DREDGESCAPE: FORMS OF BORROWED MATTER

Harvard Graduate School of Design, Core III

2020

Author: Colleen Sloan

Instructor: Sergio Lopez-Pineiro

New Bedford, Massachusetts has become a center for material exchange where seafood derived from outside the harbor is processed and exported to consumers, while its toxic sediment, laden with PCBs, is dredged and exported for burial in a landfill outside of Detroit, Michigan. This project seeks to reimagine the potential for waste material as a resource for new types of public spaces and material commons.

Software Used for Project: ArcGIS, Rhino, Adobe Creative Suite

The sites of intervention in both Detroit, MI and New Bedford, MA are situated within this material exchange of high value seafood imports into and out of New Bedford and the exporting of highly toxic dredge material to a landfill in Detroit.

The proposed intervention for New Bedford outer harbor, includes an archipelago of spoil islands, reimagining the lifecycle of dredge waste.

In Detroit, Michigan, the landfill that houses a significant portion of contaminated dredge from New Bedford, reintroduces, once ubiquitous to the area, Maple and Beech trees in a phased capping and planting scheme to create a public park.

Lastly, the logistics site of New Bedford inner harbor includes the processing of dredged material that is used as fill for the archipelago and a public park and nursery for the planting of the islands.

The layering of Maple and Birch trees in the final phases of the Detroit landfill not only echo the layering of toxic material within the landfill, but make connections to the layered effect of the archipelagos in New Bedford, hundreds of miles away.

The spoil islands envelop the harbor. The constructed sides of the islands that face New Bedford are planted according to coastal slope zones, and are imagined to shift over time as sea level rise meets each height in the coming years.