Project Details

The Spring 2012 design research studio is investigating the complex relationship between human inhabitation, environmental restoration, and sustainability education through the design of a 40-acre public wetland park along a tributary of the Elizabeth River in Portsmouth, VA. The studio is designing several park structures that engage urban kids in hands-on exploration and learning, including two classroom pavilions, a children’s playground, treehouse, kayak launch, and a landing stage for the Learning Barge. The park site, containing one of the river’s last stands of mature forest, co-exists with “Superfund” industrial cleanup sites and the economically challenged, racially diverse neighborhood of Cradock. In collaboration with the City of Portsmouth Department of Parks and Recreation, Portsmouth Public Schools, the Elizabeth River Project and several community partners, the studio is designing a public place with the power to inspire environmental stewardship in neighborhood residents and visitors. The research continues a six-year study that produced the award-winning UVA Learning Barge and Money Point Sustainable Revitalization projects.

The Paradise Creek Nature Park will provide a place that physically and spiritually reconnects the urban community of the Elizabeth River watershed with its home river. There are several goals: design a green place that increases the sense of well-being, economic vitality and opportunity for outdoor exploration for all ages in the watershed; design green pavilions, children’s playground and other structures that holistically educate visitors about sustainability; make a place where citizens may rediscover the healing respite of a healthy, living river; and create strategies for industry and natural ecosystem to co-exist in harmony.

The research is situated within complex social, economic, ecological and architectural conditions. Working across intertwined scales, the students represent, analyze and design from the scale of the Chesapeake Bay and Elizabeth River watersheds to the details of the architectural pavilions. The research investigates the didactic potential of architecture, by examining how physical design can teach about the inextricable links between water and land, tidal river ecology and wetland restoration, specific properties and impacts of building materials, and the balance between human activity and the environment. By studying what and how might one teach about this place, the designers are able to manifest an inventive educational agenda in the Park and its architecture. The relationship between natural and constructed systems are revealed in architecture designed to work with sun, wind, water, earth and biology. Photovoltaic panels will provide power, rainwater and wastewater will be collected and filtered, and recycled industrial materials may be used. Programmatic complexity is investigated through the study of how the architecture can be used and perform. For instance, a pavilion can be an outdoor classroom, a picnic pavilion, an event space, a place to directly experience the River and engage all the senses, a generator of energy, a collector of water, a cistern, an assemblage of didactic surfaces and spaces, a habitat for migratory butterflies and birds, and a constructed wetland for water filtration and habitat. Students investigate new materials and technologies, as well the the creative reuse of recycled materials.

Publications

Crisman, Phoebe (forthcoming 2012). "The Paradise Creek Eco Park: a Collaborative Model of Academcic Civic Engagement," CHANGE: Architecture, Education, Practices. Xavier Costa and Martha Thorne, eds. Washington, DC: ACSA Press.