rework of statement statement

Statement: The Chicago river acts as a physical cut through the city. It acts as a datum to understand the existing city. It creates a void in the grid where emergent behaviors and environments arise. It is an intersection of local and global. Recently ignored in the traditional architectonic sense, the river represents a huge variety of emergent events and affects not catered to in the constructed urban fabric. Mapping is proposed as a method of understanding the relationships of river and city, emergent affects, and functions. Drawing on the mapping practice of Raoul Bunschoten/CHORA, a datum or set of data are overlayed on the city and mapped as formal generator. Yet, the work of Bunschoten is fragmented, it lies in the tradition of the deconstructionists. I am interested in a contextual architecture, one which draws out the latent opportunities of the site. One which engages its participants in a dialogue, between participant, architecture, site. The desire is not to create a false naturalism on the river, in the manner of the lake front, but to accentuate existing affect in constructive manners and to reinhabit the river.