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LITERATURE REVIEW
For example, large trees mark the edge of the contaminated soil, and the aforementioned Kite Hill shows the massive amounts of soil that were too contaminated to be bioremediated with available technologies, which is the process that the rest of the rolling landform of the park is undergoing to gradually heal the soil and purify groundwater. With the preservation of the hulking gasworks structures, the park tells a narrative of a past industrial landscape on Lake Union. The success of Gasworks Park as a toxic landscape that is able to become a public space demonstrates that public perception about preserving industrial landscapes can change with public access and site experience. Paul Goldberger of the New York Times recognized the importance of Gasworks Park even before the park was opened and wrote, “Seattle is about to have one of the nation’s most advanced pieces of urban landscape design. The complex array of towers, tanks and pipes of the gas works forms a powerful industrial still life … serving both as a visual focus for the park and as a monument to the city’s industrial past. The park represents a complete reversal from a period when industrial monuments were regarded, even by preservationists, as ugly intrusions on the landscape, to a time when such structures as the gas works are recognized for their potential ability to enhance the urban experience.”28 Haag’s unique approach to post-industrial sites through landscape design has influenced many subsequent projects and has changed the way that we approach manufactured landscapes. The Ford Rouge River Plant in Dearborn, Michigan, is an example of how a heavily polluted industrial site can be once again transformed into a working factory, but one that maintains a healthy environment for its employees and neighbors. This project, designed by William McDonough and Partners with DIRT studio (1999-2001), transformed a manufactured site that was first a marsh then a car factory, a disassembly line during the Depression, and one of the largest industrial complexes on the planet. 29 Strategies of phytoremediation were worked out, and negotiations were made with the EPA to clean the deeper layers of soil with experimental methods (phytoremediation, mushrooms, fungi, etc.), rather than trucking it off site. As McDonough explains, the health of the site should be linked to species diversity and aesthetic value rather than meeting government imposed standards. A stated goal for the redevelopment of the factory was to have a place where employees’ children could be safe.30 Julie Bargmann, principle at DIRT landscape architecture studio31 explains the designers’ goals for this new type of factory: “Ambitious environmental initiatives are to be employed with emerging technologies forming a new landscape of production. ‘Built Ford Tough,’ this landscape will manufacture vehicles along with clean water, air and soil. A future Assembly Building with industrial strength storm water channels lined with native species hedgerows, will return filtered water to the River Rouge. The Miller Road Corridor will create a public industrial heritage boulevard and welcoming entry for workers and families. Phytoremediation gardens, integrated with the historic Coke and ByProduct Operations, will also offer visible signs of regeneration.”32 Scape/Landscape Architecture has imagined a new productive future for the Gowanus Canal, part of an estuarine system in New York City that is plagued by similar problems to the Duwamish.