Stitches Across the River

Over the past decades, the Greater Cincinnati metropolitan area has been undergoing significant changes due to new development and investment around the banks of the Ohio River. While the new development of large-scale venues stimulated commerce and tourism, the river is struggling with pollution coming from the waste of industrial plants, stormwater runoffs, automobiles, other urban infrastructures, and has historically been one of the most polluted rivers in the U.S, according to the U.S EPA. What will be the future scenarios for the development along the Ohio River? In what ways can we address environmental, economic, and social challenges to strengthen the watershed’s region and its value to citizens living in this region?

The studio envisioned and created scenarios for connecting Cincinnati and Covington across the Ohio River, formulating spatial dynamics and their broader influence throughout the metro region. Grey and green hybrids are networks of open metropolitan spaces and conservation land — public spaces, parks, wetlands, preserves, bioconduits, infrastructural connectors, and ecosystem services — that manage resources with minimal energy inputs and ecological system. The studio explored collections of multi-functional, mixed-use, multi-scalar morphologies, and speculate on new programmatic possibilities for these spatial aggregations and flows.