heth’s sculpture + stormwater park

Water as a shaping force for Art, Architecture, Landscape and Infrastructure in and around Heth’s Run, Pittsburgh.

48-410 Advanced Synthesis Option Studio | Instructor: Christine Mondor | Collaborator: Colleen Duong

Pittsburgh is one of the older cities in the US that are suffering from a combined sewer + stormwater system, one that overflows in a case of a slightly heavier rainfall and directly pours the raw sewage into the surrounding rivers. While Allegheny County Sanitary Authority is working on its decade-long project to reform the city’s stormwater management infrastructure, our studio conducted a project in which we transform one of the biggest stream valleys in Pittsburgh into a stormwater park. The project takes place in Heth’s Run, Pittsburgh - a valley that leads down to Allegheny River and is currently being used as a vast parking lot for the nearby Pittsburgh Zoo and the Aquarium that extends about 2,500 feet and is coated with a continuous layer of asphalt. The underlying premise of the project is that all the stormwater runoff from the surrounding neighborhoods would be now redirected to Heth’s Valley, where it will be filtered, held for a while then slowly released to the Allegheny River over time. Encompassing sculpture park as a co-program, the new Heth’s run will provide a myriad of opportunities for recreational, educational and environmental activities. This semester-long collaborative project had three main themes: managing infrastructure, restoring ecology, and architectural development at multiple scales. Through studying how resources and information are carried, how water can shape the culture, community and ecology and furthermore an urban fabric at micro, meso and macro levels, and how it interacts with people, landscape and architecture, we developed a proposal for Heth’s Sculpture and Stormwater Park.

Design Process

final proposal