CHEMICAL SPILL CLEANUP STATION | Sited at the Chain of Rocks Bridge at the Mississippi-Missouri river confluence, the River Remediation Beacon serves as a single base of operations from which multiple responses to an environmental disaster could be dispatched. A continuous stair wraps around the vertically stacked program of filtration, remediation, and storage tanks, around which the building envelope is pushed and pulled, peeling away to frame views of the Mississippi.
mississippi watershed | oil production + spills
ecosystem | flora + fauna
riverside perspective
section diagram, plans (levels 10 and 11)
PROGRAM | The program incorporates multiple cleanup strategies that address different kinds of problems. A floating platform acts as a boat launch. It follows the rises and falls of the Mississippi and surrounds the stairs, which wrap around the periphery of the floor plates. The boat drags a boom and carries sorbents and skimmers to the spill site. Once the chemical material is reclaimed, the boat returns, and the liquid is pumped into filtration and emulsification tanks before it is picked up by trucks for disposal. An on-site veterinary clinic serves affected wildlife, and a laboratory allows scientists to test samples.
model | 1”=4’ | polystyrene + plexiglass + mdf