Choreographing Sediment

Abstract

In 2016 the Panama Canal expansion is set to open, allowing a new class of ships to call on east coast ports. The dredging involved in deepening navigation channels to ensure safe passage of these vessels will place an increased amount of pressure on containment facilities up and down the coast. With limited disposal space, and increasing volumes, many ports have begun to rethink the treatment of this excess material. This thesis explores the prospect of dredge material being more than engineered fill. It suggests that dredge processing can become the basis for a new form of productive recreational landscape, one that can engage the public in a conversation of the spatial and material operations that sustain our lives. It works blur and dissolve the boundaries that have been erected between working landscapes and the public realm, and seeks to create a landscape that establishes a new sense of place prepared to mark the future of the new working urban waterfront; one where industrial operations generate new ecological substrates, and where productive frameworks become recreation networks.