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Christopher Hickin

Liquid Avenues


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Liquid Avenues



"What's got a mouth but never eats; what's got a bed but never sleeps?"











Abstract
Mill Creek/landscape/landform/Mill Creek/precipitation/Mill Creek flooding/watershed/rainfall/contours/Mill Creek/peakflow/lagtime/Mill Creek /subsidence/sinkholes/stormdrains/standing water/compacted earth/asphalt/pavement/runoff/water table/ sewer system/drain pipes/water loss . . . Mill creek . . .. .




Mill Creek Watershed Boundaries

Solution Sets : Possibilities

Two kinds of avenue. One is physical, consisting of subtle changes in the landform. Imperceptible. It has an invisible route except when it rains. The other one is a metaphor; it calls out and expresses a hidden element beneath the urban strata. It is an avenue of imagination, it crosses all other physical boundaries, leads one to secret temples and strange gods.
Images



Physical Graffitti








It meanders sinuously, rhythymically through a rigid, rectilinear streetscape. This memory-path alters what it touches--rain does not behave in the usual manner in the area of this path. It is held on rooftops and parking lots, flows in bizarre gutters on buildings and seeps into a ground made of porous blocks and grass. Water from twenty blocks away seems attracted here
A
interactive art sites#1: building with gutters turned inward

Weird buildings are to be found along this mental river-route. They were once abandoned, but artists and volunteers have transformed them into roofless rain temples--sometimes filled with water, sometimes not. Often a pool or grass or just sand can be seen inside.



(interactive art sites #2:building with structure removed except for plumbing








The river is expressed through marks and symbols gouged into the street, striations that let waters flow back down into the soil. Similiar marks are on walls, oozing mosses and ferns. The children of these neighborhoods have been allowed to take part, to play and invent the signs, signs that echo the old path of the river underground.







. . . contiguous vacant lots re-graded to support greenery and contain floods



Farther away in the open land undulations and depressions carry on the rhythym.
It is greener there than it used to be . . .




REVEALING WATERS
DESCRIBING THE PLACE
CULTIVATING THE URBAN FOREST
RESTORING URBAN WATERS
ENTRY


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Last Update:11/27/96
URL: http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~christo2/index.htm