2007 Cleveland competition
Cleveland possesses a multitude of important public spaces, formal and informal. However, many of these public spaces are static, tired, homogeneously programmed, and in most part, have unfortunately not transformed with the fluxes of economies, politics, demographics, technology, or culture. Many of these public landscapes are lashed to deteriorating architectures and urbanisms and fail to engage with the flows and circulations of daily, weekly, or seasonal population migrations. Many spaces are hollow, empty vessels of mythical pasts.
The Irishtown Bend site allows for the emergence of an alternative public space, or as this proposal suggests, a Public Mechanized Menagerie Infrascape/Infospace, that arises from the existential geography, economy, culture, and technology within the immediate and regional context. This vernacular-derived scheme (natural geography + industrial history) stands opposed to other prominent Cleveland public spaces, such as Public Square and Daniel Burnham’s Mall, which are “imported” paradigms from Connecticut and the Ecole-de-Beaux Arts via 1893 Chicago, respectively. However, as illustrated, this new mechanized public landscape possesses the relatively same acreage as the legacy spaces.
The proposal suggests the deployment of an infrastructure of terraced mechanized landscape situated above a terraced warehouse + archive, or if you will, a regional artifact purgatory. The mechanized landscapes and the sheltered archival spaces serve as the receiving + holding vessels for local and regional artifacts, specimens, landscapes, urbanisms, events, architectures, and histories that have been or will be expunged from collective use and memory. Pieces of demolished buildings, endangered vegetations, abandoned billboards, old playground equipment, industrial relics, information, etc. can be loaded into the warehouse or placed on to the moving trays of the mechanized landscape. Speculative constructs or event spaces can also be executed on the same trays, interspersed with the “historical” pieces.
The moving trays, on their respective circuits can migrate at variable speeds and in opposite directions. The variability of the speeds, directions, multiple circuits, and individual disposition of each tray can allow for a dynamic hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly re-alignment + re-organization of the spatial constitution of the infrascape. The infrascape system allows for the importation of different elements, spaces, or systems, or the export of Northeast Ohio elements to other urbanisms.
