China’s water resources are facing serious problems including uneven supply and demand, frequent droughts and floods, severe water pollution, and water ecosystem degradation. To solve these problems, multi-disciplinary and multi-field research cooperation, as well as multi-professional and multi-departmental collaboration are required. The different disciplines that study water resources should adopt new collaborative models that promote effective communication between professionals, and that focus on interactive integration in theory and methodology to achieve disciplinary exchange. A thorough review of Sponge City programs draws attention to policies, regulations, technical standards, and institutional mechanisms needed for this exchange.
This interview focuses on discussion of education and practice in river restoration in the United States and its possible lessons for China. G. Mathias Kondolf introduces his teaching and research at University of California, Berkeley and gives his views on dam construction and the principles of river restoration. Shuhan Shi, the interviewer, puts forward several important questions related to the topic within Chinese contexts. Together, through a fresh perspective, this work could help researchers and practitioners to consider ways to solve water problems in China. For landscape architects and planners, it provides new perceptions to combine scientific and social methods for future research and practice.
In current sponge city development, the question of how to implement plans according to local circumstances and the Guiding Opinions on Promoting Sponge City Development, issued in October 2015 by the State Council, has become a hot topic. Starting with urban development in 2010, the Eastern New District of Wenling City, Zhejiang Province has taken the lead in building an early phase of green infrastructure that centers on “water” to establish a complete framework of urban ecological development and carry out various practices of city-wide stormwater management systematically. This article summarizes the practical experiences and conceptual procedures of developers, urban administrative agencies, contractors, landscape architects, and other people who are directly related to the development of this sponge city. It is believed that the prioritized planning of green infrastructure, the boldness to be a pioneer, the systematic solutions, and the proper execution of tactful management are the fundamental reasons for the successful implementation results.
Urban water systems fulfill a variety of purposes, such as providing water resources, performing ecological functions, and supporting city life. The design of urban water systems optimizes the spatial and temporal distribution of water resources, improves the hydrographic circulation and water quality, bringing important influences to the urban ecosystem. This article aims to discuss how to maximize the protection of the original aquatic ecosystem, the repair of damaged water ecology, and the restoration of urban water system functions so as to endow the city with resilience to adapt to environmental changes and natural disasters, while enhancing the economic and aesthetic value of the land adjacent to water. A general discussion is provided on the establishment of water-land ecotones, symbiosis of aquatic organisms, and establishment of aquatic habitat.
The River Aire flows through valleys historically devoted to farming. From late 19th century, it was progressively canalized. In 2001, State of Geneva opened a competition with the idea of restoring the river to its original shape by destroying the canal. We instead proposed to combine the canal with a vast divagation space for the river and associate the new riverbed and a series of gardens in the former canal. The whole design becomes a linear garden that organizes situations, views, and presences. The canal footprint is a key device for building the necessary calm and interiority.
We proposed a launching pattern whose form addresses the play between the river flow and the prepared terrain. This diamond-shape diagram based on the percolation principle opens a complex series of undetermined channels for the flows. The river flows displacing diverse materials, gravels, sand and the initial geometrical matrix of lozenges gives birth to an extreme diversity of the fluvial geomorphology.
This project forms City of Sydney’s largest environmental project to date and an integral component of Sustainable Sydney 2030. It targets water demand to be met through local water capture and re-use. The City seized a once in a lifetime opportunity to use what was essentially an infrastructure project as a vehicle to breathe new life into the park.
Aiming at polluted water of the Chuanzi River, Changde City, and in order to restore the sustainable natural water circulation system, improve the water quality, and create an ecological water environment, this project carries out the comprehensive management of the river basin through multidisciplinary integration. The integration of various measures, including landscape architecture, sponge city construction, water treatment, and flood control, achieves concurrent implementation of a variety of functions. The project incorporates development of the surrounding properties, to explore a circular economy approach to urban environmental management.
Sasaki was selected as the winning team for the international competition to redesign Suzhou Creek in Shanghai. Suzhou Creek was historically one of the city’s most vital water routes, but in recent decades suffered from unspeakable pollution and neglect. With a loan from the Asian Development Bank, the waterway is now clean and ready to reclaim its role as a centerpiece of the city.
For the centerpiece of Louisiana, sound ecological restoration methods will heal a dying lake system while also reconnecting a city to its ecological and cultural heritage. The Restoration of the Baton Rouge Lakes project will elevate the city’s identity to one based on sound best management practices where man and water exist in equilibrium.
As landscape designers, we face complexities and indeterminacies when dealing with morphological phenomena. The advent of the Anthropocene only but increased such landscape transformations, most especially those that are directly affected by hydrological morphologies. Though engineering technologies alleviate such problématique, this paper seeks to present an alternative methodology in the use of responsive technologies, enabling real-time adaptive management, which favors ecological processes over static constructions as a design methodology. Experimentations were conducted to ground such theoretical assertions, while addressing the inconsistencies and spontaneity produced by responsive systems and accepting their integration into the landscape as part of its new Nature.
The project is concerned about dualities and paired terms, problematizing how this type of ordering forms how we conceive and look at the world. More specifically, the division between rural and urban, production and domesticity are in focus. Two concepts — that of the salon and the garden — are being recognized as liminal and in-between spaces, mediating between constructed dualities. They are used as programmatic frames for two sites in Chittagong, Bangladesh; forming ground for two interventions.
The interventions are a small-scale production of ceramic water filter and a seed library. The project concerns the everyday life of the people involved, residing in practices of washing, cleaning, sowing, cultivating, giving dimension, understanding and marvel to these routines and customs. The soil, the clay and in extension the ceramic element is what on a very elemental level joins the garden and the salon. They are also joined on a conceptual level by both being sites for production and sharing of knowledge, each with their own architectural articulation. They are rooted in the scale of the community, where participation is a keystone, and the architecture and its artefacts can be adjusted and modified according to the needs and creativity of its users.