Permeate the Voids

Green Instrumentalization, group work, partially credit for Yuting Chen, 2021

This project responds to the highway issue in Providence by using green strategies in urban scale, neighborhood scale and prototype scale. These green strategies have potential to turn the 95% impervious riverside to at least 50% pervious land by using plants to penetrate, surround and occupy the unused land caused by the infrastructure. Also, these strategies can create unique urban landscapes such as highway forest, railroad park and tree alley in different ways of assemblage according to the size, usage and runoff coefficient of the paved area. 

Specially for Providence, greening the space between the highway and the river could bring the abandoned river center back to the city, break the barrier that blocks the existing downtown and rejuvenate the industrialized riverside. 

With turning the focus from disruptive infrastructure itself to the land affected by the construction, this project provides a new methodology to think highways with adjacent unused land as the opportunities to make urban green again.