A Necessary Weevil

2020|Uncertain,TX,USA
Status: Project


Uncertain Texas, made (in)famous by the award winning 2017 documentary titled Uncertain, is one of the smallest fully incorporated cities in the state. Situated on the shores of Caddo Lake, Uncertain is primarily a tourist destination with visitors coming for the lake's natural beauty, biodiversity, and fishing competitions. Nearly 20,000 acres of the lake and surrounding landscape that spans the Texas-Louisiana border is designated as a protected wetland of international importance, protected under the Ramsar Convention after being adopted in 1999.

In recent years, the town and its inhabitants’ future has been under scrutiny as an invasive water weed, giant salvinia, has threatened fish populations and blocked water vehicle access on the lake, putting a chokehold on the local economy and livelihood of its residents. Fighting back, locals have addressed the giant salvinia crisis through the formation of the non-profit organization the Caddo Biocontrol Alliance. The organization facilitates the systematic rearing and release of giant salvinia’s natural predator; the 2-millimeter long salvinia weevil. 

The proposed project operates at two distinct scales, first imaging a new facility for the Caddo Biocontrol Alliance and second, planning an infrastructural network on the lake to help monitor and combat the giant salvinia threat and increase tourist engagement. The new weevil center increases the potential capacity for weevil rearing and entomological research, as well as providing a missing architecture for the city as a space for civic and communal gatherings to occur. The facility embeds the economic identity of the city into its architecture: hybridizing forms of environmental, educational, and agricultural tourism to provide alternative streams of capital to support the Alliance’s work.

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