SOAK_Re-calibrating the Eco-tone between River and City
Synopsis
The project Soak is situated on the boundary of the River Foyle. From one of the River Foyle’s riverbanks to another, the river's depth and speed have been changing historically, as a consequence of which, the eco realm with richer oxygen has been narrowed. The speed and depth of the River Foyle are more qualified for sailing and transporting instead of suitable as a habitation for wild salmon and other creatures. When the tide is gone, not wetland but dumped or protesting trash such as trolleys and traffic cores shown up. This sense of separation is most directly felt by the cutting off of the abandoned River Foyle and the riverbank.
From the centre of the walled city of Derry to the bed of the river Foyle, disruptive, solid manufactured edges have shaped the entanglements of the city’s history. Rapid industrialisation and the rise of the railway in the 19th and 20th centuries, while driving the city's economy, cut the river off from its walled community. Around the site of the Craigavon bridge, one of the few double-decker bridges to existing in Europe and previously serving railway freight wagons, this sense of separation is most keenly felt by the abandoned railway and the derelict site of the Tillie & Henderson shirt factory, once the largest shirt factory in Europe.
This project aims to re-connect the city of Derry with the River Foyle, transforming the existing ‘eco-tone’ or in-between using the concept of ‘soak’ both as a research methodology and design principle to break down the post-industrial, manufactured edge and replace it with a new, enriched and rewilded, tidal landscape which celebrates the relationship between Derry’s people and the river.
Three ‘soak’ based sequential concepts of infiltration, percolation, and sedimentation represent different hydrological processes and cycles of engagement between people and water, in which the process of researching, designing, and the desktop process is also included. Through a programme directly related to embodied and psychological immersion, the project re-introduces the hydrological cycle into the site as part of an inter-species pathway to the river. Soak provides space for swimming, diving, community gathering and ecological learning in a rewilded, tidal landscape. Within the concept of percolation, the design fiction aims to achieve the landscape design with passive environmental strategies that have a long-term impact on the whole city-river eco realm.
