"It's the first earthwork I know of to have two states: one wet, one dry," says one of the women who almost 30 years ago helped to bring Herbert Bayer's earthworks to a place otherwise known, if at all, only as "the lettuce capital of the world": Kent, Washington.

Her voice is heard in the 25-minute documentary "A Place for People," which premieres Thursday night at the Henry.

It's a film that could have been a straightforward promotional piece for the Earthworks at Mill Creek Canyon, a sculpted landscape by the Bauhaus artist Bayer that was completed in 1982 and that functions in winter as a dam system (hence the wet and the dry) thanks to its grassy berms and mounds and pools.

Recently, the artwork became the first historic landmark in Kent. The designation had a dark side, though—it was needed as protection. Just last year, the art was tampered with—by the authorities.

When Bayer designed it, the law called for a dam that could handle a certain volume (known as a 100-year storm). But when that was upped to a 10,000-year storm, engineers got involved and changed the work.

This wasn't exactly a travesty; more like a classic modernist conundrum. After all, Bayer intended the art to function as a dam, and functioning as a dam means meeting whatever standards are set forth for sufficient water retention. But it did leave the sculpture marred, and "A Place for People," while doubling as a friendly public-service announcement, is also a critique.

"It's not ruined, it's just broken slightly," says the renowned elder landscape architect Richard Haag (Gas Works Park) in the film, walking through the altered Earthworks with Brice Maryman, a younger landscape architect who co-authored the Seattle Landmarks nomination for Freeway Park.

If Seattle somehow modified Rem Koolhaas's library and screwed it up, then this would be like bringing in Steven Holl to walk around with Brad Cloepfil and call for restoration on record. It's politic, but pointed.

Haag's words immortalized on film, one hopes, will make some small contribution toward restoring Bayer's contours. (The so-called "volcano" mound needs to be raised in height, the overgrowth on the bridge needs to be slashed back.)

Cheryl dos Remedios, Kent's passionate arts administrator (and, as this film shows, one passionate arts lady in an unlikely line of them in Kent), directed the creation of this film, and she narrates. She's responsible for its greatest value: the embedded critique—and the hope the film provides that the aesthetics might be updated along with the engineering.