Art and research organisation Metabolic Studio has showcased aspects of its Bending the River project, an infrastructure and art project designed to remediate water and land around the Los Angeles River.
For more than a decade, Metabolic Studio has been working with local agencies to divert water from the Los Angeles River as a source for irrigation in a region that often suffers with drought.
Metabolic Studio founder Lauren Bon has acquired the first private right to the river, which allows her to legally lift, clean, and transport one hundred and six acre-feet of water to the LA State Historic Park. Much of the river is a massive, paved aqueduct that carries rainwater through the city to the ocean.
Metabolic Studio has diverted part of the LA River to provide irrigation to the LA State Historic Park and other local parks. The studio has cut into the concrete canal, placed pumps and begun to source water directly from the flow.
Bon told Dezeen that the aim of the project was to "facilitate natural systems that want to repair themselves".
"When we keep floods from entering the city, we prevent all of the debris that comes with a flood from settling in these drainage basins, which is problematic over the long term, because the soil doesn't get enriched," she said. "And we don't have much soil to begin with, because we paved over everything."
It required cutting sections out of the mostly concrete river bed to place a drain
The team used indust...