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LOCUS Architecture is collaborating with landscape architects at the Hoisington Koegler Group Inc. (HKGI) and the City of Hastings to create an interpretive center, bandshell/festival grounds and other community amenities within a small complex along the Mississippi River. The site, donated by Flint Hills Industries, is a 200 acre brown-field slated for flood plain restoration. Called Hasting River Flats, the site will become a new central park designed by HKGI, reinforcing a current riverfront redevelopment re-orienting Hastings toward the river. The LOCUS designed complex - a land bridge uniting the river and adjacent wetlands - will center the new park. Hastings, a quintessential Mississippi River town, sits at a crossroads. Shipping, timber and agricultural predominated its early history, with industry becoming important later. Today, Hastings is rapidly growing as a Twin City bedroom community, suburb development blossoming around its perimeter. These transformations compel Hasting citizens to reevaluate their relationship with the Mississippi, which is being re-discovered as an amenity to be embraced. Just a short walk from downtown Hastings, the site itself is a threshold. It is the confluence of land and river uses - commercial, industrial, recreational, residential - within a natural setting. The site proper is a spit of land separating river and lake/wetland, with major transportation arteries, land and water, visible. The site is also a transition between the urban/industrial Twin Cities and the rural/agricultural region downriver. These dichotomies and tensions melding at the site create the rich “habitat”, which in conjunction with the Center’s “designed” elements, deliver the interpretive experience. Rather than a nostalgia look at the past, the Center aims to encompass present and future too. In other words, the project not only presents the historic context of Hastings and the Mississippi, but we also expect the Center to evolve and remain relevant in the future. The Center serves its interpretive objective, as well as providing a suitable model for sustainable river development. We propose several strategies to address these broad aims: The first is multi-use design. Overlapping and complimentary site uses – interpretive center, boating, fishing and various other recreation uses, sculpture garden, band shell, trails, and flood plain restoration – will help ensure the overall site success as a community center and resource. Crossover usages within a multi-use facility will also promote passive visitorship. Second, we are suggesting the latest in computer and internet technology for Center exhibits and research at the, in order to link the site to other global river sites, and to encourage communal interactive research. Rivers define many communities. The common threads Hastings has, not only to other towns up and down the Mississippi, but to other river towns worldwide must be reinforced. Third, we are incorporating historical “artifacts” within the complex. Site improvements will be constructed partially with discarded and reused materials, including Mississippi River dredging spoils, leftover concrete rip rap, and excess steel material culled from the Flint Hill scrap yards. The sustainable and historic aspect of resuscitating these materials is critical to the project’s success. Fourth, the complex sits on stilts. It can receive the Mississippi’s ebb and flow, without construction of extensive flood walls. Aside from the ecological advantages of avoiding this sitework, lifting the complex up inflates its presence, allowing it to “compete” against the nearly bridge and barge traffic. The project team proposes an evolutionary design process, commencing with analysis and design by the architects, landscape architects, engineers and Hastings officials, but one evolving with the daily interaction of Center visitors. The design team is committed to producing a truly interactive Center, where the visitors’ initiative completes a comprehensive, immersive interpretive experience. Interaction with site improvements will be a theme throughout, and will include exhibits, trails, art, event sites and even the permanent buildings structures. The Center itself is pierced and pinned by a foot-bridge riding over the undulating site. Elevated in case of flooding, the walkway allows visitors Center access without worrying about uneven terrain and offers excellent vantage points. Additionally, as part of the Center narrative unfolds along the bridge, complex arrival is wed to interpretive experience. Designing this walkway, and other complex elements, within the vocabulary of materials salvaged on-site, and within the aesthetic of nearby bridges and barges floating by, links it literally and figuratively to the historic past, which is neither banished nor glorified. The City of Hastings and its relationship with the Mississippi is at a critical juncture. The Mississippi River was formerly regarded as a spiritual, mystical entity. But more recently we have seen it as a commodity – a power source, a transportation resource, a waste receptacle. In our changing perception of the river, and the fact that we now see the Mississippi as a precious amenity, we stand at an ideal time to update our perceptions of rivers and river towns. Comprehensive interpretive centers can aid in that understanding. TOP |
© 2004-07 LOCUS Architecture, Ltd.