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KORTRIJK-WAREGEM: Constructing a Riverway, Projects for the ‘As Found’ Leie (2008)
Location: Leie River Valley, Belgium
Designers: RUA and Leiedal
Kelly Shannon, Bruno De Meulder, Wilfried Vandeghinste, Isabelle Putseys, Christian Nolf, Matei Bogoescu, Daan Derden, Griet Lannoo, Bram Lattré, Kathy Helsen, Vasudha Gupta, Sara Callebaut, Betsey-Marie Eskeland, Siri Mette Carlsen, Louise Cheetham, Aryani Sari Rahmanti, Michael Rudolph, Annelies De Nijs.
Commissioned by: Leiedal
Period of design: 2008
Area: 400 ha (overall investigation area)
BELGIUM
Leie River ‘as found'
Agriculture and water-intensive flax industries once structured the alluvial plain in which the meandering Leie regularly flooded. Villages settled at the edge of flood corridor and along the green fingers of tributaries. Today riverfront parks and recreational uses recolonize the 2km urban stretch in Kortrijk. (Ferraris Map 1777/ Plissart 2010)
Historical Impact of the Leie River
Historically, the Leie River had tremendous impact on the development of the Kortrijk Region. The river was essential for the founding of cities and for transport; it was a battlefield where a French army of nobility was defeated and is a river with a particular water quality, crucial for the specialized flax industry of the middle ages, etc.
The multitude of nicknames – black river, stinking river, golden river – demonstrate the shifting perspectives of the Leie River, but more importantly resonate the dramatic ecological transformations that the river has undergone.
Riverway and Riverplain
The natural floodplain of the Leie River and its tributaries were conceptualized as a ‘riverplain.’ The ‘riverway’ was defined as the area of the Leie River/ canal demarcated by ancient trade routes
Persisting Parcellations
The historic traces of the Leie River not only persist in the severed meanders, but also through the parcellation of areas immediately adjacent to the river itself, alternating perpendicular and parallel directions in the convex and concave meanders.
Contemporary Transformations of the Leie River
The contemporary character of its riverbanks is just as diverse. It reads as a fragmented succession of different, if not opposing, natures. Today, the Leie is being straightened, widened and deepened as part of an improved international water transport project. Hand-in-hand with this gigantic process of canalization, are projected futures of re-naturalization where cheap recreational exploitation of the landscape competes with heritage.
Constructing a riverway; Projects for the ‘as found’ Leie
The project emphasizes the ‘as found’ Leie River/ canal as the heart of the Leie Valley and develops the riverplain as the primary public realm for the municipalities along its trajectory. Strategic projects between Kortrijk and Waregem (15km downstream) (re)articulate the thresholds between the urban/ rural, built/ unbuilt and the natural/ artificial and figure as step-stones in the construction of the riverway.
The Dual Nature of the Leie River’s Future
In this sense, the Leie offers a dramatic scene where the site ‘as found’ coincides with the site as ‘undergoing destruction’, becomes simultaneously an object of ecological reconstruction. The design project demonstrates how cartographic explorations elaborate new territorial readings/interpretations of the Leie as found and as (re)found. The ecological recovery of the river is an important part of that exploration.
Central Park Spanning the Leie (Harelbeke/ Kuurne)
The broad river unites a parallel riverway balcony and a large gently sloping perpendicular park. This articulates the riverway and structures the vast fragmented urban continuum of the edges of Harelbeke and Kuurne.
Re-meandering a Creek & Cascading Open Spaces (Heulebeek in Kuurne)
A series of cascading public open spaces are configured to link the village center to the river and the Heulebeek (tributary of the Leie) is renaturalized to create another public accessway to the riverfront.
Landscape as Industrialization Deterrent (Schoendaele)
A landscape strategy was developed to create a visually powerful element that would discourage development while at the same time recall the parcellation pattern of the logics of the territory.
Redevelopment Strategy for the Leie River
The majestic site of monumental scale is mapped, conceptualized and reconceptualized in a project for the redevelopment of the river site, both as an ecological corridor and as a park in a dense urbanized territory. The prime design strategy was derived from the interpretation of the logics of the landscape and the articulation and accentuation of these logics.
The Leie River/canal was reconfigured as the heart of the Leie Valley and the riverway was developed as the primary public realm for the municipalities along its trajectory.