Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Jake Boswell’s project River Prosthesis 1 has placed second at the LA+ INTERRUPTION competition. The fourth in the LA+ international design ideas competition series asked how design can be used to challenge the status quo, interrupt the jargon, and disrupt and redirect ecological and socio-economic flows. Boswell’s entry placed second in a field of designs from 23 countries.

Emsworth is a 25’ lift-gate dam that allows navigation to Pittsburgh and up the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. The project deploys three pre-existing technologies: a hydraulic ram pump, a water tower, and a water turbine to create a prosthetic infrastructure, converting the existing dam into a hydro-power plant and a pumped-hydro storage battery. In so doing, it creates a second, more speculative interruption...River Prosthesis can help balance out normal variability while also powering a reliable, redundantly distributed, zero-carbon micro-grid, ensuring that critical infrastructures like cooling centers and hospitals can continue to function.

Read more at LA+