SITE:
The Mersey River, as it crosses through a ‘new town.’ The river, and its riverside, is no longer used by the town; people forget, even, that it’s there. A highway runs alongside the river and makes pedestrian access difficult; bridges across the river function now only as legs of a traffic turnaround; parks on the riverbank are left-over spaces, collecting garbage.

PROGRAM:
Renovation, and revitalization, of the riverside. Carrying out a project would depend on a combination of public and private money.

PROPOSAL:
An atmosphere of ships at sea. It’s as if, from within the town, you can see ships off in the distance, you see masts up in the sky; in the middle of town, there’s the call of the sea.

A line of masts runs down the middle of the river, from the New Warrington Bridge to the Blue Bridge. The masts, 30 meters high, are tied down by cable to four points on the shore, two on one side of the river and two on the other They look like boat-masts, ship-rigging; or like a rigging-system, a crane-system; or like the installation of a temporary town, or a fairgrounds, that has come down from outer space and landed on the river.

The masts, and their support-cables, make a city of pyramids that runs down the river. The masts, and their support-cables, function as a structure-system that takes things and people from the town into the river, and from the river into the town.

At the top of the masts, triangular shards of mirror are propped between cables and tilted in different directions. The mirrors are angled so that, as you walk down a street toward the river, you can look up and see the river reflected above you.

Lines of light, tubes of light, connect the cables: shorter tubes at the top of a mast, where the cables come together, and longer tubes toward the bottom of a mast, where the cables spread out onto the shore. Between cables, the light-tubes float in the air, the light-tubes fly through the sky: they swoop up and down to illuminate whatever constructions the mast supports.

Between the Old Warrington Bridge and the Railroad Bridge, and between the Railroad Bridge and the Blue Bridge, the masts lead people out onto the river. A walkway spins off from the edge of the shore, and slips out over the water: it’s the ghost of a walkway, a light transparent walkway made of grating. The walkway pivots on hinges and slides on track, so that it moves with the water, and rises and falls with the tide. The walkway spirals down around a mast; it’s tied by cable to a sleeve that moves up and down with the water. When it comes down onto the river, it loops like handwriting over the water, until it spirals up another mast and takes you back to the shore.

As you walk on the looping walkway, over the water, you can step out over the edge, into a bulge from the loop that functions as a seating area. It’s as if you’re stepping off a dock, down into a boat; you sit – bobbing, rocking – in the middle of water.

You sit on an open river, but as if you’re inside a closed room. Supported by the cables between two masts, a triangular frame looms out over the water; thinner lines of cable are stretched across the frame like the strings of a harp – growing from the shore, climbing plants spread over the fan of cable and make a roof.

Another canopy of climbing plants comes out in the opposite direction, away from the river. Near the entrance to the Old Warrington Bridge, a fan of plants starts to climb the cable toward a mast: it turns back then, it folds over and crosses Bridge Foot, where it descends to just over the height of a bus at the end of Bridge Street. As you walk down Bridge Street, toward the river, it’s as if the river comes out to meet you: plants from the shore rise up and swoop down toward you – you walk under a roof of plants, into the world of the River Mersey.

On the near side of the river, a grating walkway shoots out over the water, toward a mast: it spirals up the mast and crosses over the Old Warrington Bridge – on the other side of the bridge, the walkway spirals down a mast and heads into the War Memorial on shore.

To one side of the New Warrington Bridge, the mast supports a floating restaurant. From a sleeve that slides up and down the mast, cable supports a housing of translucent fabric: the restaurant is a teepee that floats on the river – the fabric walls of the teepee fan out to enclose the walkway that takes you, from the park on-shore, out over the water into the restaurant. Inside, an elevator and a spiral staircase lead you down onto the water; the restaurant is a set of adjoining discs, adjoining circles of different sizes, that float together on the river: each circle, each ‘island,’ holds a table and chairs – a small island holds a table for two, a mid-sized island a table for four, a large island a table for six (the tables and chairs might be shells of glass: the river rises and falls inside the shells).

To the other side of the New Warrington Bridge, cable fans out from the mast to the edges of a paved area on shore, next to Fatty Arbuckle’s. The pavement is sunken, about two meters, making a wall for an outdoor market: the fan of cables is the support for a village of fabric roofs, translucent roofs, lean-to tents that make up a marketplace.

At the far end of the site, a theater floats next to the Blue Bridge. The stage is like an island that rises and falls on the mast: fanning out from the island, fanning up from the island, three wedges of bleachers are sheltered by translucent fabric roofs that sweep down from the mast.

Here and there, the masts send water into the shore. Water is pumped from the river, up through the masts; the water is transported then, through hoses, tubes, alongside the cables that stretch out onto the shore. Water sprays down from the tubes: the pavement and the grass are spotted with little rivers, triangular pools, throughout the site. When you don’t want to go out onto the river, the river comes in to you.