding their agency within ‘site’. This is where landscape architectural practice becomes at odds with this new ecological model. When we adhere to this short-sighted view, limiting our political and design responses to one single bound practice (Build a wall, Create a dam - or in this case dredge) we create even more harm, causing an even bigger disturbance within a wider system of ecology (Milligan, 2015). This mentality is already having a major effect on our environment; we are mistakingly “curating” ecological systems without even knowing their implications and reactions. A lack of knowledge and control within practice is becoming detrimental to our landscapes, and many practices rarely escape this tunnel vision.
3000 Years Ago
1930
2016
The taming of the Mississippi from its natural occuring flow had a detramental effect on its delta, with sediment no longer feeding much needed nutrients to its coastal marshes. A representation of the short sited lense practice can put on an ecologically connected landscape.
The area of Altona has been subject to disjointed collaboration; where a project did not acknowledge the repercussions of their actions in an extended ecological system. By not acknowledging the ecological landscape; one solution has created a noticeable disturbance some 100kms away. Altona’s southern coastline is a flourishing coastal grassland, however in the past 10 years has seen it grow into a coastal sand spit caused by the relationships between Port Phillip Bay water currents and polluted sediment from the dredging grounds as part of the Port Phillip Channel Deepening Project in 2008. It is this lack of understanding in a wider ecological system that has lead to one solution becoming someone else’s problem, with no communication between the two ends of the stakeholder spectrum.
Site in current practice is seen as the extent of our work, and anything outside of its boundary is considered unnecessary. Site analysis, for example, is bound by a physical line in the dirt. We investigate the wind and water flow, topography and drainage within this bounded line, however this territorial boundary limits our thinking and creativity to physical confines of site; our actions and decisions are limited to a client’s needs and wants within the particular boundary of territorial ownership. This territorialisation does not consider landscape’s larger agenda; modification due to outliers external to this boundary of ‘site’ that might be unnoticed under the constraints. It fails to consider the abundance of components and events that contribute to the construction of that site, and in turn omits recognition that designing within site can have a larger effect on this constantly reshuffling system.
Port of Melbourne
5
10
Geelong Harbour
80 % Fully Loaded
Port Phillip Bay Channel Deepening Project Shipping Routes The Channel Deepening Project is in response to global economic pressures to perform and to provide more economical gain where the bays sea floor topography has put the Port of Melbourne at a disadvantage. Vessels are only able to ship 40% fully loaded as a result of shallow bed topography.
15
20
40 % Fully Loaded
Altona
Port Melbourne Channel
South Channel
0
5
10
20
30
Dumping Ground
Dredging Location Looking at the Port Phillip Bay Water Current Direction, Intensity, Dredging Location and Dumping Ground; Sediment Transit Direction can be established.
40
Intersection of Currents
Dredge Location
Dredge Location
High
Water Current Intensity Low
Water Current Intensity Mesh / Dredge Locations Looking at the water current intensity with intersection of dredge location. Higher levels of water current intensity suggests that sediment is more likely to become in transit, with the sediment depositing in additional areas.
Seaholm
Altona Altona Meadows
Portarlington, East
Portarlington, North
Portarlington, West
Point Cook
Cocoroc
Sediment Pollution Zones Sand Movement As a result of the relationships between forces and events, sediment is now being transported to adjacent shores where it is now an issue to local councils and ecological communities.
2017
2015
2012
Recorded Growth
South Channel & Port Melbourne Channel Maintenance
2013
2009
2007
2005
2002
The relation between Port Phillip Bay dredging and the growth of Altona Coincide with the Maintenance Dredging Cycles and Altona, there has been a considerable growth in the past 12 years with further growth projected as the maintenance dredging of the South Channel and Port Melbourne Channel continues. Despite there being a strong connection between the course and the output- there has been no communication or collaboration between the two stakeholders.
Altona
Laverton C
re D rift
reek
Lon
gsho
Port Phillip Bay
Altona
Laverton C
re D
rift
reek
Lon
gsho
Port Phillip Bay
1.5m 1m 0.5m
24
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~ Hightide, Lowtide
Tidal Movement and its Coastal Formation of Sediment
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We must acknowledge ecologies larger agenda, it shifts and tears things apart- not scared to stretch and bend territories... To think that we work in such a confined, non-influential system is the most common of reasons why we are constantly trying to fix what we have mistakenly done further in the ecological chain.
RMIT University School of Architecture & Design Masters of Landscape Architecture CoLAB (Masters Thesis Project) 2017 Submitted by: Reuben Hore-Waterhouse