Landscape Architecture: Landscape Architecture: - School of ...

the start, settlers had to construct a unit of measure,
qualitative and subjective at first, that would allow them to
establish a relationship between the different entities in
oscillation. This vertical build-up, which shifted in relation
to the fishing cycles, was a first attempt to establish a
differentiation between natural processes and the first
imprints of human settlement.
Canals: Striated Topographies
Upon the arrival of Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville and his brother
Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville in the early 18th century,
a new ideology about the way this territory could be handled
began a slow, but steady, process of transformation. For the
French, the biggest challenge in taming this territory entailed
preparing ground suitable for agricultural production and,
more importantly, finding a way to introduce the plantation
model into this land. With this purpose, it was essential to
develop surveying techniques and a parcel structure that
would alter the swamp into the agricultural gold mine the
French had envisioned. If initial settlers in the area had
established a vertical condition that allowed them to
sectionally distance themselves from the flood plain, the new
model aimed for a striation of the territory and lines that
would serve as both geopolitical demarcations and drainage
infrastructure. This provided a new horizontal skeleton that
would induce an agile figure for the terrain, one better
attuned to the new economy of lower Louisiana and one that
provided confidence for the settlement of future outposts.
Levees: Contained Topographies
Through the development of the agricultural carpet, land
stripped of original cane and vegetation became weaker and
more prone to spillages and crevasses. The never inert
strength of the water became an even more muscular
antagonist in the relentless process of forming ground, at a
point in time where the already permanent agricultural
settlements were much too prosperous to simply pick up and
go. The dilapidated state of the existing levees – sporadic and
ill-constructed walls of soil and sand – put in place by
individual landowners, combined with a need to further
100