Landscapes of Industrial Excess: a Thick Sections Approach to Gas Works Park
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Under the sky Landscapes of industrial excess: A thick sections approach to Gas Works Park Thaïsa Way, University of Washington, Seattle, USA Recycling urban excess is not a new practice. The reuse of one Gas Works Park in Seattle, WA, designed by Richard Haag Associates and LAKE generation’s materials and forms into alternative resources recently listed on the National Register of Historic Landmarks, serves as UNION and forms is at the core of two millennia of urban develop- one of the earliest post-industrial sites to be transformed into a public park ment. However, with industrialism new excess arose, as the wastes of production were spread across the landscape. Ini- through remediation and reclamation. The radical nature of the park lies LAKE in its adaptive reuse of waste landscapes, not merely ameliorating contam- tially cities buried, relocated or disregarded such excesses, as WASHINGTON they seemed only to suggest the worst of progress and civili- inated land but transforming it to serve the public. Although officials and zation. At the end of the twentieth century we experienced a residents called for the remains of the industrial plant to be removed, Haag positional turn—to consider the wastes of production as a part PUGET SOUND convinced the public to retain elements of the industrial apparatus and, of our urban landscape rather than something to be made in- more importantly, to retain and treat the polluted soils. Previous scholar- visible. This is not to say that we celebrate toxicity, but rather ELLIOT BAY that we engage the inherent signification of the products and ship focuses primarily on the architectural elements, leaving the landscape alter relationships to urban industrial histories. as mere setting. This article proposes a site narrative as read through the Gas Works Park in Seattle, designed by Richard Haag As- Figure 1 Seattle with Gas Works Park on the northern shore of Lake Union. landform. It suggests an alternative reading that gives voice to the site’s sociates, was an early model of a post-industrial landscape toxic history. transformed into a public park (Fig. 1). The radical nature lies in its adaptive reuse of waste landscapes, not merely ameliorating contaminated land but transforming it to serve Gas Works Park / polluted landscapes / post-industrial landscape / the public. Although officials and citizens called for the re- Richard Haag / thick sections mains of the industrial plant to be removed, Haag Associ- ates [1] convinced the public to retain elements of the indus- trial apparatus and, most importantly, to retain and clean the polluted soil. Nonetheless, scholarship focuses primar- ily on the architectural ruins. This article proposes a narra- tive as read through the land in conjunction with that of the NAME OF THE DATEs OF sTUDY structures. It seeks to give voice to the disturbed site history, OPERATION Project dates 1969–1976, framing it as both a ruin and a place-maker in a new para- Gas Works Park with continued consul- tation digm of practice (Fig. 2). [2] LOCATION A history of addressing degraded landscapes has general- Seattle, Washington, USA DATEs OF ly been one of making wastes invisible. Urban landfills have CONsTRUCTION been re-covered to provide what is euphemistically called CONTRACTING 1971–1976, AUTHORITY some work ongoing open space. The sites are covered over to become new sites (COMMIssIONING as in 1936 when New York City covered its Corona landfill AGENCY) sURFACE AREA IN m 2 to create the 1939 World’s Fair. The landscapes were trans- ALAN WARD, 1996 Seattle Parks Department 8.3 ha projecting 122 m2 and City of Seattle formed by concealing the industrial history and the embed- into Lake Union with Figure 3 The Great Mound or Kite Hill with Seattle skyline in the distance. 579 m2 of shoreline ded realities. Similar processes of transformation occur on PRIME CONTRACTOR quarries, mines, industrial sites and other wastelands. Such (DEsIGNER) TOTAL COsT IN EUROs Richard Haag Associates, sites are presented as re-enacted nature, the reclamation of 44.6 million Euros (borrow- Seattle, WA, USA a once-disturbed site, as if one can remove human interfer- ing balance for 2010–2011) ence and the consequent damage disappears like magic. The public is offered a place covered in a new skin hiding the hid- eous history. The disturbed site is metaphorically and liter- Figure 2 View of Gas Works Park, northern shore of Lake Union, centre of Seattle, WA. ally concealed by a pastoral landscape. [3] 6 Journal of Landscape Architecture / spring 2013 Journal of Landscape Architecture / spring 2013 7 Landscapes of industrial excess: A thick sections approach to Gas Works Park Thaïsa Way However, this has not been a uniform practice and alterna - The design and construction of Gas Works Park reveals the oremediation. Haag embraced the industrial ruins and trans- tives can be identified in the nineteenth century. A signifi- complexity of the project’s narratives, not just within Seat- lated their presence into defining features of the park, there- cant project is Jean-Charles Alphand’s Parc des Buttes-Chau- tle, but also within the larger practice of landscape architec- by offering an alternative reading of Seattle's industrial past, mont, completed in 1867. Alphand transformed a significant ture. In this framework, Haag’s design proposes that where not one to be forgotten but to be remembered and respected. refuse dump and former quarry into a public landscape, one the history of a site is disturbing, where the reality of the site The gas towers suggest a history of Seattle focused not only in which the park experience engages with its historic nar - analysis suggests human vulnerability and a tenuous rela- on the natural resources of mountains, forests and water, but ratives—geological, cultural and industrial. As noted in the tionship with natural processes, one should engage in com- also on urban industrial ventures of previous eras. By invit- work of Ann Komara and Elizabeth Meyer, the new topog- plex narratives of place. One should not ignore the realities ing the public into the landscape of industry, Haag suggest- raphy and its construction offered a new type of landscape of the site, nor should one remove the disturbance to another ed this was a past they might find engaging and beautiful. experience. [4] Sited in an industrial area of northeast Par- site in some vain attempt to create a tabula rasa, but, rather, The towers remained as rusted icons to a new way of con- is, the construction engaged cutting- edge technologies and one should address the challenges on-site and in-situ. Haag ceiving post-industrial excesses as potential places of public practices expressing the modern nature of the site alongside advocated for engaging the complexities of the existing land- engagement, recreation, contemplation and learning (Fig. 4). its industrial character. The relationship between the former scape and learning from its history as well as its potential Gas Works Park is also the story of its designer, Richard , 1996 ARD disturbances of the site and its transformation could be ex - futures. Finally his work demonstrates how a site might be Haag. Haag (b. 1923) grew up on a Kentucky landscape, son of W LAN plicitly observed from the panoramic viewpoint where ‘the read at multiple scales, from the local to the regional—and fi- a nurseryman and farmer. After serving in the Second World A visitor could…see an industrial landscape of train yards, fac- nally the global—emphasizing the potential power of land- War, he attended the University of Illinois; the University Figure 4 Gas works towers with Capitol Hill in the distance, Seattle, WA. tories, and slaughterhouses beyond the borders of the park scape narratives. of California, Berkeley; and Harvard University’s Graduate that stood in direct contrast to the park’s tightly orchestrat - To begin, one lifts up the skin of such a disturbed site to School of Design. Awarded a Fulbright Scholar fellowship ed picturesque experience. This industrialized physical con- read what is below. For this purpose, the phrase ‘thick de- to study in Kyoto in 1954, Haag was one of the first schol- text became a counterpoint to Alphand’s representation of scriptions’ has been translated as ‘thick sections’, acknowl- ars to study in Japan after the war. In 1958 Haag joined the nature and heightened the visitor’s understanding of the di- edging the complex layers of history revealed in section, one Department of Architecture at the University of Washing - alogue between the two realms’ (Komara 2004: 10). Thus while of the landscape architect’s tools for site analysis. As anthro- ton (UW) in Seattle to establish the Landscape Architecture the industrial nature of the site was re-interpreted through pologist Clifford Geertz suggests, ‘The shapes of knowledge programme. He had a legendary hold on students including a picturesque lens, the history of the site remained present. are always ineluctably local, indivisible from their instru- Laurie Olin, Grant Jones, Robert Hanna and Jerry Diethelm, A second important project is the Back Bay Fens land- ments and their encasements’ (Geertz 1973: 4). To identify as well as later students Jennifer Guthrie and Shannon s N scape as completed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles and explore the complex relationships of a place, or an event Nichol of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol. [8] Others joined Haag’s ectio Elliott in Boston, MA, in the 1880s. In this project a saltwa- embedded in a time and place, requires moving away from firm as young designers including Frank James and Donald LL o c ter marshland became polluted as it filled with sewage from ‘thin descriptions’, toward ‘thick descriptions’, that engage Sakuma. His students practice around the globe.