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Abstract

The nonprofit Watershed Conservation Resource Center is restoring a 98-acre riparian wetland landscape near downtown Fayetteville as a River Commons and Institute. The Framework Plan combines watershed restoration with architecture and urban design to house a river education center, a visitor interpretive center, walking trails, passive recreation facilities including bird watching and canoeing, and outdoor heritage exhibitions. The Plan operates at the intersection of anthropology, ecology, and design in developing a lasting and robust riverine knowledge fund across space and time.

Description

The Watershed Conservation Resource Center (WCRC) is restoring a 98-acre riparian wetland landscape near downtown Fayetteville. The WCRC and the city co-own and manage the site as a commons under a permanent conservation easement. The WCRC will integrate riverine ecology with culture, heritage, and science in an inclusive and accessible environment that promotes public education and stewardship. Heritage landscapes with outdoor exhibitions will interpret the riparian lifeways of Native American, African American, and Euro-American settler populations who foraged and cultivated food and fiber along the region’s waterways. A collaboration of urban designers, architectural educators, ecologists specializing in stream restoration, and state archeologists have developed content for interpretive exhibits, habitat structure, and edible landscapes highlighting regenerative resource management technologies among indigenous and settler lifeways. The Framework Plan operates at the intersection of anthropology, ecology, and design in developing a lasting and robust riverine knowledge fund across space and time.

The commons is a shared management structure for collective benefit and entails horizontal cooperation among non-governmental, grassroot, and public-sector actors alike. Specific to cultural and natural resource systems, the commons flattens and socializes governance, in this case facilitating watershed stewardship through equitable and resilient community decision making. The Framework Plan combines watershed restoration with architecture and urban design to house a river education center, a visitor interpretive center, walking trails, passive recreation facilities including bird watching and canoeing, an inter-city water trail, and outdoor heritage exhibitions. Taking cues from indigenous knowledge systems, the emergent appreciation of urban riparian ecologies is inspiring development of such river institutes globally. River institutes raise historical awareness of the various civilizing processes harnessing riparian landscapes across different eras of human occupation. We still lack development vocabularies for this new typology, despite that river institutes are akin to museums in cultural and educational importance. River institutes model best practices in urban-water interfaces, two systems usually in conflict. Watershed urbanism is critical in reversing “urban stream syndrome” and common dysfunctions related to flooding, erosion, and the general depletion of ecosystems. A key objective is to restore the 17 life-affirming ecosystem services delivered by healthy ecosystems.

Three principles guide development of the Riverine Commons and Institute, and its unique visitor experience.

WATERSHED URBANISM
The commons facilitates professional and volunteer restoration of riparian functioning in the river and its associated wetlands. Reclamation of ecosystem services is occurring through restoration of rivercane patches and Ozark meadows, removal of competitive invasive plants, rebuilding healthy spoils, and reconstruction of stream banks.

HERITAGE: CELEBRATING INDIGENEITY
Native American, African American, and subsistence Euro-American settler populations in the Ozarks were riparian cultures. Outdoor exhibits recall indigenous lifeways where the “primitive” is reconceived as innovative, technologically sophisticated, and environmentally regenerative.

FOODWAYS
Foods are technologies cutting across social, ecological, and economic spheres. Demonstration gardens curate indigenous plant assemblages and growing strategies, recalling their various levels of symbiosis with nature.

Publication Date

2-2023

Document Type

Report

City

Fayetteville, AR

Keywords

riverine; commons; resource management; education; conservation; passive recreation

Disciplines

Anthropology | Archaeological Anthropology | Architecture | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | Environmental Design | Landscape Architecture | Other Engineering

Awards

2023 London International Creative Competition Official Selection-Architecture
2023 American Architecture Award
2023 The Plan Awards: Culture Future Honorable Mention
2023 The Plan Awards: Landscape Future Honorable Mention
2023 EDRA/Great Places Award: Honorable Mention for Planning
2023 Green GOOD DESIGN Award
2023 Progressive Architecture Award: Citation

Comments

Sponsors
National Endowment for the Arts
The American Institute of Architects Small Project Design Grant Program

Project Team:

University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Stephen Luoni, Director and Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies Claude M. Terral Ill, AIA, Project Architect
Kacper Lastowiecki, Project Designer
Isabelle Troutman, Project Designer
Elizabeth Wehr, AIA, Project Architect
Kayla Ho, Project Designer
Lauren Lamker, Project Designer
Victor Hugo Cardozo Hernandez, Project Designer
Shail Patel, Project Designer
Linda Komlos, Administrative Analyst

UACDC Students
William Bellamy, Courtney Ewin, Maya Fallows, Emily Fordyce, Margaret Imber, Carson Kennerly, Carson Schulke, Devin Tabor, Tyler Hash

Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design
Peter MacKeith, Dean
Dr. Ethel Goodstein-Murphree, Associate Dean
John Folan, Architecture Department Head

Watershed Conservation Resource Center
Sandi Formica, Executive Director and Co-Founder Matthew Van Eps, P.E., Associate Director and Co-Founder Sharida Holloway, Planning Group
Sharon Killian, Planning Group
Sarah Lewis, PhD., Planning Group
Dr. Jami J. Lockhart, Planning Group
Cameron Pratt, Planning Group

Arkansas Archeological Survey
Dr. Jami J. Lockhart, Director of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Research

Riverine Commons and Institute Framework Plan

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