preparation for final design review 4.10.17

Working to refine final design based on the December review of the preliminary conceptual approach.   The seven options offered then have been pared down to four and those have been refined as an alliterative grouping.  The underlying intent is to create a series of elements that poetically and materially reinforce a conceptual flow from park to trail to the surrounding urban environs.

glacial retreat and climate change

An important subtext of this project is prompted by the materiality of stone and the concept of water. There's an implied interplay of the two in terms of glaciation and how the landscape was formed over millennia of geologic scraping and metamorphic formation.  That we're now dealing with a glacial retreat happening in a matter of decades due to anthropogenic climate change is something that deserves attention.

As a lasting landmark, what will the flume element have to say about this particular moment, in terms of human, biologic and geologic history?  How do we want to mark this occasion?  An ode to past civilizations?  A contemporary take on sustainable infrastructure?  Or a message to an unknown future?

A few thoughts running through my mind today...

http://www.nichols.edu/departments/glacier/Bill.htm

sifting through research for appropriate fossils

The Cordilleran ice sheet deposited many fossils throughout the Pacific Northwest.  Radio carbon dating provides evidence of four glaciations, the most recent being the Fraser (which correlated with the Wisconsin Glaciation).  Earlier glaciations were known as the Salmon Springs, Stuck and Ortung.  Ice sheets advanced south into the lowlands of western Washington at least 6 times.

Between glaciations were periods of warming when the Olympia beds in western Washington accepted fossil impressions in peat, tephra, lahars, mudflows, lacustrine and fluvial deposits.  Many of the these Olympia beds yield excellent pollen preservation (pine and spruce), freshwater diatomite suggesting clear shallow lakes and larger fossils including mammoth teeth and tusks, cones, needles, branches, leaf prints and tree roots.  Mastodons, mammoths and bison roamed the Puget and Fraser lowlands during this nonglacial interval.

In the Central Puget Lowland glacial lakes formed south of the retreating ice front, coalescing into one lake, Lake Bretz.  Sea level change has also been a significant factor in the fossil record, with a range of 200 meters above present level to 100 meters below as a result of eustasy (change in water volume), isostasy (growth and decay of ice sheets) and tectonism (plate slippage and faults).  I'd like explore this relationship as a metaphoric expression in flume particularly as it relates to mechanically-cut surface and alignments of the stonework...perhaps as a sort of regional map that could only be deciphered aerially (by drone?).

The glacial lakes of the Pleistocene left a larger carved terrain and a range of smaller fossil deposits.  Typical among them are as follows...

  

additional 'flume' refinements

So apparently polishing and v-cuts are very expensive.  Yet a straight cut simply honed costs much less (still not cheap, but not a budget-buster).

Given this, I begin to explore ways to arrange a series of flat-cut stones in an alternating line (like a 'stone zipper') that appears like a v-cut only as viewed from either end of the piece.

Through exact alignment and a consistent angle of cut, a discontinuous flume-like channel becomes apparent.  Each angled stone cut offers pairings of informal seating.  

Add a few well-chosen small fossils as hidden surprise elements...

more 'flume' refinements

Thinking about 'essential gestures' as it relates to concept and site.

Piece needs more scale and presence along South 74th.  More linear.  More stones.  More flume-like.

Thinking of ways to recreate a sense of flume in stone.  Could make it as a construct of multiple stones laid with mortar (but then there's issues with long-term maintenance related to crumbling mortar). 

Imagining a flume-like v-cut running straight through several aligned stones.  Large igneous boulders warmed by south-facing surfaces could provide informal seating/lounging.  Possible polished cut surface could reinforce a water feeling with reflected sky and clouds.  

Technical and budgetary issues with this exact approach, but it provides an opening to other solutions...

'flume' refinements

Am looking at a more monumental approach to flume involving a singular iconic stone with stainless birdbath feature.  One located along the 74th Street entry to Oak Tree Park.  The other located in the quarry within the park.

A spun stainless steel bowl would crown honed granite base.  Engraved 'fossil band' would define honed versus raw boulder surface.  Options for water play.  

Questions about scale and impact given overall scale of sites.  Also 'refined' nature of this approach seems at odds with surroundings.