THE NATURAL UNNATURAL

4,000 SF PUBLIC ART INSTALLATION WALLER CREEK CONSERVANCY CREEKSHOW 2015

AUSTIN, TX 2015

A hidden network of inlets, storm drains, and ultimately the Waller Creek dig project tunnels are Unnatural controls creating a city-wide water displacement grid. This concealed system seeks to control the Natural processes of torrential rain storms allowing for our habitation of this flood prone land. Flowing water can be graceful and seductive, but it can also be grotesque and terrifying. Perspective defines how we see this relationship, and as we alter the built landscape, this perspective changes. This project intended to make visible the tenuous relationship between the Natural chaos of water in an impervious urban environment during a large rain event and the structured Unnatural order of the manmade devices attempting to contain and direct it.   The scale of the Waller Creek tunnel dig project is staggering and largely invisible. Once complete, this underground tunnel system will carry 3.7 million gallons of water a minute displacing rain in a flood event from the surrounding 28 acres of land in Central Austin. This displacement project will allow for Austinites to engage this central creek in ways not previously possible. Our project highlighted the flabbergasting scale of this endeavor. A sphere, simple and pure, represents the manmade geometry of the tunnel system. At the size of a person the sphere presents a scale index of the tunnel volume. Making the invisible understandable and bringing the chaos to light.