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Title Patent scenarios for the Mississippi river
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Journal Journal of Architectural Education, 71(2)
ISSN 1046-4883
Author Hindle, RL
Publication Date 2017-07-03
DOI 10.1080/10464883.2017.1340778
License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 4.0
Peer reviewed
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ISSN: 1046-4883 (Print) 1531-314X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjae20
Patent Scenarios for the Mississippi River
Richard L. Hindle
To cite this article: Richard L. Hindle (2017) Patent Scenarios for the Mississippi River, Journal of Architectural Education, 71:2, 280-285 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10464883.2017.1340778
Published online: 28 Nov 2017.
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Download by: [Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture] Date: 28 November 2017, At: 08:35 Patent Scenarios for the Mississippi River
Richard L. Hindle University of California, Berkeley
When considering patents, one inventions granted between 1890 with no trees, or trees anchored in deep may automatically recall some type and 1901 that may have altered the water, channels would form. In areas of thing. Throughout the last six morphology of the Mississippi and where tree canopies slow flowing water, centuries of Western technological led to radically different futures an accretion of sediment would occur, progress the conflation of for the river and its environs. ultimately resulting in the formation of manufacturing, mechanization, and Each invention, as described in new deltaic landmasses. patents has resulted in a distinct the original patent document, has Initially, a 20-meter grid would object-oriented bias toward things.1 unique geographical dimensions be established, spanning distances of However, a look back into the and instrumentality that transcend up to 40 kilometers. The basic unit of annals of the United States Patent the object orientation of typical construction is trees of varying sizes— and Trademark Office (USPTO) patents and evoke the scale, scope, from 2 to 7 meters high, and up to 9 through the contemporary lens of the and contingencies of innovation in meters of canopy spread—anchored Anthropocene reveals that large-scale the Anthropocene. As projections of by chains to heavy boulders. The height environmental systems, such as rivers speculative futures, the patents also of the trees varies in relation to the and coasts, are also represented in frame new and discursive visions for water’s surface, and their depth defines patents and have been subject to the Mississippi River. the desired channel geometry. Just as in the iterative and projective forces of wild deltas, friction and the processes patent innovation. US Patent 658,795 of accretion or scouring would define The Venetian government A Method for Building Navigable Channels the channel location and geometry. granted the first patents for in the Bird’s Foot Delta of the Mississippi And in areas where woody armatures “environmental” technology in the The presettlement delta of the remain unburied, mollusks and marine early fifteenth century, when radical Mississippi, as described by early organisms would potentially colonize new processes and devices were explorers, was a vast matrix of mud and ossify the branches to catalyze invented to urbanize the lagoon, lumps, snags, natural levees, alligators, the formation of new ecologies. build canals, and create terra firma and migrating channels—a place Medici’s system operationalizes this from mud.2 Patent law spread formed over millennia. Juan Bautista- cycle, essentially building a delta as a from Venice throughout Europe Medici’s patent (1900)4 for navigable delta might build itself and defining to France, England, Holland, and channels at the Heads of Passes navigable channels in the process. Germany, eventually crossing the reconciles the inherent conflict Medici’s system defies the notion Atlantic.3 In the United States, where between dynamic deltaic conditions of a singular object and instead evokes western and technological frontiers and the necessity for stable navigation field conditions or matrices as the progressed concurrently, inventors channel geometry by building the delta organizing structure. The scale of the continued to transform the physical a channel using principles observed in intervention is commensurate with environment, leading to a rich dossier nature (Figure 1). the scale of the islets and marshes of environmental innovation within Medici’s system involves the associated with the world’s great deltas. the USPTO. The infrastructural anchoring of a subsurface “forest” Given the flexibility of the grid layout, space depicted by the 9 million or “orchard” of large cut trees with it is important to note that there is no Downloaded by [Association of Collegiate Schools Architecture] at 08:35 28 November 2017 patents issued in this 227-year history variable depths to guide flowing water preconceived formal configuration represents every known sector and capture sediment. The arboreal for the bathymetric forest, and in this of the technosphere, including grid would create a vast matrix of manner the structure can conform to a unique subgenre that blurs the vertical trunks and branched canopies unique conditions. In fact, the system boundary between technology and employed to alter the speed and may adapt and grow over time, evolving environment. direction of water by establishing a new as the bird foot of the Mississippi To illustrate the dynamic bathymetry. Treetops would define extends to the gulf and new channels reciprocity between patents and deltaic channels and the flow of water are required. The patent invites us complex earth systems, I explore by their height in the water column and to imagine a vast deltaic landscape implications of four site-specific their density based on tree size. In areas constructed on principles observed in
280 Figure 1. Above, left: US Patent 658,795 “System evoking instead conditions found US Patent 452,989 for Formation of Permanent Channels in Navigable in naturally forming delta systems. Syncopating Floods, Farming, and Rivers” was granted to Juan Bautista Medici Envisioning the system implemented Riparian Ecology Throughout the October 2nd, 1900. The original patent drawing shows 20m x 20m grid of large cut trees, in plan and at the Southwest pass suggests the Mississippi’s Watershed section, anchored to boulders to define a subsurface creation of a subsurface bathymetric Levees bridle river channels, compress “orchard” or “bosque” in the delta of sediment rich field of trees aligned vertically and ancient floodplains between finely rivers. The grid of trees would be configured to define channel geometry and array across areas up horizontally to direct the current of the engineered lines, and exacerbate to 40 kilometers in order to direct river water and Mississippi, while capturing sediment divisions between wet and dry build deltaic landforms. When scaled and sited at in a kilometer-thick matrix of tree land along unnatural gradients. the mouth of the Mississippi. limbs and trunks. The branches of A functioning floodplain not only Figure 2. Above, right: The magnitude of the these trees would become encased in accommodates vast quantities of proposal becomes apparent. In this configuration, silt and ossified by mollusks, further floodwater during the natural ebb a series of “islets” would be situated at each of the main passes to define channel geometry. A edifying the structure and catalyzing and flow of rivers but also inherently secondary grid matrix would extend across vast the formation of new ecological supports a unique ecology adapted to horizontal areas to create a subsurface bathymetric assemblages. Extension of the delta the fluctuations of sediment, water,
Downloaded by [Association of Collegiate Schools Architecture] at 08:35 28 November 2017 “bosque,” intended to stabilize and augment the delta through the accretion of sediments. (Drawing using Medici’s principles would also growth, and decay that is fundamental by Author.) require the cultivation of trees on the to river health. George B. Boomer’s banks of the river to harvest as the basic levee construction method (1891) nature, yet designed to meet human building block of the deltaic system. envisions a system in which the necessity for navigation. The image that emerges is a quixotic productivity of riparian and wetland When compared with conventional kaleidoscope of sediment, vegetation, ecology, agricultural production, technologies for the engineering and water adapted to meet the needs conveyance of floodwaters, and of navigable channels, such as of navigation—a tectonic delta that sediment management are balanced jetties, Medici’s proposal precludes precludes simplistic binaries between through the utilization of a double object-oriented descriptions, man-made and natural. levee system that hybridizes river
Hindle JAE 71:2 281 Figure 3. Above, left: US Patent 452,989 “Method regular flow, it provides space for the structures, reducing risk and altering of Constructing Levees” was granted to George B. Boomer on May 26th, 1891. The original patent ecological functionality or agricultural the regional and urban landscape. drawing (left) describes a double levee system that production within the mediated Each of the aforementioned is compartmentalized to allow for the syncopation boundary between terrestrial and performance criteria could be of floodwaters from the main channel and/or tributaries. The controlled flood-zone, or batture, hydrologic systems. The system also syncopated to periods of flood, crop between the double levees is intended to span more links fluvial processes to the adjacent production, or ecological cycles such than a mile and extend the length of the leveed landscape by releasing water from the as bird migrations. areas of the Mississippi River. The segmented levee system allows each compartment to be main river channel back into double By engaging the dynamic forces of programmed with farming, sediment recharge, levee enclosures. Reintroduction the riparian zone as a multifunctional or fallow riparian ecology, when not employed as of floodwater from the main river flood infrastructure, the patent flood control. Water control structures allow flows and discharges to be choreographed seasonally channel recharges sediments in reframes an entire river system as and in response to emergency flood events. When wetland and agricultural systems, technology—instrumentalizing the visualized at the scale of the Mississippi watershed maintains nutrient balance, and movement of sediment and water recharges groundwater levels essential while creating room for ecological and Figure 4. Above, right: The network of levees suggest a landscape management strategy to the health of riparian soils and productive processes to adapt and hybridized with flood control, ecology, and ecosystems. If deployed at scale the respond. The cyclical forces that are Downloaded by [Association of Collegiate Schools Architecture] at 08:35 28 November 2017 agriculture. multiplicity of levee berms utilized mediated by the levees and floodgates in the system thickens the boundary situate it in larger sediment and processes with flood-control between riverine and terrestrial water cycles that extend far beyond structures (Figure 3).5 systems, allowing for the storage the boundary of the river, making it Boomer’s layered and and gradual release of floodwaters possible to manipulate and coordinate compartmentalized levee network along with increased ecological systems that operate at a watershed is multifunctional. During periods and agricultural productivity. The scale—which in the Mississippi River of flooding, the double levee allows proposed levee system would also system is equivalent to approximately for water storage and the control of separate and buffer adjacent land uses 40 percent of the land area of the inflow from streams. In periods of through redundant flood-control contiguous United States.
282 Patent Scenarios for the Mississippi River Figure 5. Above, left: US Patent 488,422 “System Lands from Overflow” (1892) partially invention was to protect low-lying of Protecting Riparian Lands from Overflow” was reinstates this process through a lands and urban areas from overflow, granted to Linus W. Brown on December 20th, 1892. The original patent drawing shows the proposed series of outlets and tailraces that the systems of weirs were also known configuration of weirs, levees, tail races, and natural stitch the lower Mississippi back to facilitate sediment recharge and lakes designed to relieve flood water and protect to an ancient network of lakes and even help reclaim land. low-lying riparian areas. When visualized serially along the lower Mississippi near New Orleans. deltas during periods of high water, Relinking lakes and bayous back while maintaining the health of the to the main river channel would Figure 6. Above, right: The interconnected system vegetation, sediment reserves, and ameliorate subsidence through the links the main river channel to its ancestral delta 6 and floodplain. In this scenario, the natural lakes waterway (Figure 5). introduction of sediment-laden (Maurepas, Pontchartrain, Salvador, and Lac Des Brown’s deceptively simple freshwater into distributaries, Allemands) would serve as flood storage reservoirs topographical solution to flood lakes, and the adjacent landscape. for cyclical flood events, reducing river levels near the city of New Orleans. Periodic recharge control in New Orleans and its The benefits of periodic flushes of of the lakes with floodwater and sediment would environs guides floodwaters back sediment-rich freshwater would also benefit the ecology of the delta, as they are through their historic territories also help maintain the health essential to the health of wetlands and cypress forest ecosystems. (Drawing by Author). and works with nature to maintain of native cypress trees, wetland flood control. According to the grasses, and other vegetation that US Patent 488,422 patent, outlets would be located captures sediment and protects Spillways, Tail Races, and Sediment at precise flood elevations along the landscape against storm surges Recharge in the Lower Mississippi Delta the lower reaches of the river, and and subsidence, increasing the The ancient delta of the Mississippi during periods of flood the weirs resilience and stability of the delta. built southern Louisiana through would carry floodwater to adjacent As a flood-control system, the Downloaded by [Association of Collegiate Schools Architecture] at 08:35 28 November 2017 deposition of sediment in extensive lakes where it would be distributed weirs maintain a constant flood networks of bayous, lakes, and naturally through the vast deltaic datum that water levels would not backwaters within vast plains of network of bayous and channels, exceed, providing a consistent level vegetation. Levees ultimately broke ultimately draining into the gulf. that defines high and low ground. the vital link between river and Brown suggested that his system be The weirs and tailraces utilized landscape, altering the delta-building implemented at Lake Borgne and in the systems are by no means capacity of the river and starving Lake Maurepas, and at as many river innovations in and of themselves, lower Louisiana of life-giving bends as necessary to distribute yet as a series of interventions substrate. Linus Weed Brown’s patent floodwaters effectively. Although strategically inserted within the for a “System of Protecting Riparian the primary purpose of Brown’s existing levee system of southern
Hindle JAE 71:2 283 Figure 4. Above, left: US Patent 687,387 “Jetty or US Patent 687,387 of flowing river water. A structure Breakwater” was granted to Lewis M. Haupt on November 26th, 1901. The original patent drawing Self-Dredging channel at the mouth of the designed to engage the forces of water, (left) shows the doubly curved reaction breakwater Mississippi instead of resisting them. in plan and section, sited at the South West Pass Permanent jetties and nearly constant Professor Haupt was well aware of of the Mississippi. The breakwater is designed passively dredge a navigable channel at the mouth dredging have maintained navigable issues of land loss and the important of the Mississippi using the energy of river water channels at the South and Southwest role of sediment in recharging and focused by the geometry of the breakwater. The Passes of the Mississippi for more stabilizing the delta. During a speech to design balances the source/sink sediment budget necessary for channel maintenance, and therefore than 140 years. Diesel fuel, man-hours, the American Philosophical Society in does not require dredging. When envisioned over and federal dollars keep the channels 1904, he convincingly argued for the use decades at the mouth of the Mississippi. clear, while the constant force of of outlets in conjunction with his single Figure 8. Above, right: The reaction breakwater the river rebuilds the sediment. The concaved jetty, stating that the outlets would use littoral currents and the force of river possibility of self-dredging channels would nourish the delta and reduce the water, in combination with upriver outlets, to build has existed since 1889, when Lewis need for dredging as the curvature of land and replenish sediment along the Gulf Coast of Southern Louisiana. (Drawing by Author). M. Haupt received the prestigious the jetty would deposit sediments and Magellanic Premium Award from the maintain depths. What emerges from Louisiana, they present an alternative American Philosophical Society and his Haupt’s patent, lecture, and writing function of the levees: changing patent for the “reaction breakwater” is an image of the delta in which the them from singular impenetrable from the USPTO—a system that sediment budget and flow is balanced boundaries, to a complex series was prototyped at the Aransas Pass, between outlets and the reaction of topographical relationships near Galveston, Texas (Figure 6).7 In breakwater, and the navigable channels between infrastructure, river, and 1901, Professor Haupt modified his are passively excavated by the forces of city designed to optimize discharge innovative self-dredging “reaction the Mississippi. The precise geometry of floodwater and maintenance of breakwater” for use at the Southwest of the reaction breakwater would the deltaic landscape—a vision Pass of the Mississippi, adapting direct sediment-heavy water toward as prescient today as it was in his prior invention to respond to the western bank of the channel and 1892. The patent utilizes tactical conditions found in sediment-bearing deposit it on the bank of the adjacent Downloaded by [Association of Collegiate Schools Architecture] at 08:35 28 November 2017 interventions, or acupuncture, rivers.8 A doubly curved (curved in wetlands, while speeding up the flow to retool existing landscape plan and section) structure directs the adjacent to the structure to scour infrastructure and recalibrate hydraulic force of flowing river water, material from the navigable channel. regional water systems, providing an excavating a navigable channel, and When combined with the littoral drift alternative interpretation of patented depositing the sediment (with the help of sediments, the reaction breakwater technology, not simply as singular of littoral currents) on the adjacent positioned at the Southwest Pass would or heroic inventions, but as complex bank. The system not only maintains replenish sediments closer to shore operations, or landscape strategies, a channel, but over time, it also builds and contribute to land building instead which may improve upon and adapt land on the western bank of the of depositing it in deeper water where existing systems. Southwest Pass, using only the energy it would not recharge wetlands, as is
284 Patent Scenarios for the Mississippi River currently the case. Even conservative but instead a failure to innovate. Notes estimates suggest that the Mississippi Individually the patents challenge 1 The Venetian government began issuing patents carries an estimated 500 million tons assumptions about the scale, scope, in the first decades of the fifteenth century and in 1474 drafted the world’s first patent law, known of sediment to the gulf annually, and and agency of conventional patents, as the Venetian Patent Statute. The first “true” an estimated 200 million tons reach reframing the river as technology patent was issued in 1421 to the architect Filippo the delta plain, enough to build 2,740 and defying object-oriented biases. Brunelleschi of Florence, though patent law there square kilometers of new land in Collectively they uncover something did not develop as robustly as it did in Venice. over a century when combined with even more radical—the possibility of Correlations between industrialization and patent 9 law have arguably skewed the contemporary vegetation and organic production. an alternate innovation model in which interpretation of patents toward objects, Haupt’s invention puts the river bottom-up sociotechnical processes of machines, and devices. For an in-depth analysis to work maintaining a navigable patent innovation reinvent rivers and of the relationship between patents and industry, channel and building adjacent complex environmental systems. As our see Christine MacLeod, Inventing the Industrial Revolution: The English Patent System, 1660–1800 wetlands, bucking the need for diesel understanding of the Anthropocene (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). fuel, dredge boats, pumps, jetties, continues to evolve, from a geologic 2 Salvatore Ciriacono, Building on Water: Venice, and other Victorian-era inventions. epoch to a projective framework for Holland and the Construction of the European Imagining the river itself as a sort of planetary management, the boundary Landscape in Early Modern Times (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006). chimeric machine, capable of work, between the technosphere and earth 3 Craig Allen Nard and Andrew P. Morriss, with strength to build and alter the systems will collapse. At this frontier, “Constitutionalizing Patents: From Venice to morphology of its delta, represents the agency of architects, landscape Philadelphia,” Review of Law and Economics 2, no. 2 a break in history, and potentially a architects, and planners will be (2006): 223–321. divergent path in the evolution of reinvented in response to a shifting 4 Juan Bautista Medici, System for the formation of permanent channels in navigable rivers, US Patent modern rivers in which the power of design paradigm that extends our 658,795, issued 1900. the Mississippi is enhanced instead thinking and “work” beyond discrete 5 George B. Boomer, Method of constructing of shackled. From this perspective, sites and buildings, into large-scale levees, US Patent 452,989, issued 1891. Haupt’s invention makes the river and complex systems. Patents have a 6 Linus Brown, System of protecting riparian lands from overflow, US Patent 488,422, issued 1892. more like an improved cyborg with a 600-year history of building complex 7 Lewis M. Haupt, “History of the Reaction prosthetic delta optimized for land infrastructures and sociotechnical Breakwater at Aransas Pass, Texas,” Journal of the building and navigation. systems. Might the distinct agency, Franklin Institute 165, no. 2 (1908): 81–97. instrumentality, and legal mechanisms 8 Lewis Haupt, Jetty or breakwater, US Patent Inventing Rivers and Other Complex of the global patent system be 687,387, issued 1901. 9 Bentley, Samuel J., et al. "Using what we have: Environmental Systems employed to invent rivers and complex Optimizing sediment management in Mississippi The Mississippi River has been environmental systems of the future? River delta restoration to improve the economic building deltas at the Gulf of Mexico viability of the nation." Perspectives on the for approximately 7,500 years, after Author Biography Restoration of the Mississippi Delta. Springer initially carving its alluvial valley from Richard L. Hindle is an assistant Netherlands, 2014. 85-97. glacial outwash at the end of the last professor of Landscape Architecture Ice Age. When compared to geologic and Environmental Planning at the time frames, the postsettlement University of California, Berkeley, “anthropogenic” history of the river where he teaches courses in ecological is relatively short, spanning a mere technology, planting design, and three centuries. Yet transformations graduate design studios. Hindle's of the ancient river by levees, dams, research focuses on technology in the urbanization, agricultural drainage, urban landscape with an emphasis on jetties, and dredge boats has been material processes, innovation, and cataclysmic, leading to subsidence, patents. His current work explores hypoxia, and loss of the river’s ancestral landscape-related technologies across fluvial territory. Today, collapse of the a range of scales, from large-scale Downloaded by [Association of Collegiate Schools Architecture] at 08:35 28 November 2017 Mississippi Delta is a very real possibility mappings of riverine and coastal even though technology has been patents to detailed studies of artificial disclosed in patent documents for more “hard” habitats associated with than a century to reconcile natural river coastal armoring. He has worked as processes with human necessity. a consultant and designer with firms The existence of alternative such as Surface Design, Michael scenarios reveals a counterfactual Van Valkenburgh Associates, Steven history in which collapse of the river Holl,and Atelier Jean Nouvel, on system was not an inevitable result advanced building systems integrated of human technological intervention with vegetation.
Hindle JAE 71:2 285