Spatterdock Pavilion: An Intervention in the Tidal Schuylkill, 2022
Axonometric Drawing
Spatterdock, also known as yellow pond lily, is a species of water lily native to North America. They grow abundantly along the Schuylkill river and other watersheds along the Delaware River. Its scientific name is Nuphar advena. Spatterdock has been used extensively in the medicinal practices of and as a food source for various Native Americans groups.
Spatterdock Pavilion is a spite-specific intervention in Philadelphia's Bartram's Garden along the banks of the Schuylkill River. Through a series of analyses and transformations, the forms of the pavilion were derived from the rhizomes and roots of the Spatterdock plant.
The pavilion moreover addresses the idea of interconnectivity in multiple respects, both through the winding roots of the vegetation in the ecosystem as well as the broader intersections of landscape, organism, and history happening at the site.
The heightened level of detail deployed in depicting the wider ecological landscape of the Tidal Schuylkill River in the orthographic drawings is meant to both emphasize and illustrate the important relationship between Spatterdock Pavilion and the site it inhabits. It not only takes borrows forms from an organism that has long grown in the Schuylkill, but it also highlights the existence of a unique ecotone area between terrestrial and aquatic biomes. The intervention embodies a wide variety of changes in the landscape taking place at the water’s edge; changes in tide, changes in slope, and changes in organism and ecosystem.
Fig 1. Elevation of Spatterdock Pavilion and the Tidal Schuylkill ecosystem
Fig 2. Section of Spatterdock Pavilion and the Tidal Schuylkill ecosystem
© 2023 Victor Li