Cut & Fill I:
Robotic Remediation

Objectives: This studio sought to understand the hydro-dynamics of the site in such a way that contaminants could be controlled or contained by sculpting the earth. Perhaps even ‘corralled’ into a central location from which they might be more easily removed. Recognizing that no contaminated earth could leave the site, among the many challenges facing students was what to do with excavation – especially in the instance that it was deemed necessary to dig the seventy some feet down to the contaminated aquifer. Students were challenged to use these site conditions as a starting point, and then utilize parametric modeling software, coupled with the idea that heavy equipment could be understood as one would additive and subtractive processes, to make a working site strategy, that might also be beautiful in its surreality or otherworldliness.

Outcomes: Students invented several sculpted shapes including clefts and mounds of various forms that worked to gather, disperse and direct water as well as wind. These multiple shapes were deployed using parametric tools, in such a way as to either dilute or concentrate contaminants into managed remediation parterres or fields. The shapes would be carved by autonomous earth-movers to protect humans from danger of exposure to radioactivity or chemicals, and were meant to act at the speed of erosion and other natural processes, including radioactive decay. Perhaps the most unexpected outcome of the studio was the introduction and recognition, perhaps even discovery of an entirely new speed of design at the pace of nature, entirely other than the speed of capitalism or construction.