The urban heat island effect occurs when pavements, roads, and buildings absorb the sun's heat and radiate it back, causing the temperature to increase and preventing the city from cooling down. With the growing reliance on cars in cities, the number of urban car park spaces is also increasing to accommodate buildings. This has resulted in the conversion of large areas of pervious land covered with vegetation into impervious hard surfaces for more car parks. The use of materials like asphalt, combined with the lack of shade, reflective steel surfaces of parked cars, and loss of greenery in these extensive car parks, contributes to the amplification of high-temperature effects and extreme heat events, making urban spaces uncomfortable. This transformation is impacting the climate of car-dependent regions and calls for collaborative ideas and efforts to mitigate the negative effects of rising heat.
New York Governor Hochul has announced a partnership with the nonprofit Friends of + POOL to open the first urban river-sourced swimming facility in the United States. Utilizing + POOL’s design and technology, the 2,000-square-foot plus-shaped swimming pool is set to open in New York City’s East River in the summer of 2024. In 2010, four young designers, Archie Lee Coates IV, Dong-Ping Wong, Jeffrey Franklin, and Oana Stanescu, established + POOL with the goal of providing New Yorkers with access to free and safe river swimming. Now the state promised to invest $16 million to pilot and scale the system, hoping to expand it across the state of New York.
As we reflect on the tumultuous events of 2023, it becomes evident that the challenges posed by changing environmental conditions have left an indelible mark on communities worldwide. In response, architects and urban planners have set out, searching for the ways in which their actions can help create safer environments for communities worldwide, responding with both fast-to-deploy emergency architectures and long-term strategies to build resilience and mitigate risks.
Beyond merely responding to events like the devastating earthquakes in Turkey, Syria, and Morocco, or the widespread flooding in Libya or Pakistan, professionals are attempting to take proactive approaches, developing strategies that extend from predictive modeling to the application of re-naturalizing techniques or the ongoing research into the physics of safer and resilient structures.
At the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, The PhilippinesPavilion presents an exhibition that investigates the ecology and social implication of the Tripa de Gallina estuary in Manila. The body of water, once a mechanism for flood mitigation, has now become congested and polluted, affecting the lives of the nearby communities. The Pavilion aims to present the initiative that set out to gather and investigate the guts of the estuary and to work with the residents to find adequate and sustainable architectural solutions. Titled “Tripa de Gallina: Guts of Estuary,” the exhibition in Venice is co-curated by Architect Choie Funk and Sam Domingo and presents the work of the Architecture Collective, represented by Bien Alvarez, Matthew Gan, Ar. Lyle La Madrid, Noel Narciso and Arnold Rañada.
Following findings from a study published in the Nature Ecology & Evolution journal this April, it has become public knowledge that the phenomenon dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (an area of 620,000 square miles between California and Hawaii) is serving as host to an entire coastal ecosystem. Marine wildlife is using the massive area compiled of human plastic waste as a floating habitat, and scientists are shocked at the number of species that have managed to establish life in this otherwise hostile environment.
The news once again brings into sharp focus not only pressing issues of climate change and ocean pollution but also the question of environmentally-induced migration, even at a microbial level. Architecture is moving into more and more experimental realms when it comes to considering locations for the communities of our future – and rising sea levels have promoted water to the top of the list. But these deliberations are not as recent as one might think: floating cities have been around for centuries and individual homes on water are common in areas of Benin, Peru or Iraq, among others.
Every year since its establishment in 1970, Earth Day aims to bring into focus not only the increasingly threatening effects of climate change but also highlight the effective measures and adaptation efforts that can improve the quality of our environment. This year’s event comes after a report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in March, which presented another warning on the magnitude of changes produced by human-induced global warming and its impact on people and ecosystems. The same report does offer some hopeful prospects as well, showing that adaptation measures can build resilience, but those urgent systemwide transformations are needed to secure a net-zero future. In response to these findings, the 2023 Earth Day is focused on the theme of “Investing in Our Planet,” as an encouragement for governments, institutions, businesses, and civil society to accelerate the change. Read on to discover several citywide initiatives aligned with these objectives of building resilience and a more sustainable future through legislation, civic involvement, and innovative systems.
Danish Maritime Architecture Studio MAST, working together with the Municipality of Segrate, plans to transform a former sand quarry into a central park to reconnect the surrounding neighbourhoods and create a new destination for the residents of Milan, Italy. The abandoned quarry has left behind a unique landscape. The off]ice’s proposal includes a series of buildings along the lake’s perimeter linked by a public walkway and a cluster of islands in the centre of the lake. MAST is currently working with the Municipality of Segrate toward realising the project.
Venice, a city usually concerned with devastating floods, now faces the opposite problem: canals are starting to run dry following weeks of dry winter weather and unusually low tides. A combination of factors is believed to have caused this rare sight: lack of rain, high atmospheric pressure, and the lunar cycle producing low water levels during ebb tide. Since the canals serve as streets in the city, the phenomenon has implications beyond the disappointment of the tourists. Some of Venice’s smaller calas have dried up almost entirely, making it impossible for gondolas, water taxis, and ambulances to reach areas of the city.
International office MVRDV has been selected by the Taiwan Ministry of Economic Affairs to design the Hoowave Water Factory, a large-scale redevelopment of Huwei’s Beigang and Anqingzhen waterways. The project combines a strategic master plan with the landscape design in an effort to move beyond the mono-functional approach for controlling and distributing water. Besides storing and capturing water, the proposal also opens up access to the river and the natural ecosystem by integrating cycling paths, cultural amenities, and ecological systems. The master plan also includes a comprehensive strategy for flood resilience while improving the quantity and quality of available water. The project is expected to be completed in 2026.
David Adjaye, in partnership with Bedrock and the city of Cleveland, unveiled the masterplan for the Cuyahoga Riverfront, a 15-to-20-year vision that will transform 35 acres of the riverfront to improve accessibility, equity, sustainability, and resilience of the downtown area. The design embraces the city’s rich history and connection to nature and creates a sustainable infrastructure that prioritizes pedestrian movement and activates open public spaces. David Adjaye, a British-Ghanian architect, has been awarded Britain’s Order of Merit, making him the fifth architect to be appointed the honor.
Danish Maritime Architecture Studio MAST has developed the “Land on Water” project, a system that provides an adaptable solution to building almost anything on the water: floating homes, campsites, even small parks, and community centers. The project represents a response to the acknowledgment of raising sea levels and increased risks of urban flooding, which has led to a growing interest in adapting architecture to be built on water. The “Land on Water” proposes a flexible and sustainable solution, a departure point from previous solutions, which are proven to be difficult to adapt, transport and are often using unsustainable materials such as polystyrene-filled concrete foundations or plastic pontoons. The project is developed with the support of Hubert Rhomberg & venture studio FRAGILE.
The 22nd of March 2022 saw the twenty-ninth commemoration of World Water Day – as a worldwide water crisis continues to leave populations vulnerable. It is an extremely multi-faceted issue. Governance sadly determines water accessibility, with marginalized people disproportionally affected. Urban typologies are another factor. The over-pumping of groundwater sources to meet the water demands of Hanoi, for instance, has resulted in arsenic being drawn into Vietnam’s village wells.
In April 1782, just six years after the Declaration of Independence was signed, John Adams arrived in Amsterdam as the first U.S. Ambassador to The Netherlands. Three months later, a consortium of Dutch bankers provided a 5 million guilder loan (equivalent to $150 billion today) to the new republic, a clear sign of my country’s confidence in the U.S. While I can’t provide a loan, as a Dutch water engineer I can offer something else to Americans: my country’s five centuries of experience living, working, and thriving below sea level. This is surely knowledge and knowhow that the U.S. will desperately need as water levels continue to rise and countless coastal communities are threatened.
https://www.archdaily.com/977124/sea-level-rise-could-the-netherlands-polder-system-work-in-theJan H. de Jager
For the 17th international architecture exhibition – la biennale di Venezia 2021, Denmark is creating a water cyclic system that connects people with each other and with nature. The national pavilion, titled “Con-nect-ed-ness”, is curated by Marianne Krogh and Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects, and will be on display from May 22nd to November 21st, 2021.
On a small strip of land between the Emscher River and the Rhine Herne Canal in Germany sits a rest stop whose colorful appearance belies its radical purpose. The structure’s artful design consists of pipes leading from two toilets and the Emscher (the most polluted river in Germany) that converge at a small community garden and drinking fountain. The garden is, in fact, a manmade wetland that collects, treats, and cleans the effluence from the toilets and river—making it drinkable.
Rising sea levels, and the potential of extreme conditions globally, are threatening coastal cities around the world. While the Netherlands are often considered to be leading the engineering battle against the tides, Japan—with a renewed sense of urgency—are investing heavily in high-end systems and infrastructure to protect their largest metropoli.
https://www.archdaily.com/881308/doubts-loom-over-japans-vast-subterranean-water-control-systemsAD Editorial Team
Against the backdrop of an ever-increasing number of its farmers committing suicides, and its cities crumbling under intensifying pressure on their water resources—owing to their rapidly growing populations—India has revived its incredibly ambitious Interlinking of Rivers (ILR) project which aims to create a nation-wide water-grid twice the length of the Nile. The $168 billion project, first envisioned almost four decades ago, entails the linkage of thirty-seven of the country’s rivers through the construction of thirty canals and three-thousand water reservoirs. The chief objective is to address India’s regional inequity in water availability: 174 billion cubic meters of water is proposed to be transported across river basins, from potentially water-surplus to water-deficit areas.
In the third and final installment of their micro documentary series on architecture and water, Ellis Woodman and a team at the Architectural Review (AR) have collaborated with architects, developers, urbanists and thinkers to examine the latent connections between water infrastructure and our built environment. Taking a journey by narrowboat through London, the film explores the radical ideas which may offer the keys to unlocking the potential of the urban waterway. Through recreation, interaction and radical ideas such as floating parks, amphibious houses and new public wetlands can the river become a living part of the city?
