Concrete and Water: A Digestive Process of the Self-Emerging River

The Los Angeles River is an extreme scenario of landscape altered by anthropogenic forces. Presently, polluted water spills oozing out of the conveyance drainage have degraded the channel surface, which declares the force of nature against Anthropocene. This observation reveals the River’s self-regulating process and creates an interlacing narrative between the concrete and the water. This project celebrates the River’s process by proposing a retrofit recipe that can enhance ecological values in an impermeable concrete environment. This project not only encapsulates the materiality of the River’s concrete and water narratives, but also utilizes the existing channel conditions to establish a connection between aesthetics, ecology, programs, and water.