Water Power
The world's largest whitewater park challenges
Charlotte's Liquid Design to live up to its name.
Source: ARCHITECT
Magazine
Publication date: September 1, 2007
By Tim Neville
The rafting guide, a barrel-chested
twenty-something nicknamed Butter, yells for everyone to paddle hard
through the rapids, but it is already much
too late. “Forward!” he shouts as the bow slams into a standing wave
four feet high. The hull buckles. In seconds, three paddlers to my left
and Butter himself pop out of the boat like hot kernels of corn.
It is quite the
show, watching them get worked in the current, and a few folks relaxing
on a breezy patio nearby cheer wildly. They have the best seats in the
house for watching the meanest rapid here, a monster called Tourist Trap
that ranks a class IV out of V in difficulty. While a waitress ferries
chilled lagers to the onlookers, another boat comes over the falls, this
one backward. All but two paddlers get ejected, and the hoots erupt
again.
The strange thing?
We're not on some remote river, but minutes away from the banking
skyscrapers that loom over uptown Charlotte, N.C. The bottom here is
smooth as concrete—because it is concrete. The water, warm and sweet,
comes from a tap. That tremendous thunder? That's mostly the noise from
massive pumps that circulate more than 12 million gallons of water in
this, the world's largest, completely artificial whitewater park.
Welcome to the U.S.
National Whitewater Center (USNWC), a $37 million complex of man-made
rapids and waterfalls, where every rock, ripple, and chute was
meticulously designed on drafting tables and with computer models. Here
on the outskirts of North Carolina's largest city, workers spent 18
months converting some 316 acres of red clay and pine forests into a
sprawling compound of cedar-clad commercial space, murky ponds, and
nearly a mile of surprisingly real rapids. The result—a raft trip before
dinner if you like—is an outdoorsy adventure in a decidedly urban
setting. Get maytagged in Tourist Trap, and a $17 plate of grilled
Atlantic salmon served on the patio above can certainly mend the woe.
“This is about much
more than just rafting or kayaking,” says the project's lead architect,
Michael Williams, a principal of the Charlotte-based firm Liquid Design.
Williams, his partner Mike Standley, and the design team drew some 580
pages of plans for the center, which opened last August. “The last thing
the community wanted was another Slip-'N-Slide. This is an outdoor
lifestyle park.”
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