This seminar has represented the inaugural event of HRC’s Landscape Habitats Research Field launch, featuring members of the community – academics and others – who are involved with the well-being of the Sorge and Chamberonne rivers bordering EPFL and UNIL campuses. The objective of this event was to bring these sensitive waterways – which harbour some of the region’s most delicate ecological niches, and slopes subject to erosion at the heart of the region’s hydrological system – into
the public mind by bringing these hidden rivers to light.
To this end, Habitat Research Centre initiated this first “Hidden Rivers” research-by-design project in cooperation with the journalist who broke the story, starting with the causes of the recent disaster and public responses to it, while looking closely at these waterways and their implicit ecological qualities – and finally considering how these can be conserved and further cultivated.
The research was organized so as to address pedagogical, practical and policy objectives working together to create design scenarios for ecological coherence, while simultaneously providing enhanced public access, bicycle paths, and space for community interactions: all of which will bring eyes on the river. The basic premise of the research was first-hand ‘nature study’, collectively producing an inventory of social and biological diversity along the riverways – but also within them, revealing microbial life otherwise hidden.