Cut / Meander

Cut/Meander embraces the agency of the waterbody in visioning of a multi-valenced and just public space in Ithaca, NY.

Drawing from Cayuga Inlet’s historical predilection to meander, this project embraces this process and the various agents that simultaneously influence, and are influenced by these flows to propose a space where ecologies, infrastructures, and civic engagement coexist and become entangled. To alleviate flood risk in Ithaca’s Fall Creek neighborhood, a series of stepped areas are established as a gradient of ecotones that correspond to the successional phases of floodplain zones. While the initial organizational system of interventions (cuts) take their form from the projected city grid, this rectilinearity will blur (meander) as the inlet erodes the landscape in some places and deposits sediment in others. Underserving space like the golf course is de/re-claimed, while critical civic infrastructure like Ithaca’s municipal waterworks and Farmer’s Market are embedded in these floodable zones and connect people to the water, but are protected from destructive effects of floods via strategic microtopography. This project is influenced by the ecological processes in wetlands and floodplains, particularly the workings of beavers and muskrats that significantly alter the landscapes. It embraces the dynamic complexity and uncertainty inherent in a changing climate by utilizing these cycles of disruption and succession, and proposes a series of native and experimental forest and wetland types where various plant communities act as anti-fragility land labs. Cut/Meander is a vision for publicness in Ithaca that enables expanded relationalities on the Cayuga Inlet.