Le Corbusier drew his ideal Radiant City with utilities hidden below ground or behind leafy screens obligingly provided by plant life. Bill Morrish and his colleagues in the School of Architecture are busy bringing these hidden aspects of urban life back into the light of day.Morrish, with Julie Bargmann, a landscape architect who specializes in transforming toxic land into public landscapes, Elissa Rosenberg, former chair of landscape architecture, who focuses on urban hydrological infrastructure as public landscape, and Craig Barton, who is interested in cultural ecology, race and ethnicity, are collaborating on a project in the city of Washington, D.C. The nation’s capital has been the subject of urban design on a grand scale ever since Major Charles L’Enfant imposed broad diagonal avenues and pedestrian malls on the emerging American city in the early 19th century. He drew from a French military perspective using the asterisk design that was thought to be elegant and allowed for broad lines of sight in case of attack.

However, in the 20th century the city was besieged by neglect, lack of political clout and of access to funding. Students andfaculty from the University of Virginia are working to undo the longterm damage that these problems have caused.

In the process of uncovering Oxon Run and the Watts Branch of the Potomac River, Morrish, with his students and fellow faculty, is identifying the political, ecological, aesthetic and sociological ways in which the people and their environment are intercalated and how they impact each other. Because all cities have mythic characteristics woven into their more tangible aspect, the task is not as simple as just uncovering waterways, canals and spillways. Understanding the social needs of the many different kinds of people who inhabit the city’s neighborhoods, while taking care not to impose a cookie-cutter façade on the urban fabric, is an important part of their endeavor. The Anacostia waterfront, for example, has been a well-kept secret from many of the capital city’s residents for nearly a century, and although a canal runs through Georgetown into the heart of the city, it has never been an important feature.Soon both will be better integrated into the life of the District. Now Morrish has developed relationships with Andrew Altman, director of planning for the District of Columbia Office of Planning, Hilary Altman, director of urban design for the National Capital Planning Commission, Neal Alpert and Michael Lucy with the Washington office of the National Parks Service, to develop long-term plans for residents, communities and the city’s planning department to act on as funds allow.

A key factor that has facilitated this new approach to urbanism is reorganization
within U.Va.’s School of Architecture itself. In its recent past, the school was
divided into four disciplines: architecture, landscape architecture, architectural history and preservation, and urban and environmental planning. Now, under the direction of Dean Karen Van Lengen, these divisions are yielding to a more interdisciplinary approach. Morrish and other faculty are teaching common courses that students enrolled in all four fields attend. The broadening of attitude brought about by this form of teaching encourages students to focus on much more than the technical and physical aspects of buildings, landscapes and cities, and to
regard the built and unbuilt environment as an interrelated whole. Public policy, diverse social and ethnic needs and harsh political and economic realities interrelate and cannot be segmented. Planners, historians, landscape designers and architects studying and applying their knowledge together to urban issues are more likely to come up with integrated and workable solutions than if each discipline is confined by its own boundaries.