Techno-Natures: The River Severn
Envirogrammic Prototypes for the River Severn: Instant Islands and the Severn Lesser Bore Maker
The long saga of the River Severn's tidal energy proposals (which date back to 1925), its potential future as an energy resource, its value as a touristic landscape linked also to its vital environmental importance aptly demonstrates the abiding collision between our desire to sustain the ecological systems of the landscape and the political and social imperative of renewable energy.
The complexity of this relationship is taken as a catalyst for the design process. In 2010 before the Severn tidal schemes were again deferred for later debate we proposed two designs that inhabit the river in an imagined post barrage landscape when the river is no longer substantially tidal, when salt marshes and mud flats have been overwhelmed, habitats destroyed and due to the prevention of the upsurge of the tide along the river course the Severn’s environmental wonder the tidal bore, quashed.