A Swiss River Canal Reimagined. Geneva

Flowing through the idyllic southwestern tip of Switzerland is the Aire, a small river that winds through the countryside close to Geneva, then across the French border, through the village of San-Julien-en-Genevois. This temperamental ribbon of water has been a major flood risk to the region’s agriculture and neighboring towns: it was reined in by a canal once in 1896 and again in the 1940s before the Canton of Geneva finally launched a competition for a plan to tame the river in 2001.