Freshwater Colloquium – Propositions for the next phase of the New Emscher’s evolution: Using speculative design to probe an uncanny watershed
The School of Freshwater Sciences’ Freshwater Colloquium creates a platform for students, faculty and scientists to discuss their research and emergent issues related to freshwater resources. Presentations are open to the public.
All events will take place on Mondays from 3:30-4:20 p.m. in-person in the GLRF Ballroom.
The School of Freshwater Sciences Great Lakes Research Facility, is located at 600 E. Greenfield Ave.
For over 100 years, the Emscher River was the open sewer of the Ruhr, the center of Germany’s coal-mining and steel-production capacity. Mining related land subsidence of made the ground too unstable for the creation of a conventional sewer system, and frequent flooding in the region necessitated that the sluggish river be channelized.
The Ruhr Valley is twice the size of the Milwaukee River watershed. With a population of over 5 million spread between twelve mid-sized cities, it is the largest and most densely settled urban agglomeration in Germany. Roughly half of that population lives within the Emscher River watershed, which is roughly twice the size of the Menomonee River watershed. Like the Menomonee and Kinnickinnic, the dominant character of the Emscher is industrial.
Much like here, the region de-industrialized starting in the 1970’s. In 1988, the government of North Rhine-Westphalia initiated the Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA) Emscher Park, a ten-year plan to focus investment on the ecological restoration and economic reinvention of the region. Starting in 1990, the Emschergenossenschaft (EGLV), the regional water authority, began the 30-year, 5.3 billion Euro construction of a modern sewer system and the restoration of the Emscher river.
That project, the largest river restoration project in Europe, is now complete, and the EGLV is seeking to map out the next phase of transformations that will adapt the Ruhr to the challenges of the 21st C.
With my own water-centric research focusing on our own Inner Harbor, Milwaukee, and the post-industrial waterfronts of the Great Lakes Basin, I have long been fascinated with the ecological and cultural project of the New Emscher. This last spring I spent three weeks in Essen as a guest of the EGLV. Where in the past I have sought inspiration from individual projects, this time my aim was to understand the newly reconstructed river and its watershed as a whole. My ongoing goal is to be to provide the EGLV with a unique designer’s sensibility, and to play a consulting role in the current visioning process.
This talk will present design work that I undertook while visiting the EGLV, with the goal of coming to understand the river through my own speculations. As a designer of ecological urban waterscapes, I have a clear sense of the complexities of seeking to create a connection to nature in compromised environments. I am philosophically committed to the idea of ‘reading the land’ through the ways that water flows; of teaching ecological literacy through design starting with watershed awareness. The polderized landscape of the Emscher has confounded me. I find the river and it’s tributary landscape completely uncanny. It is that uncanny nature that my work explores and that this talk will seek to work through.
James Wasley is a Professor in the UWM Architecture Department and is a Director of the Institute for Ecological Design. He is also an Affiliate Professor at the UWM School of Freshwater Sciences. His research focuses on designing and implementing ecological urban waterscapes. Grounded in the Great Lakes, this research has recently expanded to include a comparative focus on the restoration of the Emscher River in the Ruhr region of Germany and on green/blue infrastructure in German urban design.
Professor Wasley was a Water Policy Scholar at the SFS Center for Water Policy in 2017 and again in 2024. In the spring of 2023 he was a Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Dortmund, DE. Also in 2024 he participated in the inaugural class of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Academy for Public Scholarship on the Built Environment: CLIMATE ACTION.