Aire: The River and its Double

Description

South of Geneva, Switzerland, the River Aire runs across a plain that for centuries has been agricultural land. From the late 19th century, the waterway has been embanked for flood protection, also causing the gradual loss of habitat for a large variety of plants and animals. In 2001, decisions were taken to re-naturalise the river. Yet rather than to merely reconstruct its former natural bed, Superpositions, the association of firms commissioned with the project, applied 'topographic imagination', a method termed by American landscape designer Elissa Rosenberg. It combines the embanked channel with a newly designed pasture landscape. The channel indicates a work in progress and serves as a reference line that makes 'before' and 'after' traceable. This new book documents this much recognised, award-winning re-naturalisation project with drawings, images of construction work and of the new waterway. Essays and comments by international contributors Jean-Marc Besse, Lorette Coen, Gerorges Descombes, G. Mathias Kondolf, Elissa Rosenberg, Gilles A. Tiberghien, and Marc Treib demonstrate how the restored River Aire has been upgraded to become again a characteristic feature of this landscape on the fringe of the city. Text in English, French and German.

Georges Descombes is an architect and landscape designer, and a professor of architecture at University of Geneva. He has also taught as a visiting professor at Amsterdam's Berlage Institut, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and at University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Julien Descombes is an architect and landscape designer and co-founder of Atelier Descombes Rampini in Geneva. Corinne Van Cauwenberghe is a civil engineer and a director with B+C Engineers in Geneva. Vincent Correnti is a civil engineer and head of underground and road construction with ZS Ingenieurs civils in Geneva. Francois Gerber works as an environmental engineer with BIOTEC Biologie appliquee in Delemont, Switzerland.