Erasure

Abstract

Control of water in the metropolis has occurred most dominantly through methods of channelization, or moving water across the landscape, contributing to the current infrastructural organization of bayous. If the principle method of control favored the movement of water through the earth, the landscape could begin to behave and perform much differently and complexly. The project investigates a situation where speculative non-structural methods of flood control interface with governmental acquisition of private residential property in a strategy to increase open space for parks. The variable landscape under investigation is always in transformation, be it in terms of physical growth (accumulation of land), in terms of entropy, or in terms of political and economic parameters. In such fluid territories multiple futures are projected through variable states, rather than a fixed solution, in a system that never reaches a point of crystallization and never settles on one scale of effects and implications.