Fluvial Park

Saint Louis, Missouri

Academic Project

Professor Jacqueline Margetts

Honors:

2018 American Society of Landscape Architects, St. Louis Chapter - Student Honor Award

Located South of the world famous Arch Grounds in downtown Saint Louis, Fluvial Park explores the potential for underutilized urban space adjacent to important ecological zones. The park is situated outside the flood wall along the bank of the Mississippi River extending from the I-55 bridge South along the Kosciusko waterfront. The park would serve as a diffuse transitional edge between the Mississippi river ecosystem and urban hardscape while offering habitat for semi-aquatic animal life, migratory birds, mammals adapted to the urban environment, wetland dependent plant life, and undervalued insects.

The landscape was planned to develop semi-autonomously as initiated by a sequence of interventions. The first of these being the introduction of wooden piles and groynes extending from the wall into the edge of the river. The piles are arrayed on a grid referencing the streets and wharfs of the historical Saint Louis waterfront; the height of the piles mark the crest of the 1993 flood, providing spatial recognition of water level variability. These obstructions collect driftwood, detritus and silt over time, eventually resulting in expanding pockets of plant growth and animal habitat. As silt accumulates, phased plantings of Decurrent False Aster (Boltonia decurrens) and riverine tree species are enacted. The resulting planned landscape develops in unplanned ways, responding to the ecological disruption of fluctuating water levels of the Mississippi river.