Open-Ended Landscape

2019-current
Saptari, Nepal
collaboration with UNOPS

Across southern Nepal, flood disaster is an annual occurrence. These disasters are manufactured by a diverse cocktail of circumstance: poor governance and destructive infrastructure are only the beginning. Riverside embankments are the by-and-large the only effort made--other than post-disaster response--to address this reality.

This proposal imagines a response to flood disaster that rejects the prevalent notion of flood control in favor of a landscape that is allowed to shift over time, shaped by dynamic waters, sediments, plants, knowledge, and landscape-making practice.

It begins with the insertion of a series of layered, flood-permeable infrastructure intended to attenuate high-speed floodwater and encourage the deposition of sediment in the lower floodplain. This initial stage isn’t an end in itself, but the beginning of a process. As flood stages come and go, the landscape from the previous year shifts. New sediment accumulates, new channels form, plants keep growing or are washed away. Landscape infrastructure is reimagined each year on these foundations. This infrastructure is continually shaped through adaptive maintenance driven by place-based knowledge that evolves along with the land.