30 Distillation Guidebook Co-Lab • 9.18–9.19 2025 variation of the post-industrial problem: fragmentation. The Thames River, which separates the two cities, is a landscape of immense historical power. Between the two cities, they host two historic waterfront forts, a submarine museum with the first nuclear sub, the future National Coast Guard Museum, and a dozen or so other heritage sites related to the water. But here, the waterfront is a patchwork of brownfields, abandoned sites, high speed roads, and rail lines. The “pilot” here was two-fold: a water taxi and a visual identity. First, the water taxi acted as “guerrilla” infrastructure. Instead of waiting for millions of dollars to acquire land and build boardwalks, we launched a boat. This stitched together the existing docks at Fort Trumbull and City Pier in New London with the landing in Groton. Overnight, the insurmountable gulf of the river became a connector, and experiencing it became core to a visit to the region. Second, we needed to make this new connection legible. A boat alone does not make a park; a park requires a sense of place. To achieve this without permanent construction, the YUDW designed and produced a system of temporary signage. These were deployed at every landing point and key heritage site on both sides of the river. This signage unified the disparate sites, creating a “branded” experience that felt coherent even though the physical connections were temporary. A tourist standing at Fort Trumbull could look across the river to Fort Griswold and see the same visual language, reinforcing the idea that the sites are connected and part of one structure. That first pilot has evolved into a sustainable system which runs the water taxi every year, in addition to collaborative programming and events. The whole became greater than the sum of the parts. Fishers Island: The Cultural Pilot Even in places of wealth, the “small city” dynamic can apply if the demographics are distorted. Fishers Island, accessible only by ferry from New London, faces an existential crisis of year-round population loss. It is an enclave of high property values, but its permanent population is extremely fragile. The “market” drives up prices for summer and year-round homes alike, starving the year-round community of access to housing. In this wealthy, conservationminded community, fear of change and outsiders made it difficult to institute comprehensive changes that would keep year-round residents on an island with increasing costs and decreasing vitality. So, we proposed piloting “people.” The intervention here wasn’t infrastructure,
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTA0OTQ5OA==