Making-up

On Monday was our final critique, last step in the project : presenting our final product to the audience. We were a bit stressed and didn't really know what would be the critiques.We were surprised to see that teachers, students and professionnals seem to be very positive and pleased about our performance.
This project has been very interesting in a way it was real which made it even more exciting. The first weeks were quite hesitant because we didn't know how to proceed and how to gather information. But step by step, we have managed to give a result, I think, clear and concrete and show that our group is united and works very well together.
So I want to thank my dear group, it was really nice to work with you guys, you have been wonderful. Thank you too to our mentor Marco, for your advices, ideas and attention.

To be continued ...

-Caroline

Meetings

Yesterday we had interesting meetings with stakeholders. We met two associations (Probillnäs and the fishing society of Åminnefors). It was very nice to notice that they really seemed to appreciate and like our plan. It was good to get feedback from them. We also met some local people from Billnäs (for example a diplomat and firefighters).

I was suprised because a reporter from Länsi-Uusimaa newspaper called me yesterday. She had called the University to get my phone number and she wanted to interview me on the phone. I sent her the the pictures of our plan and she told me that today there will be an article about the project in the newspaper. That's cool. :) I havn't gotten the article yet, but I think that we will upload it here when we get that.

- Mika

plan & section

Here are the plan and sections for two sites.


plan for Billnäs

- and sections.



Plan for Åminnefors
- and section.


-Meiko

Technical details

During the last few days, I was working on the technical details of the rock ramp fishway to show how it works basically. I've just finished the 3 details, they are as follows :



- Caroline

Here are the final pictures...

Léa

Mika already finished all the written part of the final report. Meiko is finishing all the sections and plans, Carolinedraw the technical detaisl of the fishways...and I am doing the 3D and photo montage pictures of our project!! today we finished also the working model of the Billnä area...i am proud of our group!!

I made these pictures : a total of six.

- 2 panoramic views of Billnäs and Aminneförs dams (with the addition of our project on it) from the pictures meiko Caroline and me took

- views of the walkay along the river, in spring and automn times

- 2 other specifique views of the fishway in Billnäs

Here you can see the process of the construction of these pictures : to mixe few photographs of the site, manage them as a true picture on photoshop, and add our project on it, by photo-montage, photoshop rendering, work on the light, the colors, the graphism...

Now we are doing the final presentation...

Tomorrow we meet with marco the Pro-Billnäs association...we should bring th model and make a short pdf presentation...we hoped that we could meet also the same day the owner of Billnäs area and some owner who has a house in Aminneförs and who invited us to have a coffe at his home. Let's see next week maybe..AnyWay we really should meet them!

Léa

3D model completed!

Today we continued to make our model for Billnäs, and it was completed finally.



this white line is our designed fishway streaming between the old buildings and providing water front public space.
This site has dam whose height is about 7m, and then our fishway running between this height with slope, so this model is nice to show how it's running through this topography.
We hope it helps our presentation :)

-Meiko

3D-model processing

Today, we have started to make the 3D-model of Billnäs with wood and cardboard. The topography is finished, almost all the buildings are done. We still need highlight the fishway so that it can be seen easily in the model. We were thinking of using white cardboard to have a contrast with the brown cardboard already used for the toporgraphy.

To be continued...tomorrow !

- Caroline

Report writing

So, the deadline is tomorrow. I think that the text part is alright now, though I just realized that it might be good to add some small things and change some small details. I wrote something about fishing tourists and and I think that the argument could be better. I'm not 100 % sure about the list of references. For example, if a book is in Finnish, should the name of the organization be written it in Finnish or in English (Suomen ympäristökeskus or Finland's environmental administration)? I decided to write it in Finnish. It's very interesting to hear comments about the report before after the first submission tomorrow..!

We divided the work so that everyone does their own part and one group member puts all of it together (text, pictures, etc.) It seems to work quite well.

EDIT: Oh well, the last version of the text didn't get to the first submission, but it's ok anyway. The list of references is unfinished. Also a misunderstanding with the references occurred. I noticed that there are some other small mistakes too. Like every picture should be mentioned in the text. And each of them needs captions too. Some appendixes are still missing. And the title of chapter three should be "the results of the questionnaire study". Just to mention that we are aware of these things.
But in general I think it's quite good and looks very good! :)

- Mika

design plan

Now we are making and discussing our landscape design plan. Although there are some possibility of the types for fishway as Caroline wright before,
after some nice opportunity to have meeting with the persons from Raasepoori urbanism and Finland's environmental administration, we are going to choose "natural fishway" with rock ramp rather than fish ladder.
plan sketch for Billnäs
idea sketch
We are also making for design
- visual images like perspective drawing which is most important for attracting people
- detailed section(or plan) with technical information

keep working :)

-Meiko

Some publicity

An article about our project was published in Västra Nyland newspaper in 16.4.2010. It is actually a relatively big article, one whole page. That's good. It is written well and the pictures are good too (we look good ;) Västra Nyland is probably the biggest newspaper in the area.

One of my statements might be misunderstood, the first statement in the article. The road was build and that is when the flooding channel was closed (in Åminnefors). Before that the fishes were able to rise to the river trough the flooding channel. So in a way it is only the road that is blocking the fishes from coming to the river. However if you go to the dam, there are no signs of the old flooding channel anymore, so it might sound kind of strange that the road is closing the river. Of course the dam is actually closing it but the migrating fishes could not rise to river anymore after the road was built over the flooding channel.

Anyway, we have already succeeded in some goals of our project: we got some publicity for the issue. Anyway, in two weeks we will offer the final article to the local newspapers. The text part of the final report is almost ready. I am very excited to see what kind of pictures have Lea and Meiko managed to do, the visual plan is the most important part of the plan.

Tomorrow we are having a group meeting. I scanned and attached the article (I hope it's not illegal to do that).

- Mika

l

léa

I took some pictures of existing waterfront installations, added by local people to make easier a walkway, to sit down and enjoy the sun and the view, or the rests of old installations. I think it can be interesting to have an idea what people spontaneously do; the poetry and the aspect of these element can be for us kind of inspiration. Also before an exemple of used local material for construction, in Billnäs. It is a, important aspect of the landscape.

Léa

Some pictures from the last visit, as I promised

Here is Aminneförs : views of water front, you can see the slope :)

Billnäs, the group working : Mika, Meiko, Marco

Her you can see the fishway project places in Billnäs

Léa

Today we have been visiting the Mustionjoki area for the last time.
With Marco Casgrande, we have been in Billnäs site in order to see the place without snow ;) and to make mesurements of some places we were thinking to design a fishway : level of the water, space wilde between the historical buildings, , colors, direction of the light, possible vegetation...all these details are important to imagine a fishway which could integrate the existing landscape. We took many pictures, that you will see later.
So Billnäs,and also Aminneförs, since we decided many weekes ago to focus only on these two dams. We had a very nice walk on 2 hours between the two dams, a long of the river, trying to have a vision of a designed walkway,many fishermen and families staying and having picnic on the waterfronts. No so easy, nobody was there ! but the bucolic landscape carries nices pictures in our mind. Wait a little bit, some sketches will arrive soon from this walkway !

In Aminneförs, we met a journalist, who interviewed us for the swedish speaker local newspaper. About our personnal backgrounds, ou work, our vision of fishways...also some interesting critics about the question of designing a fishway in a private area, as well as Billnäs ! This is an important question for us, we have absolutely to contact the Billnäs owner, but from Marco, he seems enthousiastic about our project. Who knows ?
Also some pictures for the newspaper, us working, us sitting in front of the river...I am curious about this article, at least it shows that local inhabitants are really interested about the Mustionjoki project. I have to say that I was not expecting that, maybe my french way of mind. It is so positive !

Marco organised a meeting with interesting persons form the Raasepoori urbanism, the biggest city of the district (before Karjaa). We have to add the names on a list of thanks on our website at the end of the project. We got useful informations : the complete list of fishes species planned to go in in the Mustionjoki River, the complet plans/sections/elevations...of Billnäs area, the complete project of the old fishway which existed in Aminneför before they built the national road. Actually, we learn that it is not the dams which prevent the fishes to go int the river, but the construction of the road, wich destroyed the old fishway. Interesting!

From all these informations, we decided, hopefully definitively, where to place the 2 fishways : in Aminneförs, on the North side, to avoid the road and take profit of the flood of the river (which attracts fishes, so it can be ideal to lead fishes in a fishway at this precise place) , and in Billnäs among the buildings, and probably a part inside a building, in a nice and artistic architecural way.

We talk a lot with Marco and the persons we met anout the consequences of our project : this kind of visionnary plan have never been done there, even if the Karjaa community is talking about fishway for twenty years :) So we have to produce very strong images, or maybe only one, in the newspapers, to give again enthousiasm about this project. We speak also about Art Landscape, and I think this is the main interest of our work. Ar least for me, beeing an architecture student.

I am doing the final report plan as well as sketches.

Léa

Meeting

The meeting went well, we got lot of good information. For example, we got a plan that was made by Finland's environmental administration in the year 2000. They were planning to build a natural fishway in Åminnefors. We can use the information in our report and planning.

We also got 3 more answers to the questionnaire trough the website and that's good. Majority of the local people seem to think that fishways would be a very positive and important thing for the area.

Tomorrow we are going to Karjaa to check some things and our mentor has arranged some meetings with local administrative persons as well.

- Mika

Meeting on Monday

Tomorrow we will have an interesting meeting with our mentor and the chairman of VIRHO (http://www.virtavesi.com/). We can represent him our ideas and then hear his opinions about them. It is very interesting and useful because Virho has done so many projects related to river restorations. Probably we can get a lot of good information for example about the fishes. In order to design a fishway properly, we need to know what kind of fishes would be swimming in the river. For example, if there would be sturgeon (well for sure there isn't, but it's a good example anyway), a vertical slot fishway should be much wider (pool width = 3 m) than if the biggest fish would be salmon (pool widht = 1,8 m).

We have read a couple of good books about the desig and planning of wishways. Tomorrow we will find out more about the details and on Wednesday we will go for a study trip (to the dams) to find out more about some details.

- Mika

Migrating fishes

As we need to know what kind of fish species will be in the Mustionjoki to decide what is the best fishway to design, Marco sent a list of the fishes which are involved. I found on internet more details about these fishes like their size or weight.

There are mainly four types of fishes.

1. Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar)

I found on internet that this fish is also known as the "king of the fish" because of its athletic powers. It can reach a length of 1,5 metres and can be 2.3 kg-9.1 kg. Spawning is generally in October-November. The most important point is that it is a symbol of clean and healthy water that run wild to the sea. So if we can recreate a population of altantic salmons in the Mustionjoki, it means that the water will be clean and this is one of our aims !

The first fish-eggs have been placed in March 2010 in the Mustionjoki. The smots will live in the river between 2 and 3 years after which they will travel to the sea.

2. Sea trout (Salmo trutta trutta)

The trout can be 25 cm long up 140 cm long, and its weight is 10-15kg.
Marco told me that the trout can form sweat-water base communities some of them are already existing in the Karjaanjoki water system. Some enjoy migrating betweens rivers or streams or lakes - such as Lohjalake. Some will migrate to the sea like the salmon and then come back to the native river to spawn.

3. Whitefish (Coregonus lavaretus)

Its maximum size is 75 cm and its weight about 10 kg.We are concentrated on the migrating whitefishes

4. Eel (Anguilla anguilla)

The eel can reach a length from 40 cm up to 150 cm and its weight is approximately 4 kg.
Marco said that the amounts of migrating eels are less than 1% of what it was before 1980's. The Karjaanjoki water system has been famous of rich eel population that also our design is now trying to restore.

- Caroline