WATER

UFO 1
URBANISMS
_ Urbanism Fascicles OSA
Water and the City
The ‘Great Stink’ and Clean Urbanism
Bruno De Meulder & Kelly Shannon

WATER CULTURES ANOTHER WATER URBANISM

Essays on Water Urbanism Vietnamese Urban Projects

Quays as Keys Modernity in the Mekong

Antwerp, Belgium Cantho, Vietnam
Bruno De Meulder Matthew Neville

Water + Asphalt: The Project of Isotrophy Water [re]Cycling, Phong Dien

Veneto Region, Italy Cantho, Vietnam
Paola Viganò Ngo Trung Hai & Kelly Shannon

Pumps + Polders [re]volutionary Land_structure | Infra_scape

The Netherlands Hiep Phuoc, Vietnam
Inge Bobbink Bieke Cattoor & Janina Gosseye

Reinventing Waterscape Urbanism Tan Hoa Lo Gom Canal Upgrading

Changde, China Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Antje Stokman Benoit Legrand & Kelly Shannon

Between Pampa and the River

La Plata, Argentina
Viviana d’Auria & Laura Vescina

South Asian Hydraulic Civilizations

India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh
Kelly Shannon
EXPLORATIONS AND SPECULATIONS
Excerpts of Water Urbanism

Canalizing and Colonizing the Campine Weaving Water and Rail

The Campine, Belgium Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Maarten Van Acker Ana Beja da Costa

Water and [re]Production Logics in Amsterdam Urbanity between Coalscapes and Water
Ij River, The Netherlands Le Centre, Belgium
Karl Beelen Christian Nolf

Pani and Mati Living in a Hybrid-Dyke

Khulna, Bangladesh The Ronde Venen, The Netherlands
Sabina Favaro Si Minji

Recovery and Reconfiguration of Morii Lake Re-tracing Chile’s Central Littoral

Morii Lake, Romania Catapilco River, Chile
Teodora Capelle Carolina Contreras

The Shifted Connectivity of Kete Krachi

Volta Lake, Ghana
Barbara Roosen

Pond City
Taoyuan Metropolitan Area, Taiwan
Daoming Chang

WATER AND THE CITY
The ‘Great Stink’ and Clean Urbanism
Urbanism has historically had a double focus. On the one hand,
it is the science of the city. On the other hand, it is the discipline
that holds the capacity to steer the transformation of the city and
to design its rational development. In other words, urbanism
documents and interprets the city; it acts upon the city – this
strange object of study for which there doesn’t seem to exist a
common definition shared through scientific disciplines (even
if within the discipline there is agreement on its distinctive
characteristics). With the city as a humanly imprecise object of
study, urbanism – as most human undertakings – tends to surf
on the waves of the times. It redirects its attention to evolving
themes and shifting issues that impose themselves on policy
agendas or gain public interest for one reason or another:
appalling housing situations, unsanitary conditions, facilitation
of creativity and branding. No matter the issue, it has almost
certainly been, at one time or another, on the urbanism agenda.
Water appears to be one such issue that is (re)conquering
the contemporary agenda of urbanism. Probably this is not such 5
a surprise as we are constantly reminded of the consequences
of global warming and rising sea levels, uneven distribution
of scarce water resources, disturbed terrain and effected
watersheds, pollution, water storage and harvesting, flood
protection, etc. [Swynegedouw 2004]. The list of ecological,
technical, economical, social and political issues related to
water increases year after year, as the natural forces of water
seem to take revenge on so much of humankind’s reckless
behaviour – while, at the same time, much of contemporary
cultural production and pretentious engineering remains
fundamentally socially unjust and politically incorrect.
In a certain way, the reappearance of water as a focus of
  WATER AND THE CITY
urbanist concerns is not uncalled for. Rather, its disappearance
during the heydays of urbanism in the 19th and 20th century is
remarkable. Running through an ad-hoc collection of classic
handbooks of urbanism – Raymond Unwin [1909], Werner
Hegemann [1922], Harold Maclean Lewis [1949] – one does not
find a single substantive component that attends to the relation
between water and urbanity. Water is reduced to a photograph
of a ludicrous fountain in Unwin and a marginal observation.
This omission is quit strange given a tradition of more than 2000
 years in which the water structure – artificial or natural – was
a keystone of the constructed urban structure. From the plan
of Dinocrates for Alexandria (331 B.C.) to the plan of L’Enfant
for Washington, or for that matter, the plan for St. Petersburg
(both in the 18th century), the definition of the city (structure)
was unconceivable without river(s) or canal(s) as cornerstones.
The 15th century Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci developed
urban prototypes that were centrally structured by rivers.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
The common sense logics of cities and water are evident:
clean water source, the possibility of transport, water as a
defence mechanism, a receptacle for storm water, etc. Such
logics make it all the more surprising when water suddenly
disappears, in the 19th century, at the moment when modern
urbanism emerges as a scientific discipline. The mysterious
disappearance may have much to do with (what the British
6 so eloquently dubbed) the ‘Great Stink’ – the consequence of
massive and unprecedented urban development, congestion
and speculation and skyrocketing pollution which resulted in
vast cholera epidemics during the first industrial revolution;
where corpses floating amidst sewage, dirt, garbage on the
Thames was common place. Halfway through the 19th century,
water was convincingly and dramatically linked to public
health. Water sanitation was deemed an utmost necessity and
civil and hydraulic engineers had unprecedented commissions.
At the same time, water lost its natural attraction. It became an
object of mere sanitation and purification processes and the
sooner dirty water could be dumped somewhere outside the
city, the better. It was covered and hidden. The epoch of ‘clean
urbanism’ [De Meulder 1997] began with the visual banishment
of water. From that moment onwards, water became an absent
presence in modern urbanism, an engineering trick – out of
sight and, consequently, out of mind. Sanitized, canalized,
covered, cleaned, piped – hidden. Urban water was absent.
All powers of technological progress, hand-in-hand
with bureaucratic regulations and hygienic measures, were
unleashed to make water disappear, reduce it to a technical
element, somewhere in a device, piped underground for
expulsion out of the city as quick as possible. This has been
done, consequently and consistently, to such a degree that –
despite the fact that the great majority of cities owe their very
origin to the presence of a river – water has almost disappeared;
it is there, but not visible. It is not part of the collective conscious
of urbanites. In Brussels, the entirety of the Zenne River was
covered in the second half of the 19th century, which makes
it (since also the city port inside the city walls was abolished
around the turn of the 20th century) one of the rare Flemish
cities, and one of the few capital cities in the world, without any
significant water body. And the artificial fountains on the Mont
des Arts don’t make up for such an erasure.
Nonetheless, done away with in underground pipes or
not, natural waterways continued to play a dominant role in
the morphology of many cities. Originally, water and road
structures of the medieval city would evidently be intertwined
as ‘warp and woof’. Most of the cities in the Low Lands are, in
essence, bridges across rivers. River and road each define and
spatially thematise directions of the city, as is clearly evident
even today in the city of Kortrijk which is defined by the (east-
west direction of the) Leie River and the perpendicular north-
south road crossing it. The intertwining of water and road
networks made place for a complementary quality, whereas the
covered beds of river branches were recuperated as oversized
roads, monumental avenues, markets, etc. The straightened
trajectory of the Zenne structures the central avenues of the
medieval/organic centre of Brussels. Elsewhere in Belgium,
such as in Liège, former river meanders of the Meuse give way
to gracefully curving avenues that glue together the urban
fragments generated on the different former river islands.
In a certain way, it is the deviation that (former) water
bodies induce in the regular ordinariness of the built fabric that
generates the most striking spatial quality of many water-based
cities. Water indirectly generated a great deal of the double-
coding and sophistication of many medieval urban structures
and tissues and their subsequent afterlife, while formal 19th
and 20th century urbanism was only capable of creating one-
dimensional, so called rational tissues. Furthermore, the
covering-over and filling-in operations that often turned out

to be pleasant spatial interventions were seldom discussed
within urbanism. The documentation on such projects ends up
collecting dust in forgotten annals of engineering associations
such as Technique des Travaux.
In recent decades, a cocktail of nostalgia and ecological
concerns catapulted water back onto the scene of urbanism.
A stereotypical uncovering of rivers, usually with adjacent
pathways, biking trails and the like pop-up in fashionable
journals and become topics of interest. Surely the concreteness
and tangibility of water, its ‘natural form, dimension and
character’ and ‘deviation’ from the boring generic urban
substance is what attracts the discipline. Water is undoubtedly
an obvious tool to emphasize the ‘situatedness’ of urbanism. In
its own way, water combines universality and specificity, global
and local. It perfectly aligns with glocalism, the new password
of correctness. It should come as no wonder that Chinese cities,
besides their ambitious catching-up sprint with Singapore and
the like, often restore there historic ‘bunds’, heritage of the nasty
imperialists. Water is surely on the marketing menu of many
urban management programs of beautification.
UFO 1
This fascicle on water urbanisms documents different
engagements of urbanism with water issues. As this fascicle
looks with interest on innovative and relevant practices of
urbanism, it doesn’t pay attention to what has already become
conventional practice; it is surely not interested in mere
beautification operations.
This first UFO, Urbanism Fascicle of OSA, has three main
sections. [1] Water Cultures. Essays on Water Urbanism elaborates
interplays of urbanism and water in different cultures and
regions. In short, it develops themes of water urbanisms
through specific case studies in Europe, Asia and Latin
America. In Europe, forms of (re)appropriation of water-related
structures are exposed, such as quays and obsolete harbour
installations. Instead of reiterating mainstream stereotypical
waterfront developments, De Meulder’s essay exposes the
master plan project for the quays of Antwerp, probably the
first of a new generation of waterfront developments where
WATER AND THE CITY
real estate development is the least of its concerns. Instead,
the concern of the project, which restructures quays and
strengthens the flood protection system of Antwerp, develops
new tools to turn civil structures into civic elements in an
effort to enhance the resonation of the river (life) into the city.
In the south of Europe, the ancient water logics of the Veneto
Region of Italy are critically analyzed and their potential re-
interpreted in Viganò’s ‘project of isotropy’. The structuring
capacity of not only water, but also asphalt and iron are
discussed in relation to the new territorial and dispersed
form of urbanism of the contemporary European city.
Scenarios for a new project of isotropy place water meshes to
the fore. Similarly, claims Bobbink, an understanding of the
historical Dutch polder language and its urban and landscape
architectonic qualities can inform the necessary reorganization
of the lowland territory. Water management control is also
an obvious and primary concern in the rapidly urbanizing
and transforming landscapes of Asia. According to Stokman, 7
the city of Changede exemplifies the dramatic shift in socio-
hydrological conditions within Chinese cities over the decades.
The once ‘hydraulic society’ has been superseded by a conquest
of nature and concealment of water bodies. Cooperative and
speculative projects attempt to (re)construct ecologies and (re)
invent concepts of waterscape urbanism. In South Asia, the
millennia-old relations of water and society are investigated by
Shannon though the lens of India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
The region’s indigenous traditions hold invaluable lessons for
the contemporary city and territory, while new waterfront
economies and ecologies (natural and urban) can be stimulated
to work with natural forces in the development of a resilient
water (based) urbanism. Finally, in the Latin American context,
the potentials of the estuarine landscape of the interstitial zone
between the Argentinean city of La Plata and the Rio de la Plata
are discussed by d’Auria and Vescina as experimental terrain
to simultaneously accommodate development pressures and
ecological concerns.
The middle section, [2] Another Water Urbanism. Vietnamese
Urban Projects, gives a podium to perhaps unexpected, but
no less inspiring experiences. Instead of turning, as usual,
 to the world of renowned and admirable experiences of the
Dutch in hydrological engineering in relation to urbanism
and even production of the territory itself (with polders, etc.),
this fascicle gives the floor to recent experimental projects
and studies in Vietnam, a country that is on the verge of
literally drowning in water. Vietnam is undergoing massive
urbanization and is consequently on the outlook for less
capital-intensive solutions that attempt to work with the forces
of nature rather than articulating an antagonistic position
towards water – which is both economically unsustainable
and ecologically undesirable. The experimental projects in this
section – realized as experimental urban design projects – not
only share this fundamental position that avoids antagonism
with nature, but also, in one way or another, share the same
credo. They all assume that weaving (natural) water (logics)
and urban structures enriches the resulting urban reality. In
this sense, the assembled projects all take their distance to two
8 centuries of denial and reduction to pure (and hidden) technical
engagements with water in urbanism. The exposed projects, on
the contrary, reclaim a deliberate and integral position for water
in the formation of cities, in the construction of urbanism, on
different scale levels, and for different aspects.
The last part, [3] Explorations and Speculations: Excerpts of
Water Urbanism, gathers a wide range of excerpts from recent
and ongoing urban design explorations of existing and potential
relations between water and urbanism. It puts forth descriptive
historic case-studies that deconstruct the crucial/formative
role of water infrastructures in the production of the territory
itself (The Campine, Belgium and the Ij River, The Netherlands),
while contemporary case-studies test the capacity of water
systems to structure an agricultural territory in view of crop
rationalizations and other agricultural innovations, market
accessibility, rational settlement organization for a growing
population, etc. (Khulna, Bangladesh). Other case-studies revisit
the monumental hydrological dam projects of the optimistic
after-war period (Morii Lake, Bucharest-Romania and Volta
Lake, Ghana) and investigate how the necessary reinvestment
that these major engineering works can go, hand-in-hand,
with a more productive, sensitive organization of adjacent
territories. A similar case-study (Tapyuan Metropolitan Area,
Taiwan) envisions how the incredible system of water ponds,
accumulated over generations and generations of agricultural
development, could literally be reused to canalize the dynamic
dispersed urbanization processes of the region. Reclaiming
water structures, natural and artificial alike, and using them
as structuring devices for urban renewal strategies is at stake
in excerpts in diverse post-industrial contexts, ranging from
dense metropolitan environments (Rio De Janeiro, Brazil) where
water is proposed as integrating device (between the favela
and the conventional city; between nature and city; between
metropolitan scale and local attachment; between new and
historic) to dispersed post-industrial territories ( Le Centre,
Belgium). The proposal for The Ronde Venen, The Netherlands
goes two steps further to capitalize literally on the new dike
systems, necessary for flood protection, for other programmatic
needs. The last case-study (Catapilco River, Chile) attempts to
transcend the usual consumptive use of waterscapes, while
constructing a (re)development scheme for the Central Littoral
of Chile in which the productive potential of the water system
of city and river is highlighted.
Evidently, this fascicle – this assemblage of experiences,
projects and reflections – is unable to deliver the definitive
synthesis on water urbanism. And this was not the ambition.
The excerpts are merely appetizers, the projects shown
attempts and the essays first reflections. However, we hope that
this fascicle delivers good advocacy for new forms of urbanism.
Urbanisms in which water, after an undeserved absence of two
centuries, forms an integral part, urbanisms in which issues –
(fair) distribution, flood protection, purification, storage, etc.
are dealt with, but also vice-versa, urbanisms that make use
of the structuring capacity of water systems, urbanisms that
take advantage of the deviations, sophistications and the like
that water offers urbanisms. One last aspect to become clear,
we hope, is that the water problematic of today and tomorrow,
no matter how complicated and difficult they might be, offer
at the same time challenging opportunities to get rid of a few
of the unfortunate disciplinary and sectoral divisions that we
inherited from the 19th and 20th century. Water problemmatics

are a vacation, an open invitation to combine engineering
approaches with designers creativity, to find solutions that
offer qualitative and quantitative answers, to exploit the
‘situatedness’ that water offers to urbanism while solving
utilitarian questions, etc.
As hopefully will have become clear out of this fascicle,
the urbanisms of water of the future are a domain to further
develop.
WATER AND THE CITY
References
DE MEULDER, B. [1997] ’Invisible HST: The High Speed Train in Antwerp ’
in Archis, December 1997.
HEGEMANN, W. and PEETS, E. [1922] The American Vitruvius: An
Architect’s Handbook of Civic Art. New York: Architectural Book Pub. Co.
MACLEAN LEWIS, H. [1949] Planning the Modern City. New York: John
Wiley & Sons.
MOHOLY-NAGY, S. [1968] Matrix of Man: An Illustrated History of Urban
Environment. New York: Frederick A. Praeger.
SWYNEGEDOUW, E. [2004] Social Power and the Urbanization of Water:
Flows of Power. London: Oxford University Press.
UNWIN, R. [1909] Town Planning in Practice. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
9
WATER CULTURES
ESSAYS ON WATER URBANISM
 Introduction
Prosthesis of modern times
The straitening of the Scheldt and construction of the quays in
Antwerp brought about a historical breach in the city’s relation
to the river. The city, with its well developed system of canals,
inlets and ramparts which was organically connected to and
interwoven with the river, was disconnected from the Scheldt.
The quays became an autonomous ‘intermediate’ entity
between the city and the river; an elongated, stone and concrete
body. As an industrially organized platform – complete with
QUAYS AS KEYS railway tracks, cranes and hangars – it was used for all types
of port activities, such as loading and unloading, storage,
customs clearance and customs entry. Several kilometres
Antwerp, Belgium
long, the quays’ area was a separate world, fenced in and with
limited, controlled access from the city. The quays did not
belong to the historic city centre, but made up a commercial-
industrial transition space at the edge of the city core. They are
13
like a large-scale prosthesis, an element that does not naturally
belong to the body. Nevertheless, the city core developed
a very close relationship with the quays: a cityfront with
impressive buildings and the intense activity (offices, shops,
bars, restaurants) in the street that runs alongside the quays. At
the ‘Noorderterras’ and ‘Zuiderterras’, where city and quayside
overlap each other, the city was given a window overlooking
the river and, at the same time, a view onto the industrious
kinetic theatre of hoisting, lifting and dragging that unfolded.
Antwerp as a port city.

Entity, space and time

With the ongoing scaling-up and the northward shift of port
activities, the port and city became more and more separate
worlds. Port life on the quays gradually disappeared and the

  WATER CULTURES
obsolete prosthesis was quietly claimed by the city to fulfil its
needs and desires; banal needs such as parking alternated with
fantastic events.
You can go to the quayside for a solitary walk along the
water, have a cup of coffee on the ‘Zuiderterras’, and watch the
occasional ship sail in. You can just go and sit – do little else but
ponder – on a desolate bench; you could stroll aimlessly, just to
 city & Scheldt spine filter head & tail

14

Fig. 1  The City and the River

The quays form a strong figure for the ‘Rede van Antwerpen’. With an
accentuated head (polder dike in the south) and tail (harbour park in the
north), they shape the backbone of the city. The raised water barrier and
punctual buildings – strategically positioned between cityfront and quay
wall – act as a filter in front of the city.
The successive historical deepening and enlargement of the harbour
and the consequent move towards the north – left specific harbour territories
with very different relations to the surrounding city. A correct re-interpretation
of these different harbour territories and their respective impact on the city
is essential to appropriately refurbish the quays and develop them with a
raised water barrier.

pass the time, perhaps experiencing a chance encounter with a
close friend, or perhaps not. The quays are a residual space, no
longer claimed exclusively for one sole purpose, but filled with
possibilities – from informal social occasions to more ephemeral
events like a circus or the arrival of St. Nicholas. The presence
of the water evokes a certain modesty and serenity, yet it is here
where you can just as well go dancing and partying exuberantly
into the early hours. Few activities would be a nuisance here,
as the generous surplus and the residual character of the
quays generate loads of capacity, providing enough space, both
literally and figuratively, for all kinds of activity and ‘passivity’
(fig. 1). Looking into detail, the quays have been a blessing to
Antwerp.
Morphologically, the quays are a tussenterm: an autonomous
in-between entity. They are an intermediate space. When you
step onto the quays, you are stepping out of the city and are
offered a view onto the majestic landscape of the Scheldt River.
In this sense, the quays are the balcony of the city. From the
river, you step onto the quays, perceiving the city which you
can sense, although you’re not completely in it, even somewhat
removed. You can see the city’s facade, yet can look deeper
into an incision and observe its different districts, colours and
characters. The quays and the city exist side-by-side and are
therefore complementary. Both the city and the river function
as the quays’ background, depending on the point of view. In
return, the quays serve as a soundboard for the moods of city
and river, resonating the changing of the tides, the sequence of
day and night, the succession of seasons and the progression
of time. The quays are the barometer of the city’s state of mind,
the city’s atmosphere. The quays are located in between two
worlds; they are a threshold to the landscape of the river or, in
the opposite direction, a threshold to the city. The quays are
an intermediate entity, an intermediate space for intermediate
time.
Generally speaking, the time you spend there is
intermediate indeed – maybe even a step outside of time:
a break from hectic everyday life; from work, buying and
selling; participating in an event, recreation, doing nothing,
staring at the river; tuning in, dropping out, tasting the wind.
QUAYS AS KEYS
That is the quays’ program today. In other words, the quays
are a ‘decompression space’ where the city and its inhabitants
can recover their breath, a ‘compensation space’, a refuge
where things considered inappropriate in the formal, urban
environment can occur. In other words, the quays are a
‘heterotopia’ – an ‘other place’. It is a space where spatializaton
and social practice co-exist with various cultural fragments,
safe from political and economical influences. As a heterotopia,
the quays are a laboratory of urban culture that is open-
minded and seemingly ignores norms and standards. It is a
public space that accepts and is accessible; it is a receptor for
the differences within the city. Therefore, it cannot be made
unambiguously thematic and is barely programmed. Contrary
to the quays, the city of Antwerp has a large number of public
spaces that are clearly programmed or thematic. They can be
found from the busy ‘trade corridor’ from Meir to the Zoo;
from the Stadspark (city park) over Middelheim to the future
Spoor Noord (series of projects in Northern Antwerp); from 15
the public transportation market that is the Rooseveltplaats,
over the Leien to the St.Jansplein, the Paardenmarkt and the
well-known Groenplaats. Because of their unique diversity,
individual character, size and unique position between the city
and the river, the quays escape from the invariant definability
that typifies the other public spaces in Antwerp. The quays
belong to no one and everyone, everything is possible and
nothing is possible. It is a terrain vague: an indefinable wave – a
place of continuous movement, a place of coming and going.
Design Attitude
With thanks to the embankment
The embankment needs to be made higher, presenting a great
opportunity to once and for all recognize and develop the
indefinable status and equally generous character of the quays.
The new embankment will protect Antwerp from the quirks of
the river and set out the boundaries in the juxtaposed existence
of river and city, nature and culture.
To emphasize and render permanent the ambiguous status
of ‘space in between spaces’ that, although latently present,
already characterizes the quays today, the embankment is used
 step_1

step_2

16

step_3

step_4

Fig. 2  Quays as Keys – The Composition of a Melody

Based on 10 distinct ‘key-typologies’, the quays planning game is simultaneously a powerful
and playful tool, able to initiate public participation and facilitate the input of the authorities
involved. It works as a user-friendly simulator, providing instant perception of the combination
decided upon. In a first step, the ‘key’ typologies are selected according to strategic options,
step_5 composing a strategic view and consequently indicating the location of the raised water barrier.
Based on this view, pieces can still be reshuffled in a fourth step, finally allowing ‘completion’ of
the space and finalization of a first arrangement. The proposal defines a genetic code, based
on a system of principles and rules rather than a finished, immutable work.

as a boundary that attempts to articulate this staggering status.
In that sense, the absurdity of the embankment is considered
a blessing for Antwerp, for it should not be our ambition to
consume the quays and make them into another urban space
with an over-crowded programme and illusory results. It
should not be our intention to make the quays a part of the city.
The goal should rather be to get the most out of the investment –
so that the quay area can develop its role as a refuge in Antwerp
to the fullest – by granting the embankment a double function:
protecting the city as a civil structure and marking the frontier
between city and quayside as a civic element.
Provocations
The preliminary design is all about defining the embankment
as a civil structure and a civic element, and exploring the
possibilities to subtly shape the quays in such a way that they
can fulfil their role of refuge in a manner superior than before.
The preliminary design explores the possibilities thematically,
in plan and in cross-section, and offers a tool kit of methods to
deal with the quayside and the embankment, and concludes
with process and project management attitudes.
Themes
‘Rede van Antwerpen’
Underlining the panorama of the ‘Rede van Antwerpen’,
the quay wall must remain a continuous figure with a clear
ending. Because of the concave tracé of the quay wall, this
underlining cannot only be seen from the left bank of the
Scheldt (Linkeroever) or from the water itself. The concave tracé
makes the quayside look back at itself. The new embankment
underlines the Rede van Antwerpen a second time. The quay
wall together with the embankment fence off the quayside
as an intermediate space and defines it as the skirting of the
city. On the convex Linkeroever – which is characterized by a
complementary soft river bank – several locations offer a view
onto the majestic Rede van Antwerpen.
QUAYS AS KEYS
River/Quayside/City
Throughout its history of development, the relation between
the city and the water has been continuously altered. Today, the
results of the ever-changing relationship are clearly noticeable
on the city plan, in the shape of an impressive figure of quays,
which are suitable for different methods of loading and
unloading all kinds of goods in a rich variation of atmosphere
and infrastructure. Exploiting and maintaining this richness of
such relationships is a clear objective.
The quay platforms, including their quay function are
maintained. In the future, it is imagined that river cruisers, the
occasional house-boat and a flashy museum ship will spend
time alongside the quays.
Combined action of quay figure and embankment
These themes allow us to determine the quay space, place and
nature (fixed/mobile) of the embankment, making use of a
17
three-part division of the quayside flanking the existing city.
From south to north, the impact of the quay is expanded. At
the position of Petroleum Zuid, it is not more than a dike; at
Antwerp South it becomes a real quay; from the ‘Eilandje’
it becomes a whole system of quays. This three-way division
crescendo from south to north, and the changing nature
of the relationship between river and city, is a motivating
morphological quality.
The urban segment of the quayside (Antwerp South – ‘het
Zuid’) requires a more sensitive approach. Here, as mentioned
before, there is the least pressure on the compensatory aspect
of the quays. A landscape approach to the embankment can be
adopted. The part flanking the historic city centre deserves a
more sophisticated solution for the embankment. Wall segments
can alternate with mobile embankment units. Pressure from
the historic city centre demands limited coverage of quayside
space from the city (and for moving back the embankment).
Tool kit
With the combined action of the quays and embankment as
major guideline, a tool kit is developed that will help determine
the set-up of the quayside space and the construction of the
 Fig. 3  Possible Key Scenario
Two key typologies are combined with a connecting
element – resulting in a new ‘terrain vague’ to host
temporary events and a floating platform for ferry
mooring. The connecting element becomes an upper
plaza, linked to a green area. Having the dike near the
quay permits the tram to leave the building front. The
slopes towards the buildings are a lawn that spreads
towards the city.

18

Fig. 4  Possible Key Scenario

The combination of two other key typologies creates an
open space with a small ramp for boats. The temporary
use of parking supports a musical event and the upper
walk varies in width enlarging for an equipped green
area.

embankment that preserves a certain level of flexibility (fig. 2).
Varying water level
The water level in the Scheldt varies greatly. The daily
succession of ebb and flood alone brings about a 5-metre
difference. At high water, the difference increases, while
exceptional circumstances (every 10 years and every 70 years)
exceed those numbers significantly. An extensive and thorough
study of the quayside section is necessary to make the dynamics
of ebb and flood, high water and extremes more tangible on the
quayside and to allow the wave action of the river to add colour
to the quays’ image and character. The tides of the city become
the breath of the quays. Floating parts can follow the tides. At
high water, large parts of the quayside can easily be flooded,
without causing residual problems.
Type sections
The diverse boundary and development conditions, resulting
in the combination of the different thematic layers mentioned
above, can be clarified by working out several types of sections/
slices from over the entire length of the quayside. They make
up the vocabulary or, more importantly, the tool kit for the
design of the quays. Whereas point X can require a slice with
landscaping and taluds that puts the waterline along the city
side, point Y might demand a slice, in which the waterline is
laid close to the river. A slice used for a cruiser quay will then
again respond to different criteria. A slice containing new
buildings works differently than a slice that must deal with
already existing structures. Each of these sections will react
differently to the varying water level.
Polyphony
We suggest considering all the slices for which a preliminary
design reconnaissance has been made in this bundle, as a tool
kit. They each represent an incremental segment of the quays;
we can call them ‘keys’. Once a refined set of keys has been
put in place, the design will come down to adding components
together into a concordant composition. Some keys function
perfectly in co-subordination, others only concord with specific
QUAYS AS KEYS
others.
The previously explained combined action of quay figure
and embankment thereby functions as a rectifier. It determines
the principal ‘melody’, that, to say the least, should be taken
out of the soundboard, using the keys mentioned above. At the
same time, this method does not determine everything. The
principal melody has not the intention to record one simple
tune and just leave it with that. The ‘master plan’, therefore,
is anything but a blueprint for development, as it is very
unlikely that all elements that could possibly be realized on
the quays, will be realized in one single offensive. How certain
is an expansion of the ‘MUHKA’ (Contemporary Art Museum
of Antwerp)? What can be demanded by a possible private
investor, who is interested in an underground parking garage?
With what wishes will the inhabitants of the St. Andries
quarter come up and when will they vent their wishes? Who
can predict what the archaeologists uncover? Which function
of urban life would be at its right place on the ‘Nieuw Zuid’ 19
and who is going to build it?
The list of both horrible uncertainties and fascinating
possibilities is endless. Therefore, we work with keys and a
principal melody. Nevertheless, the principal melody can be
interwoven with complementary melody lines, variations and
some improvisation if necessary to bring in contrast and relief
(fig. 3, fig. 4). This requires some insight in contra-punt, but every
good student of the conservatory can handle that. In the same
way, every good team of architects, urbanists and landscape
architects, in consensus with policy-makers and investors with
class, will deal with opportunities, new developments and
unexpected turns, by giving them an appropriate place in the
polyphonic music piece and playing all the right keys.
 Starting from water and asphalt
The point of view presented here concerns a research trajectory
focused on the contemporary territory and on the concept of
fixed capital, or social overhead capital (as Hirschman defined
it). It deals with the durable, enduring infrastructural part
of our territory that constructs the conditions for society to
reproduce itself. The hypothesis is that today the relation
between the fundamental elements of territorial support and
daily life practices, the way in which the territory is used,
is facing a big change, if not a deep crisis. It is as if between
WATER + ASPHALT: THE PROJECT infrastructural heritage and society a distance, a big hiatus
OF ISOTROPY is being formed. People use this support, usually a long-term
one in the European territory, in ways that are judged to be
Veneto Region, Italy inefficient, considering it inadequate to the contemporary
needs and even imagery. To make this hypothesis workable, we
need to reverse the usual approach that starts from built form
and projects the infrastructural space of water and asphalt to
21
the foreground.
This proposition focuses on two levels: the structuring
capacity of water, asphalt and the iron networks in relation
to the new territorial and dispersed form of the European
city; and the relation between hierarchy and isotropy as
different, but equally rational, forms of order. The territorial
project is today one of the fundamental tools to redefine
the contemporary ‘territory’ of architecture and urbanism
[Gregotti 1966]. At the territorial scale, the different projects
forming the dispersed settlements emerge as individual,
collective and institutional projects. The individual projects
make visible the process of social mobility that has occurred
in the last forty years; the collective and institutional projects
are related to decentralization and territorial equilibrium. All
need to be understood: from the ‘spontaneous’ models of auto-

  WATER CULTURES
organization, the underlying ideology that has inspired them,
to innovations needed to reduce contradictions in opposing
situations. In the contemporary dispersed condition, different
ways to settle territory emerge – each having the possibility to
be designed using specific materials and supports related to
their natural and artificial features. There is the opportunity
for reflection on the design of new spatial organization and
22 [1] [2]

0km 5 10 15 20 25

Fig. 1  Hydrology
The map reveals the fine-grained network of all the natural and artificial
water systems in the central area of the Veneto Region. East-west runs the
spring line that divides the dry plain from humid areas. The territory has
been fundamentally constructed by water.
(source: Carta Tecnica Regionale – Veneto, 2007 + Humid areas Clc
2000)
Fig. 2  Figure/Ground
The relation between the water structure and the built form is striking.
Together with the roads they define a densely knit ‘sponge’, that integrates
agriculture, industry and living areas.
(source: Carta Tecnica Regionale – Veneto, 2000/2007)
Fig. 3  Infrastructure
The lower network of roads is almost as dense as the water network. The
recent undergoing projects will modify the isotropic condition towards a
more hierarchical one.
(source: Carta Tecnica Regionale – Veneto, 2007 and ongoing projects)
[3]

their support structures.
Frames
The territorial project is not automatically a large project: it
deals primarily with the design of different infrastructural
layers. It obliges us to understand what contemporary supports
facilitate the reproduction of social process and the risks
(or the welfare conditions) to be redistributed. Moreover,
infrastructure is not synonymous with centralized investment,
although its construction sometimes demands a collective effort.
From this point of view, many Italian territories of dispersion
are excellent laboratories. They are at the same time rich in
infrastructure, but they have many deficiencies and aspects that
are not always brought to collective attention [Viganò 2001:18].
From the territory, there emerges a model antithetic to what is
normally conceived as rational, but nevertheless interesting: a
model that is rooted in long durée supports; that can be adapted
and modified in time; decentralized and weakly hierarchical;
diffused and extendible. The territorial project questions the
techniques that are needed, different from those used today,
and attempts to give a form to a different infrastructural
rationality that is coherent in the reality of diffused settlements.
It is a design which is both ecologically and economically
relevant. These projects rethink the minute construction of the
territory, not only its most important episodes: the diffusion of
nature, which needs time and space to grow and has no great
financial resources; the safeguarding and recharging of the
water table; the natural depuration of waters and the different
relations to urban form; the production of renewable energies;
mobility projects that valorise the ‘sponge’ of small roads and
minor railways or tramways for their ability to connect, in a
capillary way, the entire territory. These and other projects are
not especially innovative, except for the scale at which they
become relevant – which is a scale of design. At the territorial
scale, these projects produce new landscapes and geographies
and clarify forms of rationality different form those of the
modernist past.
The research and projects presented tackle the design of
territorial supports, moving away from the modern sectorial
WATER + ASPHALT: THE PROJECT OF ISOTROPY
logic of territorial construction. From this point of view, a
project of ‘architecture of the territory’ recuperates the ability
to interact with a disparate mass of projects that crowd and
fragment it. Projects are inspired by the superposition of
possibilities instead of by the isolation of problems.
The project of isotropy
In on-going research on the metropolitan territory of Venice, the
image of an isotropic territory tells a story of site rationalization.
The projects aim to reinforce such characteristics – having
recognized their longue durée. If isotropic means ‘equal in all
directions’, the idea that ‘direction’ might not be influential
in the construction of a territorial project is a radical one and
capable to formulate a strong criticism of the conceptual tool-
box we dispose of: from the ‘urbanisme de l’axe’, to the idea
of ‘poles’ or ‘corridors’. It is so radical that we have not, in
this moment, a sufficient set of concepts to fully articulate it;
nevertheless it has been considered realistic in some important 23
moments of the history of our discipline.
The project of an isotropic territory is useful to understand
the distance between the concrete ways in which the territory
around Venice has been transformed and recent projects (new
highways, for example) that are attempting, with great efforts,
to modify this same character. On a very closely and densely
knit frame of water and fine-grained roads, new hierarchical
interventions that separate and sectorialize the territory and
its densely infra-structured space are being superimposed
(fig. 1, fig. 2, fig. 3). Water includes natural and artificial flows,
reclamation/ irrigation devices and drainage systems. It is
not always visible, but is the underlying foundation for the
construction of the territory around Venice. The administrative
demarcation of Venice’s metropolitan area itself nearly
coincides with the basin where superficial waters enter the
lagoon of Venice or have been deviated from it in the period
of the Venetian Republic. The empty space of today’s lagoon
remains at the centre of the territory – as was the case in the
15th century, when hydraulic sciences were born in Venice.
The research begins from the observation of water and
asphalt as the main elements of territorial structure, but
24

Fig. 4  Transformation of the Landscape

A scenario of re-qualification of the water network and of the existing
gravel-pits: simulation of the re-use of a gravel-pit as flooding expansion;
re-naturalization of the canals today in concrete; new woods and new
places to live.

with different spatial relations: sometimes running parallel,
constructing the same landscape; in other cases, defining
opposite features. In a very close dimension, one can appreciate
totally different experiences of the same place. Although
very close to one another, it is possible to turn the corner and
enter a completely different condition, where the rhythms
and sounds produce a rupture. Along the roads, there are the
small- and medium-size industries, houses, churches, shops,
furniture and car showrooms – all the repetitive heterogeneity
of the contemporary and generic fabric; on the other side are
cultivated fields, the bocage and ditches. The two landscapes
are juxtaposed – they coexist – with the water landscape often
being the backyard of the asphalt landscape.
The research takes a fresh look at territories which
have been widely studied in the past for their dispersed
characteristics. The have been investigated by starting from
their infrastructure, since the form of their support has created
a dispersion that for too long a time has been considered un-
structured and chaotic. This misunderstanding is related to the
scarce knowledge of territorial complexities, for example, the
features of the water system. In the region, different geological
layers and slopes define in the north a very permeable and
dry plain, a spring stripe running east-west and a humid,
impermeable plain in the south, widely reclaimed in the 1930s
in its lowest parts, near the lagoon.
Following the waters, a long history of territorial
rationalizations are revealed: the roman aggeratio, river
diversions and rectifications, water-way excavations in the
lagoon, fishing valleys, filling and reclamations, as well as
road, highway, and tramway construction. Different layers of
rationalization are stacked upon one another, often reversing
the point of view and the idea of what is rational: large or
incremental investments (as in the roman aggeratio and its
pervasive and continuous modification over centuries), exercises
of collective and individual power (as in the transformations of
the industrial and agricultural models) and the expression of
changing ideologies.
The territory is a repository of unresolved conflicts, relics
and attempts of integration. The understanding of this complex
WATER + ASPHALT: THE PROJECT OF ISOTROPY
layering is a slow operation: whereas the maps only tell a part
of the story, the rest has to be followed and found in surveys
on site, in the history of ideas and of practices, while always
trying to distinguish between persistence and permanence.
Each rationalization has created its own landscape: the aggeratio
associates a drainage system to a network of roads, rows of
trees and cultivated fields divided by minor draining lines.
More recently, it has also organized a landscape of houses
and industries along roads and its presence helps to reveal the
conditions in which a new economy of small- and medium-
enterprises has been initiated along the grid.
Tools: building scenarios
The territorial project is often at the centre of transition or
radical transformations; often, this is the very reason that
inspires territorial projects and plans. In periods of dissolution
of paradigms, it is urgent to rethink expectations about the
future. ‘Scenario construction’ is an important tool to re- 25
conceptualize themes and problems, to solicit the collective
imagination and to question possibilities contained in the
future. The scenario is not a prediction, but is born out of the
impossibility to make one; it is a collection of hypotheses which
are used to explore consequences.
The future is intended as a possible object of construction,
a theme that should constantly and courageously be recalled.
Its presence underlines a vision of the world as a ‘great
laboratory’ [Wells 1902] more adapted than a static vision to
the contemporary condition, as it was at the beginning of the
twentieth century, a period of extraordinary uncertainty.
In the research on metropolitan Venice, the scenario was
investigated in relation to the spatial configuration of diffused
and isotropic infrastructures. Water and road networks create
the same conditions, more-or-less, in all the territory, whatever
the direction and wherever the point of observation may
be. Isotropy is, in this case, an extreme and ideal figure: the
territory is neither perfectly isotropic nor homogeneous.
The main research question is threefold: what remains
contemporary in past processes of rationalization; is isotropy
a figure of contemporary and future rationality; what new
 pedestrian/ bicycle path

pedestrian/ bicycle path

pedestrian/ bicycle path

floating platform

natural arena

green buffer
river basin

forest
26

Fig. 5  Re-qualification of Gravel Pit

The consequences of the abandoned gravel-pit makes for an extremely attractive setting which the
project maintains, while transforming its use. The gravel pit is redesigned as a public space and
water reservoir. The central woods and the grassy escarpment need not be completely modified
while, conversely, the pit can be transformed into a veritable ecological testing ground as well as
a place for recreation.
 WATER + ASPHALT: THE PROJECT OF ISOTROPY

conditions have emerged to make it possible to conceive a References

new project of isotropy? The project of isotropy is, at the GREGOTTI, V. [1966] Il territorio dell’Architettura. Milan: Feltrinelli.
same time, the acknowledgement of territorial specificity (the VIGANÒ, P., [2001] Un progetto per il territorio /A territorial project,
Venice metropolitan area); a scenario to be investigated in in Viganò P., (ed.) Territori della nuova modernità/Territories of a New
its manifold consequences; a design hypothesis that can be Modenity. Napoli: Electa.
concretely elaborated in the roads and public transport; an VIGANÒ, P., [2008] ‘Water and Asphalt, The Project of Isotropy in the
alternative mobility design and forms of diffused welfare; and Metropolitan Region of Venice’, in Cities of Dispersal, Architectural Design.
Jan./Feb.
the evolution of agriculture and of the water system [Viganò
2008]. The new conditions exploited concern, among others, the WELLS, H.G. [1902] The Discovery of the Future. London: A.C. Fifield.
need of more space for water (flooding in the humid plan and
drought in the dry plain); the need of new woods to depurate
the water-table; the evolutions in agriculture and in the
irrigation techniques; the presence of hundreds of gravel pits
to be reused as water basins (fig. 4, fig. 5). The use of the diffuse
and isotropic road and water meshes permit the percolation of
traffic and movements in a functionally mixed region. Concepts
are inspired by the hydraulics of filtering bodies and by the
analogies with other scientific fields (osmotic transmission). 27
Starting from the waters or from the diffused mobility
network it is possible to return to more traditional themes of
the urban project: to the fragments of houses, warehouses,
industries, schools, sport fields, playgrounds, public green;
to the basic elements of the modern welfare state, often
marginal and dispersed that represent an impressive isotropic
distribution. They match with a mesh of railways, tramways
and waterways; isotropy can be used as a device to implement
equal rights and democracy, as a figure of political rationality.
 The Dutch are known for their ability to control water. Over
centuries, the Dutch have transformed the swampy region
of the Rhine-Scheldt Delta into profitable, and in part new,
agricultural land and prosperous towns. Today, however, a
number of changes in climate, infrastructural development,
city planning, water management and agricultural land use
demand reorganization of this low-lying region. The most
pressing problems facing the area are fragmentation and
disintegration of the landscape, as well as uncertainty over
methods to modernize the water system. Modern societal
PUMPS + POLDERS demands mean that specific knowledge about architectonic
features in order to achieve a large-scale transformation of the
landscape.
The Netherlands The image of the Dutch polder landscape that has become
familiar around the world is one of explicit utility and beauty,
in which the architectonic features of the landscape have
remained implicit. The layout of the agricultural landscape
formally expresses the confrontation between a neutral, 29
repetitive land reclamation pattern and that land’s underlying
topography. Given the imperative of designing a more
sustainable water system, deeper knowledge of the landscape,
its ecology and water technology are required. For effective
Dutch water management, the specific contours of polders, their
geographic position and soil types, must be understood. An
equally important factor to consider is that, in the Netherlands,
the land surface created by water drainage is the substructure
of its spatial form (genius loci).
The Netherlands is composed of more than 3,000
polders, which have been formed through building dykes,
draining and pumping the land dry. A polder is an area of
land that lies below sea level, demarcated or isolated from
the surrounding land, (usually by a dike) and which has an

  WATER CULTURES
autonomous, artificially regulated, water management system.
In the contemporary context, Dutch polders have progressively
become overshadowed by the city and the ‘language’ of the
man-made landscape has somehow been lost within these
organic urban patterns.
30

Fig. 1  Lake-bed Polder

The ‘sea of land’ expresses the tectonics of the Dutch polder landscape.

Polder types
Different polder types, such as lake-bed polders – with or
without an inner outlet pool or reservoir system for surplus
water (in Dutch, a boezem) – and various peat or bog polders are
the focus of current investigations into water transport forms
and, specifically, understanding the ways in which water moves
within polders from ditches to canals and finally to reservoirs.
Architectonic qualities of polder artefacts, including pumping
stations, bridges, dikes and water-related building structures,
are also being investigated. These artefacts have played – and
continue to play – an active role in the spatial design of the
water system, and understanding their underlying structure
is essential to explore new spatial possibilities of the water
machine. The primary objective of this research is to learn
from the existing water drainage system and to plan for
predicted future needs and demands; it thus seeks to achieve a
specific, articulated, architectonic understanding of the Dutch
landscape.
To construct a polder, the area is first enclosed by a dike
with a ring canal, after which the water is pumped into the
canal by mechanical means. Drainage ditches are then dug in
the new land – often fertile clay – to transport water to the main
canal, which is usually laid centrally along the polder’s long
axis. Pumping stations carry the water from this main canal
to the ring canal and/or reservoir, from where it flows out to
sea. The process implies a never-ending need to pump, since
the drained area is both at a lower level than the surrounding
land and below the ground-water level. Today, lake-bed
polders rely on electrically powered pumps to keep water at
the desired level. The deepest polder in the Netherlands lies
at about 6-metres below the Amsterdam Ordinance Datum
(Normaal Amsterdams Peil, NAP (fig. 1)). The lake bed within the
polder perimeter never levels out entirely, as there is a certain
variety both in soil types and rates at which the ground settles.
The result is a set of distinct polder sections characterized by
variations in level.
As early as the eighth century, areas of peat were being
drained and overlaid with a grid of drainage ditches and
prepared for farming and settlement. Peat polder regions thus
PUMPS + POLDERS
qualify as a ‘cultural’ landscape. Their elongated tracts of land
reflected the right of farmers to annex drained tidal marshland
adjoining their own land (called the recht van opstrek). Initially,
peat reclamation relied on natural drainage, with valve culverts
used to connect ditches with peat channels or watercourses.
When peat levels began to sink as the water drained away,
pumping stations became necessary, and peat dikes were built
in order to prevent surplus water from flooding drained areas
(fig. 2).
The reclaimed landscape was thus transformed into
a polder network, with parcels of land lined by dams, in
which water levels could be regulated independently of
the surrounding area. Reclaimed land was first used for
farming, but as it settled and sank, the soil grew increasingly
wet and suitable only as pasture. Continued sinking of the
ground required surplus water to be carried off via sluices
to the reservoir and let out in the area behind the dike. Later,
watermills and pumps were needed to drain low-lying 31
land and maintain fixed water levels (fig. 3). The resultant
landscape is open and traversed by ditches that stretch out in
one direction, creating a powerful visual perspective. Water
in ditches is intentionally high in order to keep the land wet
and thereby prevent further sinking. Buildings were erected in
raised ribbons perpendicular to the ditches.
From the sixteenth century onwards, the natural lakes and
ponds resulting from repeated peat extraction were drained
using water-pumping mills. Mill courses, or chains of mills
placed one behind the other, were necessary to drain the water
below the 1.5-metre level (the usual level that a single mill was
capable of lifting). Programmes for reclaiming land from such
bodies of water were conceived as part of broader, integral
design for land use, in which draining and discharging water,
pumping it out into a reservoir and letting it off into outlying
waters were all planned in advance. Subsequently, the
eighteenth century saw the introduction of steam-driven water
pumping stations, which made it possible to drain larger areas
of water, including the lake that was once the Haarlemmermeer
and sections of the Zuider Zee inlet in the North Sea.
 1696 1850

32

1920 2000

Fig. 2  Development of the Municipality of ‘De Ronde Venen’

The evolution of the Ronde Venen polder provides a perfect example of the transformation of
the Dutch landscape through time. In 1696, a multitude of ditches were dug to generate natural
drainage. By 1850, peat digging started, lowering the ground level and subsequently creating large
water surfaces. A quarter of a century later (in 1920), these lakes were reclaimed and the site
gradually evolved into the hybrid lake-bed/ peat polder that it is today (2000).
(drawings by N. Rickert – also opening image)

Dikes
Polder dikes differ from river dikes in that they are neither
as high nor as long, and enclose a level area. For a long time,
dike construction remained a process of trial and error. From
the 1870s onwards, however, it grew into an increasingly well-
developed science. Reclaimed tracts of land in the peat polders
were first encircled with earth embankments to isolate them
from adjoining marshland. Yet as the ground continued to
settle, the embankments had to be raised ever higher. The
drained and decomposing peat caused water levels in bog
streams to rise to increasingly higher levels, creating the need
for repeated reinforcement.
Dikes constructed to surround peat are lower and less
steep than those lining the lower-lying lake-bed polders.
The fact that peat beds can only support a minimal amount
of weight requires that the ground be built up along a very
gradual incline, resulting in dikes that resemble elongated
waves across the landscape. Dikes enclosing lake-bed polders,
by contrast, are far more robust, usually also in part because of
their embedded ring canal and the more cohesive and denser
clay of which they are composed. The shape of these dikes is a
defining feature of the polder and can serve as a linking device
in the articulation of water-oriented designs.
Pumping stations
The notion that polders are empty, open expanses of land is,
from a historical perspective, not true. Many dozens of mills
contributed to the imposing Dutch skyline that existed from the
sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Only after the majority of
these water pumping mills were replaced by steam-powered
pumping stations did vistas across the polder open up. Since
steam stations had far greater pumping capacity, deeper lakes
could also be drained dry. The number of pumps employed
was many times less, and their edifices stood much lower on
the skyline.
Another interesting area for investigation in terms of the
architectonic expression of the water system is the technological
and landscape-architectonic position occupied by the steam-
powered and, later, electrically-powered pumping stations. The
PUMPS + POLDERS
introduction of the steam pump was itself a celebration of new
technology – a case in point is the Cruquius pumping station
(1850) in the Haarlemmermeer polder, where the pumps fringe
the building exterior like tentacles (fig. 4).
Several decades later, around the turn of the century, steam
pumps were replaced by cleaner and more efficient electric or
diesel-powered pumps that were housed in even more compact
buildings. This new generation of pumping stations was built
in the modernist style, thus showcasing their functionality.
The visual focus was laid more on their electrical engines than
on the jacks or the pump that had to lift the water up several
metres. An example is the Lely pumping station (1930), which
rises like a white cathedral dedicated in honour of the draining
of the Wieringer Lake, and the creation of the first of the major
Zuider Zee polders. The monumental character of the building
is underscored by its triple axis of watercourses, reminiscent
of the classic patte d’oie as used in the grand French formal
gardens at Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte to link landscape 33
and buildings. Modern-day pumping stations, of which there
are hundreds, are usually nothing more than green cabins
circumscribed by unsightly fencing. With the arrival of these
structures, the architectonic epitome of the lowlands water
system faded into obscurity.
How can water system operations – and in this specific
case, pumping stations – be visibly restored and endowed with
a wider-ranging architectural expression? Opportunities may
be found if we broaden our scope to include other programmes
that engage with water. One contemporary example is the
pumping station in the Onnerpolder (fig. 5), where the station
is integrated into a hiking trail, serves as a bird-watching
post, and is an object which occupies the landscape. The city
of Amsterdam has adopted a similar approach in the eye-
catching architectural designs of the four large booster stations
used to carry wastewater out of the city. A booster station is
a pumping station that pushes wastewater directly through to
the next pump, forcing it towards the sewage treatment station.
The buildings in Amsterdam reflect their function and generate
awareness amongst city residents of the technology required to
make urban water work.
 [4]

34

[3] [5]
Fig. 3  Steam Pump in Arkemheem, Arkemhemerpolder
The Arkemhemerpolder is listed as one of the twenty most beautiful landscapes in the Netherlands
and boasts extensive openness, a distinct plot layout and a strong peat pasture character.
Fig. 4  Cruquius Pumping Station, Haarlemmermeerpolder
A beautiful example of a steam-powered pump is the Cruquius pumping station(built in 1850).
Fig. 5  New Pumping Station in the Onnerpolder
Besides becoming notable architectural fragments in the landscape, present-day pump stations
– like the one in the Onnerpolder – try to incorporate different water-related programmes in their
design, like hiking trails and bird-watching.
 PUMPS + POLDERS

Conclusion References
Polder design has always been an exercise in spatial planning, BOBBINK, I. [2005] Land InZicht. Amsterdam: Sun.
whether consciously or latent. It is the result of public works BOBBINK, I. and NIJHUIS, S. [1993] ‘Waterontwerp, de architectuur
and water management control over both land reclamation van het water: toolbox’ in G.P. van de Ven [ed.] Leefbaar laagland.
Geschiedenis van de waterbeheersing en landaanwinning in Nederland,
and the creation of Dutch water metropoli. When considered
Utrecht.
from a design perspective, the most important issue facing
HOOIMEIJER, F. and MEYER, H. [2006] Atlas of Dutch Water Cities,
western regions of the Netherlands – and many other cities in
Amsterdam: SUN.
comparable environments – is the formal integration of urban-
REH, W., SMIENK, G., and STEENBERGEN, C.M. [1992] Architectuur
architectonic and landscape-architectonic systems. If we take
en Landschap. De techniek van de rationele, de formele en de picturale
the compositional substructure of the landscape as our point of enscenering, Delft: TU Delft.
departure, a design with water as its focus provides a means
STEENBERGEN C.M., REH W., and ATEN D. [2007] Sea of Land,
of achieving this spatial transformation. Such a water-oriented Amsterdam: Thoth.
design would be capable of shaping the identity of the Randstad
WALDHEIM, C. [ed.] [2006] The Landscape Urbanism Reader. New York:
or, better yet, the entire Delta metropolitan region. Princeton Architectural Press.
While the first step – interest in water and its wide-scale
integration in land use designs – has already been taken, it
has hardly made consistent contributions to practicable water
35
management. The ideal water system would account for current
changes in climate and the requirements this implies and, at
the same time, articulate the beauty and tradition of the Dutch
polder system.
0 km 1
 Changde: Dry-scape City within Water-scape
Territory
The city of Changde, a typical thriving medium-sized city
of modern China, promotes itself as ‘a fairyland city of three
mountains and three rivers’. It is located in the western plain
of Lake Dongting and on the shore of Yuan River, which is
one of the four major tributaries of Southern China’s Yangtse
River. Its territory is criss-crossed by more than 400 small
rivers, lakes and wetlands. The agricultural landscape around
the city-centre is dominated by linear farming villages within
REINVENTING WATERSCAPE an urban-agricultural network of small-scale canals, ditches
URBANISM and reservoirs. The irrigation network supports terraced rice-
paddies and provides enough water for two crops of rice per
Changde, China
year. Water buffalos and white herons, the most common
domestic and wild animals adapted for life in wet landscapes,
are extensively present within this territory. Indigenous water
resource management techniques have evolved from an
37
intimate association with climatic, topographic and hydraulic
conditions to create a productive water-based urbanism.
However, within Changde’s modern urban centre these
natural qualities of the territory have been concealed. All rivers
and water flows within and around the densely built-up city
have been engineered to stay outside, pass around and under
it rather than through its core. The quayside road along the
Yuan River is blocked by a green concrete dike, leaving only a
narrow strip of waterfront park along the river. As well, newly-
constructed parks along Chuanzi River, which is to become the
new ’golden belt’ of the growing city, do not relate to the water.
This is partly due to an engineering approach which addresses
strong water level fluctuations and the poor water quality
caused by overflow from open sewage basins located along the
river.

  WATER CULTURES
The contrast between Changde city’s dryscape, embedded
within a larger productive waterscape territory, represents
a typical situation of many modern-day Chinese cities.
Taking into account China’s socio-hydrological conditions
and contemporary urban development challenges, how can
Changde’s identity be reconstructed based on a hydrologic-
infrastructural approach to its urban landscape?
 North China
BEIJING: Seasonal distribution of precipitation

200 mm
Nenjiang
150 mm Ertix River Songhua-Liaohe Riverbasin 165,3
100 mm 62,5
III River Sungari
50 mm

0 mm
J F M AM J J A S O N D Inland Riverbasin 116,4
86,2
Water Resources Population Tamir River Liao He
North China North China

Yellow Riverbasin 66,1

40,6
19% 46%
Yongding River
Surface Water (km3) Huang He Beijing
407,2
255,1
535,8 Tianjin Hai-Luan Riverbasin 28,8
Ground Water (km3) 26,5

Surface Water (km3) Huai Riverbasin 74,1

Großer Kanal (Yunhe) 39,3
2260,6
573,7
2.274,6
La Huang He (Gelber Fluss)
Ground Water (km3) nc
an

Jin

Jal
Nu g Ying He
Jia Jia

sha

un
ng ng

kia
-jia
Shanghai

ng
Southwest basin

ng
Jangtsekiang Wuhan 585,3
81% 54% Yarlung Chengdu 585,3

Dongting Hu
200 mm Yangtze Riverbasin 951,3
Changde
246,4
150 mm Brahmaputra
Chuanzi
100 mm
Southeast Riverbasin 255,7
50 mm
61,3
0 mm Hongshui He (Pearl River)
J F M AM J J A S O N D
38 CHANGDE: Seasonal distribution of precipitation
Guangzhou Pearl Riverbasin 468,5
Yu Jiang 111,6

South China

Fig. 1  Uneven Distribution of Water Resources

As China‘s population grows and becomes more urbanized, pressure is increasing on national
water resources, already 25% lower than the global per capita average. Today, out of about 600
cities in China, the number of cities experiencing water shortage problems exceeds 400.
Distribution of water across the country is highly uneven, with the southern river systems
(including Yuan River as part of the Yangtze River Basin) supplying 81% of water, but supporting
only half of China‘s population across one third of its territory. North of the Yangtze, 46% of the total
population survives on just 19% of total water resources.
China is subject to a strong monsoon climate with dry winters and humid summers. The
annual precipitation in areas of southern China is more than 2000 mm (Changde 1417 mm); in
northwestern China it is usually less than 200 mm (Beijing 619 mm). Precipitation and river runoff
vary greatly from year to year and from season to season, with the ratio of maximum annual runoff
to minimum exceeding more than 10 in some areas. Affected by climate and topography, China
experiences more frequent drought, flood and waterlogging hazards than most countries in the
world (Sternfeld 1997).
 REINVENTING WATERSCAPE URBANISM

Indigenous China´s Hydraulic Society ‘Evidently the masters of hydraulic society [...] were great
To understand the co-existence of indigenous and modern builders. The formula is usually invoked for both the aesthetic
techniques of water management in China (resulting in different and the technical aspect of the matter; and these two aspects
appearances of urban and regional territories), one has to take a are indeed closely interrelated’ [Wittfogel 1957].
closer look at the social and spatial aspects present throughout Until the 18th century, China was quite advanced in the
the country’s long tradition of water management. field of comprehensive, small and large-scale, environmental
The distribution of water in China is highly unbalanced and hydraulic engineering and landscape transformation.
– both geographically and seasonally (fig. 1). The consequence However, during the course of the 20th century, China
is frequent occurrences of drought and flooding events and, seemingly lost its ability to transform its historical tradition,
subsequently, unstable agricultural production, unsafe urban characterized by the formation of strong linkages between
construction and a serious imbalance between water supply and watershed logics, cultivation practices and urbanization
demand. Due to such unfavourable conditions, the regulation patterns, into a modern urban development paradigm.
and distribution of water has challenged the Chinese for
thousands of years. Even in Chinese mythology, the origins of
civilization are closely linked to the regulation of water. Going
back to Xia Dynasty [21-17 BC], the prominent position of Yu
as a controller of water shows the early integration of water
39
control with control of the state. Chinese cultural landscapes
are not only organized and structured by small-scale irrigation
systems and terraced fields, but are also the first historically
verified, large-scale, government-managed works of irrigation
and flood control (going back more than 3000 years). One
famous example, still maintained today, is the Dujiangyan
irrigation system near Chengdu which was built in 256 BC to
solve multiple problems of flood, drought and navigation. By
irrigating over 5,300 square kilometres of land, it made this
part of Sichuan one of the most productive agricultural regions
in China.
Both small-scale irrigation works by local farmers, and
large-scale, government-managed works of irrigation and flood
control, based on a deep understanding of water-related natural Bach

characteristics and ecosystem performances, were needed

to ensure survival in such unpredictable natural conditions.
This intimate knowledge of complex and dynamic hydrologic Paddy field Paddy field Paddy field Reservoir

processes was actively applied in the physical construction of

Paddy field
Paddy field
River

sophisticated water infrastructure landscapes – formed by

the integration of geo-morphological, hydraulic and technical Fig. 2  Terraced Water and Storage
structures (fig. 2). Such information induced western historians Cultivated terraces around Dongting Lake are based on existing
to call China a ‘hydraulic society’. As Wittfogel stated: hydrologic landscape structures in order to balance seasonal water
fluctuations.
 Fig. 3  Water in the Modern Chinese City
With the concreting and canalizing of waterways, the current separation
between culture and nature in China becomes highly visible. Urban
40 and landscape designers have been charged with screening and
cosmetically beautifying the appearance of concrete river banks and
dikes by the mere addition of standardized, exchangeable elements,
such as stones and statues, benches and fences, contour-cut shrubs
and flowerpots. Creating a new, controlled image of landscape, their
designs do not respond in any way to existing natural features or other
peculiarities of place. Natural processes and patterns, such as changing
water levels, the formative force of water or water-adapted vegetation
are not integrated, but rather suppressed by superimposed forms and
structures. However, outside the scope of official planning, the open
space along many urban waterways is taken over by informal productive
landscapes managed by citizens.
Chuanzi RiverChuanzi River
Rice paddiesRice paddies
Yuan River Yuan River

36 m ASL
Changde 1950 32 - 36 m ASL 29 m ASL

36 m ASL
32 - 36 m ASL 29 m ASL
basinsewage basin

belt along dike

Chuanzi RiverChuanzi River

Changde 2008
Yuan River Yuan River

Concreted
Main dike

dike
Green
Concreted sewage

36 m ASL
Green belt along

32 - 36 m ASL 29 m ASL
Main dike

36 m ASL

32 - 36 m ASL 29 m ASL
Fig. 4  Changde´s Traditional and Contemporary Layout Fig. 5  Engineered Waterways
Changde´s expanded urban territory depends on expensive water The planted concrete dike blocks view and access to Yuan River. The
defence, drainage and pumping techniques – the logics of the watershed overflow from concrete open sewage basins pollute urban watercourses.
have been compromised through strategies of disassociation (instead of Park’s within the city’s ‘golden belt’ are without relationship to Chuanzi
adaptation). River.

From Waterscape to Watertech Urbanism
Within the pre-industrial phase of urbanization and land-use
intensification, hydraulic engineering was a major component
of territorial planning and water infrastructure systems were
extremely prominent in most Chinese cities – gaining even
more importance as a structural and visual component of urban
and regional form than in cultural landscapes dominated by
agricultural land-use [Yu at al. 2008]. Man-made open canals
and retention ponds created water-adaptive cities and could
create synergies with other important urban functions such
as providing transportation routes for goods and building
materials, serving as an open space network for social needs,
supplying water for domestic and industrial uses as well as
serving as a system for storm water retention, irrigation, food
production and waste water disposal. Many of the few still
existing examples of such kinds of water cities in China have
become popular tourist sites – clearly showing that the most
profoundly moving urban water landscapes are nothing more
than the irrigation, domestic water supply, transportation,
sanitary sewer and flood control systems of the time. These
landscapes allow the site-specific natural processes to be
revealed and utilized within the urban setting. Although the reality of water experiences in the modern
However, rapid industrialization since the 1950s,
accompanied by the communist regime’s political campaigns
of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ which promoted a philosophy of
conquest in defiance of nature, put a sudden end to the long
tradition of building water-adaptive cities. Due to a strong
belief in modern technologies in order to overcome natural
restrictions and the rejection of traditional techniques related
to agriculture, most of today’s Chinese urban agglomerations
have become increasingly dry, with a strong separation
between functional, non-aesthetic engineering realizations in
contrast to non-functional, beautiful landscape decorations.
Along with rapid urbanization, the total area covered by
impermeable surfaces has increased dramatically. A vast
network of underground water pipes and sewer systems is
replacing polluted and dangerous open water courses; this is
considered to be major ‘progress’ in the field of engineering
and urban planning. At the same time, the urban structures
REINVENTING WATERSCAPE URBANISM
of cities are increasingly dissociated from the organization of
hydraulic systems, erasing the visual and spatial logic of urban
watersheds. Continuing population growth puts more pressure
on the limited available space suitable for construction and,
as a result, more and more people settle in areas that are even
more susceptible to flooding. At the same time, since rivers are
perceived as major threats to urbanization, most of them have
been transformed into concrete channels.
Current Chinese urban development practices treat
nature as an enemy that can only be overcome by increasingly
aggressive technological and beautification interventions (fig.
3). Water problems are solved by engineers in a technical and
preferably hidden way, so the urban and landscape designers
gain the freedom of being able to focus on aesthetic and spatial
design issues of the urban layout – with the effect that their
designs become arbitrary, exchangeable and with one city,
looking much like another, regardless of where it is being built.
But despite all human efforts, nature cannot be conquered by 41
technology. Hydraulic engineering frequently loses its battle
against water and today, millions of people in China remain
threatened by severe flooding and water pollution.
Chinese city reflects a strong culturally dominated landscape
image, there is an increasing effort by city governments and
investors to establish a closer relationship with the qualities of
a natural and water–based environment. As in Changde, many
Chinese cities are currently developing visions to open up their
inner-city waterfront locations, trying to attract new residents
with concepts like ‘lake paradise’ or ‘modern fairyland city’. Yet
this desire is highly contradictory. While longing for a natural
dimension, many projects merely turn the urban landscape into
a series of high-maintenance, unsustainable and segregated
water theme parks (fig. 4). There is a missed opportunity to
reinvent waterscape traditions to integrate present and future
requirements of water management, ecology and open space
development.
 Liuye Lake
Chuanzi River

2
1
Rive
anzi r
Chuanzi River Chu

Xin
3

Riv
er

Yuan River

33.90 m ASL

42 max. 28.50m ASL Chuanzi-River

reservoir of combined wastewater

1 2 3 4 5

Inflow of sewage water Coarse rack Deposition of solids Pumping station II Outlet into Chuanzi

Fig. 6  Mapping of Changde´s Open Wastewater Basins along the Chuanzi River 3
This project critically examined and mapped Changde´s existing waste water system and its 1 2
17 open rain and wastewater retention basins located along the urban watercourses. Although
connected to the wastewater treatment plant, in Changde´s monsoon climate their frequent
overflow is a main source of water pollution. Within the landscape design for the new green
belt along Chuanzi River these basins were not considered despite being located within it. Also,
the engineers avoided upgrading the existing system, but prefered costly centralized solutions.
 REINVENTING WATERSCAPE URBANISM

Constructed Ecologies and Contemporary
Waterscape Urbanism
An interdisciplinary group of Chinese and German experts,
through ongoing cooperation between the cites of Changde
and Hannover, continues to explore ways to develop Changde´s
dry urban territory within a wet fluvial plain, where a natural
hydrologic network is replaced by a drainage network (fig. 5, fig.
6). The aim is to examine and give guidelines in order to create
an urban water landscape with a clear connection between
the underlying structures of topography, hydrology and soils
be considered a strategic chance to strengthen the cooperation
between civil engineers, ecologists, urban designers and
landscape architects. In such projects the emerging discipline
of landscape urbanism could take on a major role as its strength
lies in its knowledge about incorporating the performance of
natural processes into spatial design strategies, linking them
with engineering, ecological and urban design thinking. By
Population:
26600 EW

Seperate sewage basin

Sewage water
as the major structuring foundation of urban form, including Size: 14 000m³

the use of catchments as the basis for physical planning and

Rainwater storage basin
regulation. At the same time, it aims to make use of the obvious Rainwater
Size: 30 000m³

synergies between the need to create networks of open space

to serve social and ecological needs within the growing city Constructed wetland I
and affordable approaches to engineering and urban water CSB/BSB5 Size: 5 000m²
Constructed wetland II
management. Size: 15 000m²
43
In current investigations, the different elements of water Little rain Much rain

infrastructure no longer relate only to their own networks

defined merely by functionality and efficiency, but also to their
context of cultural, social and ecological processes within the
urban matrix. This means developing ideas of infrastructure
to become landscape and landscape to become infrastructure
towards more integrated hybrid typologies. The design of every
infrastructure element should be integrated into the urban
open space framework. This way, the infrastructure of water
management can simultaneously be used by people as their
public open space as well as to store, conduct and purify water.
Two research projects demonstrate how drainage and Fig. 7  Wastewater Basins as Green Infrastructure
water purification systems, as a hybrid of built infrastructure, Rather than investing a huge sum of money in technical, centralized
ecological functions and public green space can serve as solutions for a new drainage and water treatment system, in addition
to an expensive park design, this proposal takes the upgrading of
fundamental components to change the urban landscape (fig.
Boziyuan Wastewater Basin as an example of how to combine the low-
7, fig. 8). Making use of dynamic and self-correcting natural cost improvement of its technical performance with affordable measures
processes, the designed urban infrastructures perform as to improve the accessibility and ecology of the Chuanzi Waterfront Park.
‘artificial ecologies’. They contain a higher degree of ecological It suggested subdividing the basin into several chambers to assure that
the volumes of each chamber are utilized completely by separating the
resilience, require less intervention and technical control than
different qualities of water and shortening retention time. The rainwater
conventional systems and, at the same time, offer attractive overflow will be cleaned in a series of constructed wetlands which are
landscape experiences. open to the public and become an essential part of the river park’s
The aim to reinvent concepts of waterscape urbanism can landscape design.
 Nov. Dec . Jan. Feb . Ma r. Apr. May Jun . Jul . Aug. Sept . Oct.
Rape Rice Rice

approx. 32 m ASL approx. 32 m ASL

sedimentation

sedimentation
Boardwalk

Boardwalk
Rainwater

approx. 27 m ASL
Constructed wetland River Constructed wetland
Primary

Primary
gutter

44

November December January February March April May June July August September October

Fig. 8  Wetland Park Xiajiadang, Changde

The existing waterways in Changde´s suburban areas serve as open wastewater channels, since
there is no existing sewer system. According to the 2020 master plan, these will be developed to
become green corridors that might be much less ecological and productive and also loose their
connection with the urban wastewater system; instead, an underground sewer system is to be
connected to the central wastewater treatment plant.
In a counter-proposal, a multifunctional network of open space along waterways and functions
is created as a system of retention reservoirs for excess water during floods, for water purification
and, at the same time, as a productive public park landscape. The rice paddy-dominated
agricultural identity of the territory is seen as a very special quality and is used to spatially organize
the juxtaposition of urban and rural activities within green corridors. The design seeks to use rice,
native plants and crops to strengthen the city’s identity while also fulfilling a new role as an urban
environment – namely becoming a productive landscape for work and leisure, and a technical
landscape for storing and purifying water.
 REINVENTING WATERSCAPE URBANISM

reuniting the engineered and the natural, we may find new References
logics towards a more resilient development of infrastructural MOSSOP, E. [2005] ‘Affordable Landscapes’, Topos, 50: 13-23.
landscapes, which in turn could become a base of sustainable MOSSOP, E. [2006] ‘Landscapes of Infrastructure’, in C. Waldheim [ed]
urban and regional form. The Landscape Urbanism Reader, New York: Princeton Architectural
One of the key problems of current urbanization trends Press.
in the case of Changde and China is related to the deficiencies STERNFELD, E. [1997] Beijing, Stadtentwicklung und Wasserwirtschaft.
of conventional engineering concepts of urban drainage and Sozioökonomische und ökologische Aspekte der Wasserkrise und
Handlungsperspektiven, Berlin: Technische Universität.
purification systems – and a lot of money is to be invested in
exploring new solutions in the future. Rather than leaving this WITTFOGEL, K. [1957] Oriental despotism. A comparative study of total
power, New Haven: Yale University Press.
field to engineers, landscape urbanists should use this window
of opportunity to take a leading role in the reconstruction YU, K., and PADUA, M. [eds] [2006] The Art of Survival. Recovering
Landscape Architecture, Victoria: Images Publishing Group Ltd.
and development of urban infrastructure systems – using
the landscape as a point of departure. As Elisabeth Mossop YU, K., LI, D., and LEI, Z. [2008] The water adaptive landscapes in ancient
chinese cities, in W. Kuitert [ed] Transforming with water, Wageningen:
and Kongjian Yu suggest in their recent claims for ‘affordable
Blauwdruk and Techne Press.
landscapes’ [Mossop 2005] and ‘Recovering landscape
ZHENG, N. [2008] Wetland Park Xiajiadang, Changde, Hanover:
architecture as the art of survival’ [Yu 2006], all disciplines
Unpublished Diploma thesis.
involved in the development of urban territories need
to shift their focus towards integrated, landscape-based ZHU, Y. [2007] Grüne Infrastruktur und Freiraumgestaltung. Umgestaltung 45
der Mischwassersammelbecken in der Stadt Changde, Hanover:
solutions to the seemingly independent challenges of water Unpublished Diploma thesis.
and infrastructure provision, environmental and social
improvement and the creation of site-specific identities. Rather
than trying to eliminate ecological processes and invest huge
sums of money to replace them within controlled technical
systems, we need an ‘intellectual leap by comprehensively
applying the understanding of ecological processes and natural
systems to human settlements and planning’ [Mossop 2006].
For the landscape to become infrastructural, we need a more
profound and practical knowledge about the interrelationships
between ecological, infrastructure and urban systems. We
need to educate ourselves in natural hydrology as well as civil
engineering and dare to bridge the different disciplines. The
ancient traditions and current challenges of China demonstrate
the strengths and weaknesses of hydraulic engineering and
territorial planning, and highlight the potential of water
infrastructure reclamation and its crucial role in urban and
landscape design.

SOUTH ASIAN HYDRAULIC
CIVILIZATIONS
India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh
Water & Society
Monsoon South Asia is representative of a ‘hydraulic
civilization’ [Wittfogel 1956]. Great irrigation works have
sustained agricultural settlements for millennia and a large
percentage of the region’s population lives directly beside
or derives livelihoods from its lush tropical deltaic plains
and complex riverine systems. ‘Water culture’ has played
a powerful role in shaping South Asian histories, societies
and economies. The countries of India, Bangladesh and Sri
Lanka – the cases discussed here – raise a host of complex and
intertwined issues regarding water science, water impacts on
ecosystems and societies, water law, policy and politics, water
economics, and water ethics and equity. The spatial structuring
capacity, impact and challenges of peninsular (Mumbai),
deltaic (Jessore-Khulna-Mongla region), and coastal (Galle-
Matara) systems has been, and remains, inextricably tied to
social beliefs and mythology as much as to water control and
47
engineering. Bangladesh represents an extreme case, whereby
one third of its area is comprised of water in the dry season;
in the rainy season 70% of the territory is submerged, 10% of
the people live in boats, 40% depend on the sea and rivers for
a livelihood, and 100% depend on the rain and floods for food.
Bangladesh is in the world’s largest delta system and has the
greatest flow of river water to the sea of any country on earth
[Novak 1993: 22]. The demand of respect and human vigilance
is unparalleled, as the increasing occurrence of devastating
natural disasters poignantly reminds (Mumbai’s 2005 flood,
southwest Bangladesh’s 2007 Cyclone Sidr and the 2004
tsunami in Sri Lanka and a number of other countries rimming
the Indian Ocean).
‘Monsoon’ is an Arabic word which means winds
changing directions. In the Indian sub-continent, the winds
  WATER CULTURES
generally blow from the southwest during half of the year
and from the northeast during the other half. The reversal
of direction is due to the effects of differential heating as the
Himalayan plateau heats up during the summer, causing the
air to rise and be replaced by the warm, moist air over the
Indian Ocean. Drenching rains turn solid earth into marsh
and rising rivers burst banks. Watery labyrinths transform
48

Fig. 1  Banganga Tank, Mumbai. Fig. 2  Ghats on the Buriganga River, Dhaka
The Banganga Tank, built in the 12th century, remains a vibrant centre of The land/water threshold along Dhaka’s Buriganga River is an explosion of
social and religious life in the rapidly modernizing urban core of Mumbai. activity – with wholesale markets, ferry landing places, washing areas, etc.

territories into temporal seas. Floods are a repository of the rich
silt that accounts for the region’s fertility and is essential for the
growth of rice and other crops, as well as the replenishment of
the underground water table. Flora and fauna thrive and result
in green ‘urban jungles’.
Water is an element of threatening movement; it is
unpredictable and difficult to contain. At the same time, it is
a life bringing force, an element of cleansing and important
with regards to various belief systems, mythologies and
relations of settlement to larger cosmologies. Water holds a
privileged position in Hinduism (India), Islam (Bangladesh)
and Buddhism (Sri Lanka) and is also revered in traditional
festivals and pilgrimages to auspicious sites. In India, there
are seven sacred rivers and the Ganges is considered mother
to all Hindus. As well, natural entities and forces, such as Sun,
Earth, Rivers, Ocean, Wind and Water have been worshipped in
India as Gods since time immemorial. The King of these Gods
is Indra, the God of Rain. Throughout Islam, the word shari`ah
itself is closely related to water. In early Arab dictionaries, it was
defined as ‘the place from which one descends to water’. Before
the advent of Islam in Arabia, the shari`ah was, in fact, a series
of rules about water use: the shir`at al-maa’ were the permits that
gave right to drinking water. The term later was technically
developed to include the body of laws and rules given by
Allah. In Buddhism, water symbolises purity, clarity and
calmness. Throughout South Asia, the high, dry spots in deltaic
plains usually boast ancient stupas, shrines and monasteries,
becoming focal points for the surrounding populace. Poetry, art
and song are tied to the seasonal fluctuations of aquatic lands.
Indigenous Traditions
As is evident in many cultures of the ancient South Asian
subcontinent, man was once more than able to work with nature
to harness its powers for survival. Low-tech means and rational
logics led to the efficient use of water of seasonal watercourses,
storage of monsoon rains for use in dry seasons and building
methods which adapted to flood waters. Modes of production
worked with the dynamics of erosion and sedimentation and
inextricable links between irrigation and settlement are evident
SOUTH ASIAN HYDRAULIC CIVILIZATIONS
throughout the region. Cultural practices and entrenched
social hierarchies resolutely determined the meaning, use
and maintenance of water networks – often with symbolic/
religious rituals being the flip-side of their pragmatic functions.
Throughout low-lying parts of South and Southeast Asia, a land
amphibious by nature, historical building traditions – from
the scale of an individual house to hamlets and areas of urban
centres – rely upon a process of cut-and-fill whereby higher,
‘safe’ elevations (mounds) are created by digging adjacent land
which, in turn, creates ponds or tanks.
In India and Bangladesh, the millennium-old stepwells
– very deep receptacles designed to combat evaporation and
allow for the harvesting of natural rain water – and tanks
demonstrate a successful joining of rational and pragmatic
logics with social, cultural and religious codes (fig. 1). Many
of the stepwells were resting and water gathering places along
caravan trade routes which became elevated to the status of
social and religious monuments; they were highly decorated 49
and served much more than utilitarian needs. Traditional
tanks were not only water reservoirs (collecting rain waters
for use in the dry season) used in daily domestic routines for
drinking, bathing and washing; they were also sources used for
irrigation and fishing. Similarly, step-ponds or tanks of various
sizes were used to spatially structure family compounds,
neighbourhoods and villages and were centres of religious and
cultural significance. Pump wells were often located on their
perimeter and the ponds became centres of social gathering.
Similarly, South Asian ghats – a series of steps leading
down to a body of water – are both utilitarian and symbolic.
The ghat establishes contact between land and water, varying
from a small pond to a major river and everything in between.
Along larger rivers, ghats can be major economic resource,
interspersed along concrete embankments, bustling with
activity and serving as hubs for (formal and informal) transport
and commerce (fig. 2). Gently sloping surfaces and steps operate
as landing places for different size boats, platforms for drying
laundry and recyclable plastic bags, curing bamboo, washing
and other domestic activities, and for sitting, fishing and
selling wares. Informal vendors align access-ways and create
 Malwatte - Oya

Fetawanarama
Dagaba
Kuttam - Pokuna

Bulam - Kulam

Thuparama
Dagaba

[3]
Basawah-Kulam Abhayagiri
Dagaba
Ruwanweli
Dagaba

Mirisweti Dagaba

50

Issuramunagala

Tissa - Wewa

0 300 600m

[5]

[4] 0m 500 1000

Fig. 3  Dhobi Ghat, Mumbai

The public laundry area of the city is an activity passed generationally
onto the dhobi wallahs.
Fig. 4  Anuradhapura Archeological Remains, Sri Lanka
Anuradhapura, the first royal capital of Sri Lanka (founded in 377
BC), had an inseparable tie of water to the sacred and every-daily life
settlement structures.
Fig. 5  Eastern Periphery, Dhaka
Informal settlement areas encroach water bodies and compromise the
ecology of the city.
Fig. 6  Monsoon-rains, Mumbai
[6] As impermeable surfaces in the city disappear, flooding increases.

an animated bridge between water and land. In Mumbai, there
is also the specialized dhobi ghat – public laundry places with
long cement tanks grouted into the ground, fed by a central
water channel and next to tubs where clothes are soaked before
washing (fig. 3).
In Sri Lanka, the ingenious construction of water retention
reservoirs (as early as the 1st century AD) made life in the
inhospitable parched landscape of the Dry Zone possible.
Large-scale irrigation networks were constructed using systems
of small storage reservoirs in narrow linear valleys – which
later evolved into a comprehensive system of planned river
basin development. Regal cities developed with a sophisticated
relationship between agricultural and reservoir systems, built
form and the natural landscape (fig. 4). The temples/stupae,
monasteries, housing for royalty, royal pleasure gardens (of
water), housing for commoners and reservoirs were arranged
in the territory according to Buddhist principles and related
adjacencies and geometries.
Under Pressure
Monsoon South Asia is a landscape of vegetal and hydrological
intensity. The region’s profits and perils are linked to what
once was an extensive system of rivers, canals, lakes, ponds
and low-land marshy areas. Torrential rains cause severe
flooding in low-lying areas – often under-utilized open spaces
inhabited by vulnerable squatter communities (fig. 5). Water
resource management should arguably be at the core of all
scales of planning and development, but everyday realities
and the ineffectiveness of development controls has resulted in
the wide-spread illegal encroachment, land filling and severe
environmental degradation of water bodies. Pollution by
industrial and domestic waste has transformed once-flowing
conduits into stagnant sewers, often clogged by rotting solid
waste. The devastation wreaked is evident in the price Mumbai
has paid for its flagrant indifference to the Mithi River and the
disappearance of its absorptive landscapes. In order to satisfy
the aspirations of developers (and the municipal authority’s
desire to become a Shanghai-like ‘world-class city’), the
government has turned a blind eye to the ecological checks-
SOUTH ASIAN HYDRAULIC CIVILIZATIONS
and-balances that the city so desperately needs. The lack of
green and open surfaces in the city results not only in a lower
quality of life for citizens, but also in a low capacity of surface
infiltration of seasonal monsoon rains (fig. 6).
As well, coastal wetlands, mangrove forests, protective
coral reefs and sand dunes are disappearing at alarming rates
– and with detrimental consequences. Man-made interventions
in Mumbai (primarily reclamation) and Galle-Matara and
natural circumstances in the case of the immature (active) delta
of the Bangladeshi context dramatically change coastal water
dynamics, decreasing the ocean’s capacity to absorb seasonal
water flows. This loss of the ocean’s absorptive capacity
increases monsoon flood effects in inland areas. As a poignant
example, experts claim that the affects of the 2004 tsunami in
Sri Lanka were aggravated by the fact that much of the natural
defences against disasters, such as reefs and mangroves, were
eliminated through uncontrolled development and commercial
exploitation (for example, coral reef mining provides limestone 51
for the building industry). The cultural significance of coasts
and lagoons – used for pilgrimage, tourism and leisure –
are under a great ecological stress and warrant immediate
attention. Forward-looking and comprehensive national coastal
regulation policies, requiring setbacks and development
controls to mitigate adverse affects to the coastal eco-system
are often seen by local politicians and developers alike as
‘obstructive legislation’. In any event, such planning regulations
in South Asia are easily ignored or circumvented, since the
profits to be made far outweigh any fines that may be levied
for non-compliance. Laws governing land use are, by Western
standards, almost non-existent.
In these territories with excess water, it is paradoxical
that there is a concurrent shortage of clean drinking water.
The scarcity of ground water in the public supply network is
partially a consequence of private water tank operators who
illegally tap into it as a collective source, the installation of
stand pipes and bore wells, saline intrusion and water table
arsenic contamination (especially in the case of Bangladesh).
52

paddy sponge green river edges public spaces

existing rubber hard river edges public buildings
existing tea new coconut protected beach
existing coconut

Fig. 7  Social Infrastructure, Mumbai Waterfront Fig. 8  Coast + River of Weligama (Galle-Matara)
Public (red) and private (blue) investments would work in the new spatial Riverfront and oceanfront are re-qualified to integrate locals and visitors.
structuring.

(re) Activating Waterfronts
A primary design strategy for the Mumbai, Galle-Matara and
Jessore-Khulna-Mongla regions focused on the strengthening
and quality up-grading of waterfronts (oceanfront, riverfronts,
lagoons and lakes). Waterfronts were re-established as the
primary organizers of territory and their distinct eco-systems
were adopted to (once again) provide regions with identity,
particular economic and socio-cultural activities. A main
objective was to expand the public realm which would, in turn,
strengthen the coherency and spatial structure of otherwise
fragmentary sites. New development projects would profit
from the interconnections along waterways. Water networks
were also designed as an affordable and ecological alternative
for public transport. Throughout the region, the shift from a
water-based civilization towards a road-based one has made
urban waterways open sewers – of domestic and industrial
waste – and an absolute backside. Projects created strategic
interventions to create riverfronts as new façades – with public
spaces and a diversity of programs along the water’s edge
and accessed via strongly articulated transversals connecting
inland.
In Mumbai, the Eastern Waterfront/Bombay Docklands – a
linear strip of prime real estate on the Bay – has lost its once
important function and large post-industrial properties are
now being released to the market. A proposed redevelopment
plan provided a significant amount of social infrastructure
(public housing, schools, libraries, training centres, clinics,
etc.) and public space while simultaneously framing private
investment (fig. 7). In Galle-Matara, the ‘thickness’ of the coast
was exploited to create markedly different waterfronts. The
scenario for developing Weligama (a city captured by the sea
and with several waterfronts due to the winding course of the
river) (fig. 8) would be markedly different than the waterfront
treatment in Matara (where the sea is a hinterland).
(re) Creating Ecologies
Interventions were also designed to mitigate the natural and
human threats of erosion, pollution, water salinization and
flooding. At strategic locations in the three regions, the land and
SOUTH ASIAN HYDRAULIC CIVILIZATIONS
water threshold was conceptualized as a sponge – a permeable
land mass able to absorb and shed excess water. Some projects
linked processes of seasonal flooding and river sedimentation
to new spatial conditions, while others sought inventive ways
to deal with storm-water management and wetland ecologies.
Monsoon floods are designed to penetrate the territory yet not
destroy urbanity in its wake. Riverfronts and their adjacent
rural landscapes were synchronized as a productive system
with public amenities and dynamic open spaces at the water’s
edge; urban riverbanks were redesigned to reshape the city’s
relationship and were often structured by a series of terraced
platforms which accommodate different programs. Constructed
wetlands and mangrove afforestation projects were proposed to
deal with the increasing severity and frequency of flooding, to
act as natural filters and remove pollutants, to mitigate natural
disasters (such as cyclones and tidal waves) and, at the same
time, strengthen the vision of green, tropical cities, through
interconnected public open spaces. 53
In an ecological vision for Mumbai, recovery of the city’s
wetlands and water networks are seen to go hand-in-hand
with urban up-grading, new urbanization and infrastructure
development. Special attention is paid to the Mithi River and
the marshland area on the north east. Envisioned is a corridor
between the two wetlands systems formed by an ecological
spine where investment coalitions between public and
private sectors can evolve (fig. 9). New edges are developed
and ecologies enhanced. Social infrastructure is provided at
strategic locations (such as in Dharavi – Asia’s largest slum)
and otherwise the investment in ecological systems is expected
to increase nearby real estate values. The ecological corridor,
connecting the Mithi River and the eastern wetlands is
recreated by the establishment of an interconnected system of
ponds and green spaces.
In Jessore-Khulna-Mongla, the (re)creation of the ‘delta
force’ of the territory was instigated by a 4-pronged strategy
(fig. 10): to re-assert water-based transport as a desirable and
fully functional complement to road-based transport, to
establish as new system of reservoirs, fishing ponds, water
treatment and irrigation systems (responding to a manifest
 Fig. 9  Restoration of Mithi River, Mumbai
The project creates new ecologies and identifies strategic locations
for social infrastructure projects (red) and sites for private development
(blue).

54

Fig. 10  Delta Force, Jessore-Khulna-Mongla Region
Restructuring works more with the inherent dynamics of a delta landscape
and was conceptualized through four interventions: conduits (transport
corridors), feeders (are productive, storage and cleaning water bodies),
insulators (afforestation) and transformers (public programs).
Fig. 11  Re-structuring of Nilwala River, Matara
The riverfront was activated by economic programs (aquaculture), leisure
activities, boat stop platforms and areas for new commerce. East of the
river bend, a new research and education corridor would capitalise upon
investment possibilities afforded by the new expressway.
 SOUTH ASIAN HYDRAULIC CIVILIZATIONS

drinking water problem and providing clear systems for

drainage and irrigation needs), to afforest the territory with
mangroves (to prevent river erosion, to rebalance water salinity
and to increase food production) and to develop the cut and fill
principle to provide areas of ‘safe’, higher ground and develop
much need public programs (schools, clinics, meeting places,
etc.).
In Matara, a proposal works with the inherent attraction
and repulsion of both the Indian Ocean and the wide Nilwala
River and its tributaries (fig. 11). At a regional scale, the
waterways are exploited for transportation while seasonal
flood mitigation is accomplished through the creation of up-
stream reservoirs and reforestation. The river systems natural
capacity to function as a sponge was exploited and enhanced
as a mechanism for flood protection and water purification as
well as for drainage and urban structure delineation. A large
new water body would create a new residential front to the city
and blocks sprawl from overtaking low-lands. The riverfront 55
was activated by economic programs (aquaculture), leisure
activities, boat stop platforms and areas for new commerce.
East of the river bend, a new research and education corridor
would capitalise upon investment possibilities afforded by the
new expressway and connect Matara University to the river.
New transversal spines (connecting the northern wetland to
the ocean by waterways) would guide development of mixed
settlements with small industries. The river and wetlands were
choreographed to respond to different levels of flooding (fig.
12).

Building Resilience
The urban water management challenges in South Asia are
immense – and promise to increase due to the predicted effects
of climate change, disturbed terrain due to urbanization
processes, and a continued rise in population. In today’s world,
the politicization and commodification of water relies, more
and more on the reliance of technology (and money) to conquer
natural forces (fig. 13). Yet, perhaps, ancient, indigenous logics
of South Asia’s amphibian territories offer resourceful and Fig. 12  Choreographed flooding of the Nilwala Basin
efficient models for tackling contemporary water resource The river and wetlands were choreographed to respond to different
levels of flooding (normal, tidal, seasonal, extreme).
56

Fig. 13  Asphalt and Modernity, Mumbai Fig. 14  Sarkhej Rauza, Ahmedabad
New money, new technology and new aspirations are transforming the The reflective and ultiitarian are insperable in the 15th century mosque,
reclaimed city into an Asian mega-city. tomb and royal ensemble. There are surely lessons to be learnt.

management problems. It is paradoxical that the old, low-tech/
low-coat and rich systems of irrigation networks, tanks, ponds
and ghats are not maintained and, in fact, disappearing while
largest investments are being made to build new dams, contain
water in pipes and embank riverfronts. Urbanization and flood
control are not developed in tandem, but in different sectors
and often with contradictory consequences.
There is the possibility for urban design, landscape
urbanism and clever regional planning to take a ‘soft
engineering’ approach, whereby interventions work with
nature (as opposed to merely providing engineering feats to
control such processes). In order for future urbanization and
strategies to be in congruence with nature’s natural rhythms,
serious investigation of pre-existing elements and history
of specific sites will be increasingly necessary. Mitigation
can become proactive rather than reactive and urban design
can be configured to anticipate risk and exposure. Visions
for territories and projects can be designed for resilience –
remoulding landscapes and (re)constructing settlements to
bend from hazards - but not break. Properly planned and
projected space can allow regions to not merely survive, but
thrive through creative blending of urbanity and hydrology
(fig. 14).
SOUTH ASIAN HYDRAULIC CIVILIZATIONS
References
ALI, L. Md. (2002) An Integrated Approach for the Improvement of Flood
Control and Drainage Schemes in the Coastal Belt of Bangladesh (PhD
dissertation). Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger.
KAMAL, A.(2006) ‘Living with Water: Bangladesh Since Ancient Times’
in T. Tvedt and E. Jakobsson (eds) A History of Water: Water Control and
River Biographies, London: I. B. Tauris.
NOVAK, J. (1993) Bangladesh: Reflections on the Water. Dhaka: The
University Press Limited.
SCHWARTZ, D.(1997) Delta: The Perils, Profits and Politics of Water in
South and Southeast Asia. London: Thames and Hudson.
SHANNON, K. and MANAWADU, S. (2007) ‘Indigenous Landscape
Urbanism: The Case of Sri Lanka’s Tank System’, JoLA (Journal of
Landscape Architecture), autumn 2007, 30-41.
SWYNGEDOUWwyngedouw, E. (2004) Social Power and the Urbanization
of Water: Flows of Power. London: Oxford University Press.
TVELT, T. and JAKOBSSON, E. (2006) ‘Introduction: Water History is
World History’ in T. Tvedt and E. Jakobsson (eds.) A History of Water:
Water Control and River Biographies, London: I. B. Tauris.
57
WITTFOGEL, KARL A. (1956) ‘The Hydraulic Civilizations,’ in W.L. Thomas
(ed.) Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
YOSHINORI, Y. and SHINDE, V. (eds) (2004) Monsoon and Civilization.
New Delhi: Roli Books.

BETWEEN PAMPA AND RIVER
La Plata, Argentina
“Lo que sorprende, sin duda, es el emplazamiento de la urbe,
en medio de una llanura desierta y a nueve kilómetros del Plata, donde
tiene su puerto.
¿Por qué no haber construido la nueva ciudad junto al río?” *
Octavio Velasco del Real
* What is undoubtedly surprising is the location of the city,
in the middle of a deserted plain and nine kilometres from the river Plata
where it has its port.
Why not to have constructed the new city by the river?
Double Threshold of a Secondary City
Since its appointment as capital of the Province of Buenos
Aires in 1882, the secondary city of La Plata has followed
the paradigmatic trajectory of many Latin American
agglomerations. The strength of the quadrangle and of the
grid – ideal instruments for the colonization of an equally
ideal empty terrain – has dissolved as infrastructural threads
catalysed expansion in multiple and uneven directions.
Branded by successive – and under-achieving – ideas of
development, La Plata has historically projected images of
modernization, political power and industrial specialization
capable of resisting Buenos Aires’ hegemonic role. Today, the
sixty kilometres separating La Plata from the ciudad madre
largely overlap with the capital’s preferred expansion area
and counteracting its supremacy is no longer feasible. Though
Buenos Aires’ southern coastal strip still maintains most of its
original ecological characteristics and structure, the river edge
59
is starting to present phenomena similar to those occurring
further north, whereby the fierce conflict between urban and
rural land use is unfavourably affecting the city’s footprint
in the landscape. The perils of peri-urban expansion have
begun to show in the decreasing provision of both urban
services – drinking water, waste collection, storm sewers –
and ecological processes – carbon dioxide absorption capacity,
nutrient recycling processes, water flow regulation [Morello et
al. 2003]. Today, La Plata stands on the verge of becoming the
southern frontier of a progressively and persistently extending
metropolis. It is situated within Argentina’s most important
urban-industrial axis, supported by the ravines, streams and
tributaries of the Rio de la Plata and is to be scaled-up by large
infrastructural interventions in the pipeline (including the
newly constructed highway and a bridge across the Rio de la
  WATER CULTURES
Plata to connect with Uruguay).
Yet La Plata lies on a second, more visible threshold too.
Embodied by a geo-morphological trait of the territory, it binds
the city’s development to a ‘high terrace’ overlooking a lower,
flood-prone counterpart. This 5-kilometre wide and 2.5-metre
high interstitial zone lying between the north-eastern edge
of La Plata and the homonymous river has been the arena of
60

0 km 1 2 3 4 5

La Plata - 1882 location

La Plata - 1982

marshes

topographical step between

low and high terraces

Fig. 1  La Plata water network

[Re]Constructing aquatic landscapes at the edge of a metropolis.
 BETWEEN PAMPA AND RIVER

multiple negotiations between coastal urbanization and the

dynamics of the waterway environment. Bearing evidence of
the vibrant processes of formation of an estuarine landscape,
this strip is composed of a subtle sequence of intimately
related natural systems which – beginning with the safe and
fertile terrace traversed by streams – stretching parallel to
the shore, there are lowlands and swamps, a coastline forest,
a delta of alluvial islands, and finally the sea-like river. These
layers all interlock to form a vulnerable eco-region situated at
a bio-geographic crossroads where tropical and subtropical
ecosystems – descending downstream from the heart of South
America – merge with the rolling pampas’ environment (fig. 1).
The term pampas refers to the region of low vast grass plains,
the most productive agriculture areas in the heart of Argentina.
It is sub-divided into different sub-regions, including the pampa
ondulada (rolling pampa), where the metropolitan area of Buenos
Aires is located and whose main characteristic is to feature
soft undulations. This is an exception within the generally 61
low-lying pampean landscape, whose name itself derives
from the term quechua indicating ‘flat land’. The fluctuations
of the river’s edges have entailed processes of accumulation
and subtraction of ground and locations along the coast have
been given names testifying to such animate phenomena.
Such is the case of Ensenada, whose appellation describes the
inlet born out of sedimentation and for whom the vocation as
a port was unavoidable because of such configuration. If the
natural port of Ensenada was then a significant reason for
settling the new provincial capital on Las Lomas de Ensendada
[Coni 1885:2], then it is the isolation and obsolescence of
this very same structure today that has weakened the bond
between the urban agglomeration and the coastline. The
central docks imagined to be a grandiose extension of La
Plata’s civic axis are framed by railroads, inert industries,
cold storage structures and oil distilleries at different levels
of use and maintenance. Together they form scar tissue in the Fig. 2  Recovery by Inversion
fragile, low-lying landscape of the Maldonado and Ensenada By strengthening the sponge system weakened by misuse, an inversion
is proposed in the relation between the pampean void and La Plata’s
marshes – vital natural water-regulating devices of the area.
built environment. The striated texture of natural drainage re-emerges
La Plata and this interstitial landscape could continue to grow as a governing principle for the organization and characterization of the
indifferent to one another if it were not for the pressure of new area, shifting emphasis from an artificial network to an intricate field of
waterways.
62

0 km 1
Fig. 3  Landways + Bridgescapes
This proposal predisposes the pampean interstice to a positive reception of the large-scale
infrastructures linking La Plata to Buenos Aires and across the river to Colonia (Uruguay). A series
of manipulations allow for the emergence and reinforcement of the landscape’s components: the
stratification of sediments along the coast is exposed where the new bridge will harness the land,
providing a supplementary beach for recreational activities. The old natural ecosystem of wetlands
between the highway, the bridge and the city is recovered by opening the canals and re-moisturising
the streams that have run dry.
 BETWEEN PAMPA AND RIVER

and projected infrastructures bound to drastically modify

present [current] conditions. Paradoxically – while hosting
threats of further suburbanization and of upsetting the fragile
ecological equilibrium – such developments concurrently
embody an opportunity to revise the un-productive dichotomy
between city and fringe, transforming it into a constructive and
complementing interrelation.

Unravelling the Interstice: Structuring a Layered

Fringe
From barren grassland to enigmatic desert or vacant ocean,
the interpretation of the pampean landscape through time
has undergone a number of inversions reflecting the evolution
of options set forth for re-converting the river’s shores [Varas
2000]. Port facilities, promenades, parks and fragments of coastal
avenues punctually articulate the river’s edge, presenting
a variety of conditions ranging from a metropolitan to a
63
recreational environment. Engaging with the transformation
of the urban fringe between the provincial capital and the
Rio de la Plata therefore, also means uncovering perceptions
and mechanisms of an undefined landscape whose cultural
conceptualisation in Argentina has been the object of more
than one reading. Just as the wetlands’ indefiniteness have
opened them to varying forms and degrees of appropriation
– including fishermen villages, recreational activities, garbage
dumping, squatter settlements and general neglect – their
current indistinctness allows for the testing of a wide range of
development strategies. The previous port-related topographical
manipulations and the on-going process of occupying the
wetlands are respectively responsible for the reduction of the
low terrace’s water-regulating capacity and for the increase of
effluence engendered by directing drainage water towards the
estuary. Both tendencies have profoundly altered the area’s
hydrology, as the slope is exiguous, the capacity of natural
water evacuation is limited and the increasing colonisation of Fig. 4  Islands + Bridges
By imaging extreme flooding conditions as a basic scenario for
an almost flat land has lessened the absorption, storage and
intervention, the pampas’ liquid landscape is interpreted as a sea-
distribution of short-term river flooding. like entity within which settlements operate as a system of islands.
Preservation of the pampas’ endangered ecologies and Connections between them are reinforced by transforming infrastructure
productive capacities is a critical issue. However, a crucial lines into bridge-like linkages, each with different qualities and
character.
 territory grid

edges vegetation

64

plots water systems

topography

Fig. 5  ECOfrontiers/ ECOscapes

The intervention sets forth a two-folded strategy focusing on
the ‘void’ and the ‘edge’ respectively. An artificial landscape
of constructed wetlands is proposed in order to recover the
regulating capacity of the pampas and using this enhanced
specialisation as a limit to further spilling out of the city
into the area. The meeting point between urban fabric and
open environment becomes instead a breeding ground for
designing a hybrid buffer, directing La Plata’s development
along critically selected directions.

challenge consists in avoiding a hard-line conservation of the
territory which would entail the crystallisation of the interstitial
landscape. In this regard, a number of design approaches
illustrate the tension between resistance strategies and the need
to critically engage with development pressure.
Projects dialectically explored possible re-definition of
both void and boundary, manipulating, re-enforcing, and
revealing the layered geography of the site, testing the capacity
of the existing landscape for guiding development. In the re-
design of the in-between zone, equal relevance was given
to strengthening city-river relations and to reinforcing the
interstice’s hybrid conditions, thus focusing on amending and/
or exploiting the effects of imminent infrastructural projects.
By re-naturalisation or re-culturalization of the wetlands,
interventions tested the effects of new values added to the
fringe, so as to build a more robust resistance mechanism
to the expected development to be brought in by both the
new highway and bridge. In two proposed projects, canals
were re-opened and old streams were re-watered (fig. 2, fig.
3). In another vision extreme flooding scenarios were used to
conceptually re-read and re-shape the territory (fig. 4). Finally,
another project imagined the construction of new ecologies for
the maintenance of the site’s ‘wet’ identity by incorporating
new functions for the cleaning and treatment of urban waste
water (fig. 5). Building on the on-going establishment of neo-
ecosystems in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area – prompted
by the interference of infrastructure construction and by water
and soil contamination – these projects avoid defensiveness,
but rather aim at strengthening the feeble connections
between the city and the river that share the same name. When
confronted with the ever-decreasing cleansing capacity of
water and nature [Lanz et al. 2006: 91] these projects appear all
the more precious in the qualifying features they envision for
the area: by reinforcing the wetlands’ role as water cleansing
territories, their characteristic emptiness is legitimized and
used as a way to re-define the landscape without destroying
its identity. The residuality, bareness and monotony associated
with the wetlands are contradicted by interventions which
in most cases safeguard – if not enhance – the re-generating
BETWEEN PAMPA AND RIVER
capacity of the sponge system. The slow ecological dynamics of
swamps and marshes become the temporalities within which
to development and design strategies are framed. Beyond the
fragility of the wetlands, the design endeavour faced questions
of landscape construction as a means to deal with metropolitan
conditions and scale. Strategies sought to incorporate voids and
fragmented fabrics into a more integrated system which could
still be flexible enough to engage with the different rhythms
of nature and everyday urban life. As La Plata has definitely
overcome its modern paradigm of symmetry and abstraction
and has largely stretched beyond the confinement of the grid,
thus embracing metropolitan dimensions, perhaps such design
strategies can exploit geography, while incorporating conflicts
and accepting the region’s hybrid nature.
References
CONI, E.R. [1885] Reseña Estadística y Descriptiva de La Plata Captal de
la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires: Establicimiento Tipográfico 65
de la República, 19th November 1885.
DE MEULDER, B., and VESCINA, L. [2005] ‘Southern Territories:
Capitalising Landscapes’, in Design Studio Reader. Leuven: KU Leuven.
MORELLO, J. et al. [2003] ‘Sustainable development and urban growth in
the Argentina Pampas region’, The ANNALS of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, 590 (1): 116-130.
LANZ, K., MÜLLER, L., RENTSCH, C., and SCWARZENBACH, R. [eds]
[2006] Who Owns the Water? Baden: Lars Müller Publishers.
VARAS, A. [2000] ‘From Darwin to Borges: The construction of the
landscape of the River Plate’ in A. Varas et al.
[eds] Buenos Aires natural más artificial: exploraciones sobre el espacio
urbano, la arquitectura y el paisaje, Buenos Aires: Harvard University
Press.
VELASCO DEL REAL, O. [1891] ‘La ciudad de La Plata’ in Viaje por
la América del Sur. Impresiones y recuerdos, Barcelona: Grande
Establecimiento Tipolitográfico de Ramón Molinas.
VESCINA, L. [2007] “Territorios del sur, capitalizando paisajes. Un taller
más allá del proyecto urbano”, 47 al fondo, Revista de la Facultad de
Arquitectura y Urbanismo de la UNLP, 15 [August], La Plata: UNLP.
ANOTHER WATER URBANISM
VIETNAMESE URBAN PROJECTS

MODERNITY IN THE MEKONG
Cantho, Vietnam
MODERNITY IN THE MEKONG
Cantho is water. Situated in the heart of the Mekong River
Delta in Vietnam, Cantho has evolved within a ‘liquid’, green
landscape. Existing in a continual state of transformation, it
is forever adapting to the region’s dynamic delta conditions.
Following the great engineering works of the French colonists,
settlement patterns, housing typologies, agricultural practices
and cultural codes have adapted to allow the Vietnamese to
live in the water-saturated delta region, despite the associated
environmental risks and uncertainties. Throughout the
Mekong, settlements are dispersed among the rich, productive
landscape; of these, Cantho has always been the most important.
Cantho has historically and continuously revealed an
alternative concept of modernity, consequential of its geography
and tumultuous past. From French colonization to American
militarization, the region has witnessed strong mutations to
the landscape, as well as emerging forms of urbanity that have
spread throughout the territory and aligned with the natural
landscape. The result has been an explicit form of modernity 69
defined by a liquid geography, cultural hybridization and the
absorption of multiple foreign influences.
The Vietnamese affectionately refer to their nation as
dat nuoc – or ‘earth and water’. Signs of the people’s ardent
relationship to the landscape are evident in the composition of
their culture and patterns of settlement. Even long periods of
foreign intrusion failed to break the quintessential character
of the region – the correlation of landscape and urbanity.
  ANOTHER WATER URBANISM
But recently, due in part to processes of globalization and
liberalization of regulations regarding ownership and property,
the distinctive water identity inherent to Cantho has begun to
erode. Today, throughout the Mekong Delta, indigenous urban
identities are threatened by ex-nihilo urbanization, manifested
in domestic and international exercises in master-planning and
tabula rasa approaches to city building [Shannon 2004].
Transforming the Landscape
The proliferation of agricultural infrastructure during the
French occupation and military and land-based infrastructure
during the American occupation had a remarkable impact that,
still today, shapes the region’s identity; parallel and overlapping
70

Fig. 1  Organic Formalities

Road (red) and water (blue) networks are developed in tandem, creating a public transport that
would allow for the smooth transfer from one system to the other.
Fig. 2  R/urban Dialogues
The processes of erosion and sedimentation naturally create high banks along waterways. The
in-between low-lands serve not only as productive agricultural territories, but also as river-overflow
flood basins in the monsoon season. New development and densification could therefore logically
be proposed on the riverbanks.

infrastructure networks are its defining spatial quality.
Intensification of urban development has traditionally occurred
at the confluences of such networked systems. Specifically,
the waterway system – both natural and anthropogenic – has
been the foundation upon which the other organizational
systems were laid. For transportation purposes, the roadways
strategically crossed the waterways, while irrigation
systems demanded an interdependence of canals and dikes.
Subsequently, the dikes created a high, fertile base for orchards,
interwoven among low-ground rice paddy fields, and lined
with settlement areas. This high-ground, low-ground system
of earth and water is managed and maintained by inhabitants
dispersed throughout the productive landscape. But while food
production in the region remains relevant, the impact it has on
spatial organization is drastically changing. Large-scale farming
operations and the adoption of more mechanized methods
of cultivation and production are reducing the porosity and
flexibility of existing regional spatial networks [Shannon 2004].
Patterns of dispersion are being replaced by rigid constructs of
rural and urban.
Rescripting Policy
In 1992, the state constitution was amended, allowing
Vietnamese citizens the right to property, to conduct business
and move in search of work. The present-day explosive growth
of Vietnamese cities is consequential of such drastic changes
in policy. The current trend of urban migration has placed
considerable pressures on existing infrastructure built to serve
a decentralized region and has increased the speed of human-
induced environmental degradation.
In the name and image of modernization and ‘progress’,
Cantho envisions replacing much of the agricultural-based
economy – which primarily consists of rice and orchards –
with industry by the year 2020. This will require significant
improvements in land-based infrastructure such as roads that
are locally counterintuitive, yet globally project an image of
prosperity. Large industrial parks and export processing zones
(EPZs) are planned throughout the territory and will require
major alterations to the region’s waterways, roadways and
MODERNITY IN THE MEKONG
landscape.
These changes have created an atmosphere that further
encourages impulsive, informal urbanization and the rigid
master plans – handed down from the State – seem incapable
of adjusting and adapting to the evolving demands ensuant of
a new, liberalized economy. Overall, inner-city and peripheral
growth has been unregulated and mismanaged, and
environmental risks seemingly ignored.
Potentials of a Liquid Landscape
Traditionally, rural and urban have coexisted in close
proximity, often embedded within one another. In the process
of continued urbanization of the water-logged territory and the
parallel desire for real and imagined forms and representations
of ‘progress’, there is obvious need for an alternative
development model that builds on the region’s traditional and
resilient spatial systems of interdependence and proposes fresh,
Cantho-specific, notions of modernization. 71
This new model could be based on alternative modes for
urbanization that focus on the development of new housing
typologies and urban fabrics that work with indigenous and
traditional forms and follow and exploit the landscape. There is
a need for innovative strategies that address flooding; flooding
remains a major issue and prevention and mitigation measures
are crucial to the region’s future. Continuing current trends
of urban development, with the proliferation of impervious
surfaces, and wetland infill, will only exacerbate the situation;
examples of this are evident in many Southeast Asian cities
that have turned away from indigenous water-based forms
of urbanity. As well, expansion of the public realm and
alternative housing types are required to adapt to changing
social conditions and demands. The rapid transformations in
Vietnamese culture are being strongly felt in new demands for
housing; the extended family living habits are breaking down
as children move to follow educational and career opportunities
and young families are requiring a greater degree of separation
and independence from their parents.
Such strategies should not only be implemented in
new expansion areas, but must also be incorporated into
72

Fig. 3  Canal_scape 0m 100

Public water transportation and crossings with the road-based network are
considered as key drivers of strategic development sites. New commercial
programs would be combined with recreational spaces (designed to work
with the seasonal water level fluctuations).
Fig. 4  Blending Thresholds
Important interfaces of road and river are reconfigured to infuse the urban
with rural aspects and the rural with urban qualities. New harbours are
generated in rivers, encouraging water-based urbanism. New typologies
and densities create a new dialogue between high- and low-land,
consumptive and productive landscape and built and unbuilt fabrics.

0 m 50 75 100

rehabilitation schemes for existing areas:
Expanding the City. The Binh Thuy district is an expansive
area (that has been culturally and militarily significant in the
past) located north of the city centre. Future development
schemes for the area will require alternative modes of
urbanization that utilize the overlapping of older water-based
infrastructure, proposed road-based extensions and integration
of efficient public transport systems.
Healing the City. An Cu is a dense informal settlement
quarter located in the centre of the city that is presently part
of a larger World Bank-funded urban upgrading program. Its
‘hem’ tissue is comprised of small labyrinth-like streets that
give access to fine grain housing plots. An Cu was constructed
by the French as a recreational area, but it has since become a
highly polluted water body that has been encroached upon by
squatter settlements. New housing typologies, that compete in
quality with those begin hastily constructed in the peripheries,
could be inserted into the existing fabric without sacrificing the
rich, vibrant social and spatial qualities that have evolved with
the liquid landscape.
At the same time, proposed strategies can also play a
strategic role in visions projected for the regional scale. As the
population of Cantho is projected to nearly double by 2020, the
balance between housing needs and natural flooding constraints
must be reengineered, redesigned and reestablished. An
effective strategy could exploit multi-modal transport systems
– water, rail and road. The configuration of a combined (and
more resilient) transport system could structure subsequent
urban development (fig. 1): bi-directional, continuous and linear
urbanization along roadways; mono-directional urbanization
that decreases in density from the water’s edge to the low-lands
along the river systems; and high-density, radial development
around train stations (that act as intersecting transport nodes).
These separate, but complementary models for development
could weave a continuous, diverse landscape that builds on
existing infrastructure systems.
The region’s landscape can be divided into high-land and
low-lands. To protect against flooding and diminish the impact
of urbanization on low, productive lands, a corresponding
MODERNITY IN THE MEKONG
number of canals could be constructed to offset the addition of
asphalt surfaces (and reduction in porosity) and help maintain
an ecological balance in the territory. These new waterways
could act as a form of flood control (fig. 2) by providing more
surface area for inundation as well as connect the urban area to
a larger peripheral and rural low-land area to provide further
protection during seasonal monsoons. A new raised road
system could maximize water flow through low-land areas
and create a more ecologically-friendly transportation network.
New fabrics emerge from specific canal / road / urbanization /
low-land (productive field) relationships.
These proposed transport networks could be further
enhanced by overlapping other motorized and non-motorized
forms of mobility (fig. 3), including water taxis, buses, trains,
and a system of pathways for pedestrians and cyclists. These
hierarchies of transport modes could relate to and react to
various forms of urban development. Increased densities,
combined with efficient public transport systems will reduce 73
traffic congestion and support the production of public, open
spaces along the networks.
The projected increase in population demands more open
public spaces within the already congested centre. A network
of public spaces (fig. 4) could be overlaid upon the multimodal
transportation system to increase livability of the ‘old’ city,
trigger new development and rehabilitation projects, connect
fragmented tissues, and increase porous surface areas to
mitigate flooding hazards. Within the tissue, older areas of the
city could be reconnected to their surroundings, peripheries,
and low-lands through the network, and quality of life in the
derelict areas could be increased without radically altering
indigenous housing typologies and ‘hem’ fabrics.
At the street level and neighborhood scale, punctual
interventions, in conjunction with the regional public space
network and alternative housing typologies, could further
enhance the quality of life for residents, while also providing
support for informal economic activities and opportunities
for community participation and civic engagement. Such
tactical interventions (fig. 5) in the fabric could provide relief
at a local scale, but also serve to activate a larger area over
 Fig. 5  Structuring Uncertainties
Modest tactical interventions and strategic projects create areas for informal economic opportunities,
areas to deal with seasonal monsoon flooding and ‘platforms’ for yet undetermined programs. Left-
over spaces are combined to form larger public or semi-private areas, public access to the water is
74 protected, and riparian areas can be used in a more productive manner.

Fig. 6  Connecting Landscapes

An Cu Lake is requalified as a green/blue lung of the city and works as part of a larger network of
public open spaces. New densities and new housing typologies work hand-in-hand with urban
upgrading.

time when functioning as a system. Such points could provide
landmarks and community meeting places in an otherwise
chaotic tissue and provide an anchor for the community – in
the case of An Cu, an inner-city neighborhood plagued with
issues of substandard housing, poor sanitation conditions and
high levels of poverty. The tactical interventions could prepare
the area to accept larger rehabilitation projects, and provide
structure to guide development in the future.
MODERNITY IN THE MEKONG
References
BROCHEUX, P. [1995] The Mekong Delta: Ecology, Economy and
Revolution, 1860 – 1960; Madison: The Center for Southeast Asian
Studies, University of Wisconsin.
DUIKER, W. [1995, second edition] Vietnam Revolution in Transition;
Boulder: Westview Press.
OSBORNE, M. [2000] The Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future; St.
Leonards: Allen & Unwin.
SHANNON, K. [2004] Rhetorics & Realities Addressing Landscape
Urbanism. Three Vietnamese Cities, doctoral dissertation, KU Leuven.
SHANNON, K., VERBAKEL, W. [2006] Urban Tissue Design Studio: Cantho
Reader, KU Leuven.
TAYLOR, P. [2001] Fragments of the Present: Searching for Modernity in
Vietnam’s South; Honolulu: ASAA Southeast Asia Publications Series,
University of Hawai’I Press.
WRIGHT, G. [1991] The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism;
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
75
 water
botanical park sports
park park

r
urban park

k
urban park

recreational
park

0m 100 200 300 400 500


Re-Thinking an ‘Eco-district Zone’
The rapid changes in economic and population growth and
industrialization during the past decades in Vietnam have
had adverse impacts on the natural environment. A principal
challenge for Vietnam as it attempts to integrate into the
global economy is the establishment of a direct link between
environmental concerns and sustainable urban development.
The transitional era of politics and economics is reflected in the
spatial structuring of the territory. In the Mekong Delta – the
‘rice basket’ of Vietnam – peri-urban hinterlands are bearing
the brunt of dramatic transformations and natural ecologies,
complex river and irrigation hydrology and productive
green networks are being altered beyond recognition. Yet,
the overlapping of multiple systems and networks is the
region’s primary spatial quality. The waterway system, both
natural and man-made, was the foundation upon which the
other organizational systems were laid. The irrigation system
demanded an interdependence of canals and dikes. The dikes
in turn created a fabric of orchards woven into that of paddy.
Settlement was dispersed so as to allow workers proximity
to the paddy fields and was intensified at the confluences of
networked systems. Traditional houses had a road in front and
river in back. A regular rhythm of processing factories marked
the territory. The overlapping (and sometimes interlocking)
systems of water and road infrastructure have created a
condition whereby the urban and the rural co-exist in close
proximity; commercial vitality is juxtaposed with agricultural
productivity. Urbanity and rurality are embedded within
one another, creating villages within the city and pockets of
urbanity in the countryside.
Phong Dien, located up-stream on the Cantho River and
southwest of the Cantho’s urban core, is one of the city’s four
suburban districts. In addition to being known for its fruit, fish
and agricultural production, the district has recently become
part of the Delta’s growing tourism circuit. Phong Dien has an
agricultural area of 5,000 ha (23,000 population) and is slated
to become an ‘ecological city zone’ according to the city’s
Government-approved master-plan to 2020 (with an estimated
WATER [re]CYCLING, PHONG DIEN
Cantho, Vietnam
population of 70,000). However, in reading the territory –
with its interdependent structure of productive paddy and
orchards, criss-crossed by a fine-grained network of natural
rivers and canals – it becomes clear that the zoned notion of
ecology need to be questioned in order to develop larger
networks that can capitalize on higher potential for sustainable
growth. Every year, the flood season brings alluvium from the
Mekong and enriches Phong Dien’s agricultural land. There
exists a strong ecological under-layer in Phong Dien and
other districts adjacent to Cantho’s core, where urbanization
is still in its infancy. New urbanism can be structured by the
logics of the landscape – and the specificity of the region’s
overwhelming presence of water and mud. Strategies need to
work towards integration of environmental considerations into
urban planning, including strategies for disaster mitigation
77
(particularly seasonal and flash floods).
Alternative strategies for the urbanization of Phong
Dien were developed not as solutions as such, but as problem
identification and formulation for further development. It
was recognized that there is a need not only for innovative,
environmentally responsive morphologies and typologies,
but also an opportunity to exploit water for transportation
and increased productive territories. At the same time,
  ANOTHER WATER URBANISM
flooding, water pollution and waste water management were
acknowledged as problems of increasing complexity and
severity and addressed in manners which create synergies
between the disciplines of ecology and planning and the
approaches of design and engineering. The very nature of
Phong Dien – its challenges and opportunities – marks it
as an emblematic case-study which could become a model
for developing new approaches of project formulation/
urban analysis, working across scales with a diverse set of
stakeholders to co-produce a series of visions that enhance the
existing qualities of the territory (its agricultural structure,
water-based urbanity and transport potentials); using limited
resources more effectively, and; creating new urbanity,
economic opportunities, infrastructures and eco-systems.
78 Black water tank

Fig. 1  Merging Wetland and Public Space

The project structures future urbanization
around four main elements: wetland water
purification systems, public space, road
Sedimentation pond Filtration pond
2250m2- 3000m2 6500m2- 8700m2 and water access-ways, and orchards. It
Groundwater
Hight 2m Hight 1m
establishes such infrastructure before the
Grey water sedimentation tank urban fabric is built, in order to secure their
1200m2- 1500m2
Hight 4m existence. Urbanization is envisioned at the
crossings of major river/road junctions. Public
parks – centred upon water treatment areas
(designed to treat household wastewater for
3000 - 4000 persons each) – are created in
connection to waterways; each park consists
of water cleaning system, public programs,
recreation areas and orchards. Each park
has different identities, with a mix of local
and regional programs, situated on the edge
of, or inside the parks, in order to justify the
use of land for public domains in the urban
areas. New orchards (citrus, banana, mango
and avocado) are cultivated near the public
space, providing shade while strengthening
the agricultural economy; they also work as
obstacles to urban sprawl.
 WATER [re]CYCLING

2.2

.1.2

2.4

2.5

2.5

2.6 2.5

.1.6

79
1.4 1.4

1.1

Fig. 2  Eco-Feeder
Eco-feeder takes into account the city’s new and proposed highway connections and develops a
new strategy for Cantho’s urbanization in the form of a transition zone. This transition zone is the
‘eco-feeder’ that facilitates multiple exchanges, from new road transport and water transport that
run, in parallel, to the cultural and agricultural production. The eco-feeder also redistributes heavy
highway infrastructure into a network flow that intensifies opportunities of trade. Development on
either side of the eco-feeder expands on the existing Vietnamese zero-waste agricultural model
(VAC) to create areas of collective ecological management. In urban areas, waste and flood waters
drain into parkland, and this water is used for the production of aquatic vegetables, shrimp, fish
and organic fertilizer. In the rural orchard areas, new lakes are formed for waste water and are
used for fish farming and the dredge from the lakes is used to create more orchards. All these
strategies are to be implemented gradually as the city’s needs grow. The eco-feeder introduces
a new morphology and opportunity for both the urban and rural areas. It delineates the boundary
between both conditions, while facilitating their exchanges. The eco-feeder negotiates between
Cantho’s desire to be a modern eco-city and a modern city of roads.
80
Fig. 3  Green Lines - Red Dots
Green Lines – Red Dots creates a network
of green infrastructure (green lines) to guide
urban growth and identifies strategic points
for nutrient recycling (red dots). The green
network builds upon and expands the existing
system of natural water courses and man-
made water infrastructure for both sewage and
0m 50 100 rainwater; it develops the water infrastructure
in tandem with public space and thereby
creates a frame for future urbanization. The
low-tech, decentralized water purification
system makes use of natural processes (with
constructed wetlands) and the hydraulic
gradient between high-land and low-land;
accessible soil filters have space for leisure
activities and a complex network of paths
follow the canals and ditches. Biogas plants
and city farms recycle nutrients through gas
extraction for cooking and natural fertilizers;
the income from biogas and organic food
contributes to maintain the green lines. The
system of lines and dots offers public space
for sport activities, calm spots for recreation
and nature experience, frequented meeting
points as well as a connected path system for
cycling and walking.
 WATER [re]CYCLING

81
2

Fig. 4  3rd Space

3rd space carefully considers specific contexts and works with both macro- and micro- economic
and ecologic concerns and develops densities and programs accordingly. The project questioned
the concept of zoned eco-city separated from the intensively developing area of the city and cut-off
by new longitudinal roads. On the contrary, it developed an existing transversal natural element –
the Binh Thuy River. The proposal was conceptualized as a green wedge, linking the Hau River with
its hinterland. The newly created ‘3rd space’ is constituted by four types of green: 1) the eco-islands
of Hau River; 2) the urban green between the river and the first new parallel road; 3) a cluster of
green facilities (golf course, park, urban forest, water retention basins, a water treatment plant, sport
facilities) on the crossing point between Binh Thuy River and the road leading to the Cantho Bridge;
4) the productive orchards. Together they form a sequence of open spaces from ‘hard’ to ‘soft’,
with a central node made by the green facilities which work as a filter. It is proposed that the larger
road to the west not be built, giving the opportunity for this road to be a boarder zone between city
and countryside. The proposal structures development along the transversal by introducing green
pockets, working carefully with typologies and densities, and highlighting crucial exchange points
between water and road networks.
0 km 10 20

Scenarios for an Inter-dependent Urban/Water Port
In August 2007, a competition was organized by the Tan
Thuan Industrial Promotion Company, a Vietnamese State
Enterprise, to design a masterplan for the 3600ha ‘Hiep Phuoc
Port Urban Area’. The territory of Hiep Phuoc is of unique,
water-related, economic and ecologic value. The site is located
at an important hinge between the southern extents of Ho Chi
Minh City and the Eastern Sea, in the lowlands of the Soai
Rap River estuary and on the fringe of the Can Gio Mangrove
Forest. OSA’s project, in collaboration with Vietnam’s NIURP
(National Institute of Urban and Rural Planning), elaborates
on the historical intertwining of water and settlement explicitly
addressing issues such as the rise in sea level, seasonal flooding
and water pollution.
 As an alternative to fixed zoning schemes and
incremental site-by-site urban projects, the modus operandi
developed different scale-levels to flexibly respond to the
economic and political realities of developing Hiep Phuoc –
Fig. 1  Nha Be
Port platforms alternate with mangrove afforestation
mangrove afforestation
khu vực rừng ngập mặn
Soai Rap River port
cảng Soài Rạp
0 250M 1250M
[r]Evolutionary Land_Structure | Infra_Scape
Hiep Phuoc, Vietnam
while balancing urbanization and industrialization with the
delta’s fragile ecology. At all scales, the design is grounded
in the careful reading of the site’s qualities and morphological
structures. The land-structure / infra-scape strategy develops
the age-old cut (hydrology-related) & fill (land-making)
process along side the accessibility means as the foundation of
urbanization.
 At regional scale, the envisioned port and urban
development creates a spatial sequence of a built/non-built
rhythm along the river, following its bends. High-land
alternates with low-land: port platforms alternate with
mangrove afforestation (fig. 1) – stabilizing the coast and
providing protection against erosion, oil spills and storm
surges (fig. 2, fig. 3). The water transport network – especially
with regards to connection in the Mekong Delta – is proposed 83
to be increased [cut] and made more complementary to the
road/rail-based network.
  ANOTHER WATER URBANISM
Fig. 2  Flood  Fig.3  Flood mitigation
Tidal fluctuation and seasonal river swelling Landscape as sponge
2500M
84

Fig. 4  Urban Boulevard / Parkway

Connecting the envisioned urban/port development at Hiep Phuoc to the city center of Ho Chi Minh
City is a new infrastructure line that operates at various scale levels. Developed as a ‘parkway’,
this boulevard establishes a direct connection between the existing Tan Son Nhat airport and
the proposed urban port, linking various ‘exceptional’ urban functions, public programs, civic
C

amenities as well as topographical conditions along its trajectory. Not only are existing ‘exceptions’
of the urban fabric connected, such as the Reunification Palace, the 23/9 Garden and the new
development of Saigon South, but also new civic spaces within Hiep Phuoc are envisioned, such
as an urban park, various public functions – on elevated ‘safe’ flood level platforms adjacent to the
parkway – and a new urban port. The sectional richness of this infrastructural ribbon is explicitly
designed to form a new system of transport, which provides a pleasant atmosphere not only for
motorized traffic, but also for pedestrians, motorcyles and bicycles. Through the introduction of a
D

light rail train, the parkway is not only comprehensive in scope – as it traverses various scale levels
– but simultaneously local and metropolitan in impact.

0 1500M 3000M
 [R]EVOLUTIONARY LAND_STRUCTURE | INFRA_SCAPE

C. B. A. C. B. A.

landscape morphologies infrastructural axes strategic projects

STRATEGIC PROJECTS
ROAD & RAIL INFRASTRUCTURE
Container terminal Public facilities
A. Logistic/port axis (+2.10m, 30m wide)

Urban port Mangrove afforestation

B. HCM Parkway: (+2.40m, 45-55m wide)

C. Nguyen Van Tao Street: (+2.10m, 20m wide)

Urban void Wetland construction 85
Urban park

village purification urban purification industrial / port purification

Fig. 5  Concepts and Strategies

The transformation of the landscape of the site is designed to create development that is in constant
state of change though never appears incomplete. Five landscape morphologies are envisaged;
from east to west: an XL grain port area, transitioning into a L to S grain urban zone through a
hybrid zone to the XS village clusters. These 4 built morphologies are enriched with mangrove
afforestation in the south. Based on 3 structuring infrastructural axes – varying in section, use and
mode of transport – a range of possible scenarios are generated. The roads are built as dykes
at slightly different elevations – logistic port axis at 2.10m [A], urban parkway at 2.40m [B] and
Nguyen Van Tao Street at 2.10m [C]. In addition to these 3 infrastructure lines, various strategic
projects – such as a container terminal [orange], an urban park [green], numerous public amenities
[bright red], an urban void [dark red], an urban port [dark red] and two ‘green’ projects: mangrove
afforestation and wetland construction [dark green], provide a frame for future growth. Finally,
water management is used as a spatial structuring tool for development; two parallel systems are
designed to treat industrial and domestic wastewater through industrial wastewater purification in
the port and the use of aerated lagoons on the urban platforms and village clusters. Both systems
are flood-proof and combined with additional purification through constructed wetlands.
 190657VB
land_structure
evolutionary infra_scape
5

VISION / TẦM NHÌN

Land_structure infra_scape is a
frame of reference that steers urban
development through manipulation
of the ground plane, an artificial
topography – of roads/rails/dykes,
water purification and retention
basins and platforms of various
heights – which orients development
through a process of evolutionary
transformation. The proposal
considers specific contexts and
works with macro- and micro-
economic and ecologic concerns and
develops densities and programs
accordingly.

The strategy – not a masterplan –

allows for adaptation to evolving
circumstances, while protecting
spatial principles. It defines the
possibilities of where to build first,
where to build later, and where to
not build. The strategy is made
concrete through the development of
strategic projects – urban projects
that do not merely make a
difference, but make a fundamental
difference.

Đất – cấu trúc – hạ tầng – cảnh

quan chiến lược là một khung tham
chiếu định hướng cho quá trình phát
triển đô thị, tận dụng địa hình nhân
tạo – đường bộ/đường xe lửa/đê, hệ
thống lọc nước, các hồ giữ nước và
các nền đất với cao độ khác nhau –
định hướng phát triển qua một quá
trình chuyển đổi mang tính tiến hóa.
Đồ án xem xét kỹ lưỡng các bối cảnh
cụ thể, các vấn đề kinh tế vi mô-vĩ
mô, những mối quan tâm về sinh
thái cũng như các chương trình và
hoạt động.

Chiến lược – không phải là một quy

hoạch tổng thể – mà cho phép việc
điều chỉnh theo các điều kiện luôn
thay đổi, đồng thời bảo vệ các
nguyên tắc về không gian. Nó xác
định các khu vực xây dựng trước, các
khu vực xây dựng sau và những địa
điểm không được phép xây dựng.
Chiến lược được cụ thể hóa thông
A
qua việc phát triển các dự án chiến
lược – các dự án đô thị không chỉ tạo
ra sự khác biệt thuần túy, mà là sự
khác biệt cơ bản.

86

container terminal
cảng container

urban port
cảng đô thị
urban void
KV dự trữ cho phát triển
C
urban park
khu công viên đô thị

Fig. 6  Development Scenarios

mangrove afforestation
khu vực sinh quyển

A _ scenario of port-driven development

wetlands
khu đất ngập nước nhân tạo

B _ scenario of parkway-driven development 

0 100M
C _ scenario of balanced development
500M 1000M

0km 1 2
 [R]EVOLUTIONARY LAND_STRUCTURE | INFRA_SCAPE

87

Fig. 7  Urban Platforms in the Landscape

Hiep Phuoc is designed as a flexible land matrix, based on the use of 3 types of platforms that
vary in size – from XL in the industrial zone over L to S in the urban area to an XS village structure.
The platforms accommodate programs that change not only seasonally, but also according to
prevailing politics and economics. The frame that is set for the project is thus able to adapt to
different potential r-evolutionary scenarios.

Re-forming Canals in Vietnam’s Mega-City
Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC, formerly Saigon) was originally a
small fishing hamlet set within a dense network of arroyos and
rivers connected to the Mekong Delta and the Eastern Sea. In
just over 300 years, it has become Vietnam’s ever-expanding
mega-city and, in the process, its water network has become
severely compromised. Many water bodies have been filled and
canals are clogged with refuse, heavily polluted by untreated
domestic and industrial waste and encroached by squatter
settlements. Amongst the consequences has been an increase
in the severity of city flooding, adverse health risks and the
decrease of transportation via waterways (as their navigability
has been drastically reduced).
A Vietnamese-Belgian bilateral development project (1998-
2006) had the ambitious objective to provide an alternative
solution to business-as-usual canal up-grading and focused on
a series of linked strategic urban projects that stemmed from
the up-grading of one of the city’s most polluted canals – the
western Tan Hoa Lo Gom (THLG). The THLG Sanitation and
Urban Upgrading Project, managed by the Project Management
Unit (PMU) 415, implemented three pilot projects in HCMC’s
ward 11 of district 6 and another two in the rural Binh Tan
District (Binh Hung Hoa Ward). The project widened and
embanked a portion of the canal and in the process 180 families
were relocated. The families were given the choice to inhabit
new, on-site, mid-rise apartment blocks (inclusive of a hawkers’
market and community hall) or to move to a sites-and-services
project (which improved and built upon a pre-existing informal
settlement and included new social services such as a school)
in Binh Tan. The apartments were built on the land of an
abandoned agricultural factory, partially from land recovered
by destruction of squatter homes and on reclaimed land from a
low-land marsh in the interior of the adjacent block. The urban
design of the project sought to maximize the views and access
to the canal and therefore arranged all blocks perpendicular to
the water, linking the interior pond to the canal. The first site
also included a slum up-grading project for the households
adjacent to the canal and the apartment site; drainage and
Tan Hao-Lo Gom Canal Upgrading
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
sewerage improvement was a priority. Once widened and
dredged, the canal was once-again navigable (and inclusive of
a site-based boat launch) and the housing and hawkers’ market
were designed with the canal as an attractive front-side –
instead of its usual treatment as a back.
The second site included a large-scale aerated lagoon.
The 33ha lagoon treats wastewater of the Den Canal (literally
translating to ‘black’ canal), a 4 km long arroyo located north
of the THLG basin. The project utilizes aerated lagoon and
stabilization pond technology, which capitalizes on natural
processes and low-tech techniques; the system boasts low
investment, operation and maintenance costs and low
production of sludge. The lagoon was designed to treat the
domestic wastewater of 200,000 inhabitants (expected number to
be reached in 2020 from the present-day population of 120,000).
89
It was the first of its kind at such a scale in Vietnam and was
offered as a low-cost alternative for waste water purification,
a place of decongestion (‘green lung’) in an otherwise dense
and rapidly urbanizing district, a reservoir for the seasonal
monsoon rains and has an edge that serves as programmed
recreation and free open space for nearby residents. By its
very nature as a large defined and partially controlled water
body, it is also nearly guaranteed to remain an expansive open
  ANOTHER WATER URBANISM
space – a rare event in the periphery of Vietnam’s rapidly (and
horizontally) expanding southern mega-city.
 [1]

Den Canal
Nhieu Loc Thi Nghe

Saigon River

Tan Hoa Lo Gom Canal

Aerated Lagoon

Canal Widening + Apartment Project

Boundary of District
Nha Be River/ Canal
River

0 km 1 2 3
[2]
90

2 1
7 3
Fig. 1  Pilot Project Sites
8 The Tan Hoa Lo Gom and Nhieu Loc Thi Nghe
canals form part of Ho Chi Minh City’s 150
kilometre water network. The pilot apartment
4
project site is located in the centre of the Lo
Gom watershed and between the bustling
China town (Cholon, district 5) and the rural
district (Binh Tan – where a number of canal-
side squatters were resettled and centred
5
around an aerated lagoon).
Fig. 2  Low-tech Aerated Lagoon
The lagoon and a new sites-and-services area
6 were designed to create new urban fabric
and safeguard one of the city’s remaining
open spaces. The area immediately
affronting the lagoon included such facilities
as a neighbourhood school. The linear
park around the lagoon was designed as a
1. pumping station 4.sedimentation pond 7. maturation pond 3 threshold between the new housing and the
2. grit channel 5. maturation pond 1 8. sludge drying bed 0m 100 200 300 water treatment facility; it was equipped with
3. aerated lagoon 6. maturation pond 2 playgrounds and park furniture.
 TAN HAO-LO GOM CANAL UPGRADING

91

Fig. 3  Safeguarding Open Space

The lagoon, the first of its kind and scale in Vietnam, solves several problems at once: cleans
polluted water, provides much need public space, deters the space from being consumed, and
creates a micro-climate for the neighbourhood. The lagoon uses simple aeration pumps and has
modest service buildings at the edges of the canal, neither which are visually disturbing.
 Canal
Green Surface
Pedestrian Street

0 m 10 20 30 40 50

92

Fig. 4  Canal Up-grading

The urban design sought to maximize
accessibility and views to the canal. Seven
walk-up apartment blocks, perpendicular to
the water were designed to alternate with strips
of public space. The canal-front was animated
with shop-house typologies and a hawkers
market. To date, 72 apartments, the hawkers
market, a community hall and small port with
floating pontoons have been constructed. The
canal has been widened and embanked and
is once again navigable.
 TAN HAO-LO GOM CANAL UPGRADING

93

Fig. 5  New Image of Social Housing

The blocks were designed to have 4 front elevations – each animated by a composition of
fenestration and/or balconies. The spatial arrangement of the blocks affords semi-public courtyards
spaces with ample access hallways and blurred public-private thresholds.
EXPLORATIONS & SPECULATIONS
EXCERPTS OF WATER URBANISM
 THE CAMPINE, BELGIUM
Canalising and Colonising the Campine

Analysis of the Campine canalization and colonization

project supports the hypothesis that at the base of large-scale
infrastructural projects, there is an implicit development motive
upon which urbanization of the region finds its origin in a planned
form of spatial policy. The reclamation project exists merely by the
grace of the canal infrastructure, which is in competition with
the train network. Conception of the canal structure was only
possible by relating it to the regional development agenda. At the
regional scale, the trajectory of the canal turns into a wide-spread
canal system, developing several branches which reach into the
far ends of the desolate region. Local embedding is guaranteed
by the development of a secondary, fine-meshed structure of
irrigation channels, clustered into patches of watering fields. Only
by linking the project with the other transport infrastructures, the
96 structure is moulded and integrated in its surroundings. A double
comb structure of the irrigation channels alternating with a new
secondary road network defines the dimensions and the inner
functioning of the colony of Lommel. In the case analyzed, the
colony consists of a cluster of 20 farms and public facilities such
as a communal house, a chapel and a school. The colony was
established to teach the newly-defined migrant farmers necessary
  EXPLORATIONS & SPECULATIONS

cultivation techniques. It was also meant to lure private industries

into the reclamation process. The infrastructure project does
not introduce the principle of reclamation into the region, but
catalyzes its development and translates it into a specific form,
adjusted to regional characteristics. As well, the project shapes
the surrounding landscape with a definitive footprint, consisting
of a new housing typology, large-scale forestry and rational
parcelling.

Fig. 1  Canal Network as a Tool of Urbanization

2500 hectares of fine-meshed irrigation fields, tapping into the wide-
spread main canal network, transform the landscape definitively with
rational parcelling and large-scale foresting.
Fig. 2  Tracing the Campine Region
Already long before the emergence of the Belgium state, successive plans traced canals through
the Campine region. Both of those projects considered the canal network as a mere transportation
instrument. The canalization of the two Nete Rivers was already on the agenda in the fifteenth
century and in later stages Antwerp was planned to be connected with secondary cities (such as
Herentals) in the north-eastern part of Belgium. Napoleon Bonaparte’s attempt to make the Canal
du Nord, which would connect the Scheldt and Meuse valleys, was abandoned in 1808. Other
suggestions made in favour of connecting the harbour of Antwerp with the Rhine region were
superseded by the 1834 implementation of a faster and less expensive railway connection. The
canalization project only gained credibility and relevance when its transport aspect was combined
with an agricultural logic and the regional development plan in general.

white: Canal du Nord (1808); grey: design by Teichmann & Masui (1835); red: design by ir. Kümmer,
Head of Service des défrichements de la Campine, background: colony of Wortel
 IJ RIVER, THE NETHERLANDS
Water and [re]Production Logics Amsterdam

2008 AD - Ij basin Holland is a country of dikes and polders. A country whose

North image in defined by water levels that are managed at a micro-
Sea 02| IJ
mouth scale - down to single plots and ditches. Though this image
Tidal locks/ may hold some truth, the constructed cartographies reveal a
main water 03-05| WEDGE
discharge different narrative, demonstrating that unless water is efficiently
disposed of - or until it is fully discharged into the sea - micro-
management of water levels is a not practical. The mappings
depict the story of a large-scale infrastructure, consisting of
A outlet
waterworks and engineered interventions. They reveal the
800 AD
formation of the territory as produced through artificial water
B outlet
diversions, demanded by the rivers’ continuously changing
channels, as well as by previous man-made interventions.
C outlet
‘Spaarndam’
This re-routing narrative is not one of a fully controllable
mechanism, but one of incremental formation, dictated by the
98
D outlet pace of increasing hydrological understanding and changes
in the physical terrain. The construction of this narrative
Haltweg
1550 AD reveals an inverse figure in the terrain: a formative structure
outlet
that underlies the occupation and urbanization of the larger
territory.
The charting of regional water discharges – starting from
G outlet
historic transformations in the Rhine River’s upper branch, the
  EXPLORATIONS & SPECULATIONS

H outlet so-called Old Rhine – reveals an artificial water infrastructure

running north, perpendicular to the Rhine’s silting-up
branches. As the Rhine’s main branch was blocked by a dam
2008 AD upriver (diverting its flow to the South), its silting-up course
Amsterdam and clogged mouth were gradually diverted and transformed
water outlets
into a different logic altogether. This ‘IJ basin,’ was increasingly
shaped to the task of discharging surface water into the sea,
enabled the gradual exploitation of land, harvested for peat,
‘Zeeburg’ outlet
sand and subsequently reclaimed. The mappings graphically
Lake Ij
illustrate the extent to which water discharge is a prerequisite
for such exploitation and show the territory as it is [re]produced
and maintained by such interventions.
Fig. 1  Ij Estuary and Canal, Amsterdam
The Ij Basin has been shaped to discharge surface water through a series
of successive steps: 2008 AD – reduced cove/ canal discharging on the
North Sea; 1550 AD – shifting dikes and dams blocking tidal movement;
800 AD – tidal cove.
1150 - Upper Rhine branch still unblocked

1250 - formation of interior lakes and Ij estuary Nor

th
1275. Amsteldam Se lake Ij
aC
anal
Ij e
stu
a

ry
Spa
arne
1122. dam Wijk-bij-Duurstede

1324 - region’s water discharge diverted towards Ij

1324. Spaarndam tel

ms

d A
Ol

Rh
ine
branch

ow branche
er h i n e

L
s
R

Lek branch

river clay sediments [‘Echteld’ formation, Holocene]

sea clay sediments on top of river sand and clay [‘Naaldwijk’ formation, Holocene] 0 km 10 20
major Rhine branch
[formerly] stilted-up estuary or branch
fen rivers
[diverted] water course direction
major water outlet or dam
 KHULNA, BANGLADESH
Pani and Mati (Water and Land)

In south-west Bangladesh, rural dispersion is a visible spatial

condition, driven by hydrologic and topographic forms
and agricultural practices. Yet, rural-urban migration is a
phenomenon that is changing the organization of the territory.
Attracted by job opportunities, people move from the under-
serviced rural areas towards already congested and under-
equipped urban areas. As well, large capital investment in
roads is threatening the richness of water-based urbanism.
Living in the world’s largest delta brings with it many
challenges amongst which the lack of drinkable water is a
paradox in a land of plentiful water. Access to safe drinking
water is compromised by exploitation of ground water
resources, arsenic contamination and increasing water salinity.
Despite the complicated riverine system, which includes ponds,
100 productive rice paddies and wetlands, water purification
remains absent. Waterways and water bodies are often used
as a sewerage system. The introduction of water purification
Fig. 1  Proposed Upgrading
systems is crucial.
To reinforce the rural area, the upgrading includes water purification,
productive afforestation and the provision of social infrastructure on Attempting to re-balance human and natural processes and
safe, higher land. counter balance the rural-urban migration, the proposal aims
to reinforce strategically located rural settlements by providing
  EXPLORATIONS & SPECULATIONS

social infrastructure and test new rules of densification in

Fig. 2  New Densification
New densification seeks to create a fabric that retains an element
of porosity to allow for water percolation. A key component of the
intervention is the remoulding of topography.
balance with the dynamics of a floodplain. Constructed
wetlands and lagoon water treatments are inserted not only to
purify water, but also to guide future densification and provide
public spaces. Water storage and irrigation systems are used to
catch silt and sand, respectively to fertilize agricultural land
and shape topography. By re-moulding topographic conditions,
the design provides higher (safer) spaces equipped with civic
amenities and re-defines open spaces for water. Reading the
territorial dispersion and water logic of this floodplain, a new
set of rules is proposed to regulate the relation between water
and new forms of densification. The strategy enhances the
crucial role of topography, by counter balancing the constructed
higher ground with new water bodies, the constant presence of
water and defines land heights to create new interplay between
land and water in the urban tissue.
Fig. 3  Upgrading and Densification
A new water purification system defines the edge between settlements and rice paddies. An aerated 0 m 100 200 300 400 500
lagoon system comprises of five separated ponds which work with low-technology and the power
of the sun to clean domestic and agricultural water. The high embankments which protect the
lagoon from floods are widened at strategic points and equipped with civic amenities. The balance
between permeable and non-permeable surfaces is taken into serious consideration. In each
intervention, social infrastructure or the development of new tissue – built surface - is compensated
by an equivalent water surface, allowing for water percolation and water retention. Moreover, a
productive afforestation component plays a key role in improving the absorption capacity of the
ground, and in doing so, provides food and construction materials. New pathways are opened
along the water purification edges, continuing under the shadow of productive forests and widening
in front of civic amenities in open public space.
 MORII LAKE, ROMANIA
Recovery and Reconfiguration of Morii Lake

The Morii Lake temporarily stores 14,700,000 m³ of water

in an artificial basin constructed adjacent to Bucharest’s
Dambovita River. The water body was constructed as part of
the communist regime’s program of territorial interventions
which transformed the hydro-ecological system of Romania’s
southern areas. As a large-scale infrastructure, the lake’s
construction was equated with the destruction of several rural
settlements and the subsequent loss of bio-diversity. The lake’s
inappropriate position required a topographical manipulation
of its borders, hiding the water from the city and neglecting the
opportunity to associate the new earthworks with designed
public space. Today, the lake’s margins accommodate a mix of
incoherent urban fabrics. The lake indifferently coexists with a
Fig. 1  Interconnecting Green  collection of disrupted social and spatial textures which have
Requalification of the water network is structured by a system of open
102 no relation to the water. In terms of flood control, the lake
spaces.
regulates the water level into the canalized Dambovita River
and plays a significant role for both regional and territorial
water management. This important function within the overall
water system is the starting point for a design strategy which
relies on the openness of Dambovita’s corridor. Ruptures
engendered by the lake’s construction are weakened through
  EXPLORATIONS & SPECULATIONS

the rehabilitation and re-naturalization of the water’s edges.

Organized as a sequence of spaces integrating qualities from
adjacent neighbourhoods, the lake responds to its surroundings
by opening itself to the city. The previous logics of site
production are inverted by adapting technical solutions in
order to respond to contemporary ecological challenges.

Fig. 2  Earthworks 
Topographical re-modelling of the right bank opens the Morii Lake to its
surroundings.
 0 km 1 2

Fig. 3  Reactivated Lakeshore

New programmes combine with open space requalification to create a
new urban face on the lake.
 VOLTA LAKE, GHANA
The Shifted Connectivity of Kete Krachi

Kete Krachi was Ghana’s principal provider of yam and the

cultural, commercial and centre of a network of small villages;
it was a north-south trade bottleneck between the Volta River
and road. With the 1965 post-independence construction of
the Akosombo Dam and Volta Lake, the city was disconnected
from its market and hinterland in terms of infrastructural links
and 90% of its agricultural area was inundated or cut off by
the lake. The resettlement, the largest of 730 such townships,
was only a few hundred yards uphill on the southern tip of a
peninsula. The city was forced to develop as a port with the lake
designated as the new life line – as a promised new southern
connection. Yet the lake works as an isolator more than a
connector. Flows of people and products from the peninsula to
the rest of the country simply by-pass the city, travelling along
104 the opposite side of the lake. Kete Krachi has not adapted to its
new location.
A major obstacle in establishing connections across the
lake resides in an invisible administrative border – the 85.3m
maximum water level rise of the lake (area owned by the
Volta River Authority). This administrative line creates an
intermediate ‘no-mans’ zone, separating the city from the shore;
  EXPLORATIONS & SPECULATIONS

the area has been appropriated by immigrants for fishing and

farming. The proposal reconfigures the shore as a new façade
for the city – and a productive linear park with a diverse set
of public programs. As well, the proposal introduces a new
centrality to reverse the single out-flow of products. The city
and its hinterland have the potential to be a catalyst for other
centralities and to reinforce the peninsula as a spatial entity.
Public facilities, new productivity and re-organization of the
shore could re-direct the city’s future transformation. The
1km 2 3 5 strategy aims to enhance the interaction between different
existing public facilities
0 km 1 transformations presently taking place. Tree plantations are
new public facilities introduced to provide wind protection, shadow for recreation
new neighbourhood drainage + irrigation
m 2 3 5 draw-down agriculture and meeting places and production of timber and domestic
afforestation
fuel. Storm-water drainage is recycled for urban agriculture
Fig. 1 Kete Krachi Re-connected and water channels are established as structuring elements of
3 5The penninsula is reconnected to the lake with productive forests, the city, reconciling a technical aspect with production.
3 5
3 5irrigated fields and public facilities.
3 5
 private canoes

market fish weekly ferry

Fig. 2  Kete Krachi yam livestock pontoon
Before and after the Volta River Project.
canoe transfer
 TAOYUAN METROPOLITAN AREA, TAIWAN
Pond City

Pond City recuperates the intelligence of Taiwan’s three-

century old irrigation system of man-made ponds and ditches
to tackle the country’s pending water crisis (water shortage). It
recovers ponds for the storage of rain-water and for purification
of domestic and industrial wastewater. It also utilizes ponds as
organizers of the dispersed urbanism across the metropolitan
territory of Taoyuan. Originally, the different-sized ponds
were separated from one another. However, following
major hydrological works in 1928 and 1963, they became
an interconnected network (with canals) and were used for
transport, water harvesting, and as a comprehensive irrigation
system. Today, the metropolitan area of Taoyuan faces pressures
from development and a resultant low-rise sprawl is consuming
the territory. Agriculture has diminished as a driver of the
106 economy and the irrigation purposes of the ponds has been
superseded by other uses – including fishing and recreation –
or have been simply abandoned. The contemporary meaning of
such an enormous water network demands re-definition.
The proposed scenario assumes densification will continue
and structures the new development by re-qualification of the
area’s ponds and ditches. The proposal strengthens waterways
  EXPLORATIONS & SPECULATIONS

as viable transport corridors – to lessen the dependence upon

and halt new constructions in the road network. Ponds are to
be used for domestic water-storage areas and designed as a
new type of public space. New plots are developed according
to the carrying capacity of the nearby water network. As well,
industrial platforms are limited in size, new agricultural
uses are encouraged, dwelling areas are compact, and social
amenities are equally distributed across the territory. The new
plots, together with the system of ditches, are configured to
operate as natural water purification systems.
0m 800

Fig. 1  Pond City

The city’s ponds are re-qualified and structure a new network of public
space – which, in turn, will increase real estate values along its route and
0 200 400 600 800m
stimulate densification of the dispersed urban tissue.
Fig. 2  Minimal Interventions – Maximum Impact
Public investment in the infrastructure of the city – the ponds for purification and interconnecting
green spines – would provoke private development of new housing typologies that densify and
diversity the existing settlements.
 RIO de JANEIRO, BRAZIL
Weaving Water and Railway

Rio de Janeiro’s central neighbourhood of São Cristóvão is

characterised by a complex layering of history with coexist with
today’s contrasting realities. The area of investigation consists
of an urban fringe located between main road and railway
tracks, an informal hill settlement and major (city-scale) public
programs. New forms of urbanity are suggested to revitalize the
neighbourhood and enhance existing and potential qualities of
the site. The proposal structures the relation between different
urban areas by taking advantage of leftover spaces along the
railways and weaving landscape and infrastructure. The
design strategy recovers natural elements previously eroded
by urbanization and significantly extends the green structure
of the city. Water is the most important element of the project
and is developed as the site’s structuring spine of public spaces.
108 The first water system consists of rain water catchments that
follows the railway and of a water network that irrigates areas
suitable for urban agriculture (serving the domestic needs of
the proposed housing development). The second water system
– the urban beach – deals with flood retention. In the lowest
Fig. 1  Ecological Corridors area of the city, near Praça da Bandeira, the threshold leftover
Structuring systems at the city scale. by the under-used railway is taken advantage of in order to
  EXPLORATIONS & SPECULATIONS

create a cultural and leisure area. The latter is combined with

a system of water retention ponds and an inland beach which
flexibly responds to variations of water heights throughout the
year due to tidal fluctuations.

Fig. 2  Seasonal Differences

Agriculture rotation and flooding structure scheme (wet/ dry scenarios).
 0m 100 200 300 400 500

Fig. 3  Urban Waterpark

In front of Leopoldina Station, the project proposes a flood retention pond which could also function
as a public urban beach and a productive park – acting as a hinge between new housing and
existing favelas.
 LE CENTRE, BELGIUM
Urbanity between Coal-scapes and Water

Wallonia, the southern half of Belgium, is characterized by an

urban continuum – which extends along an east-west axis, and
is home to 65% of the region’s 3.4 million people. This urbanized
area spreads over three different, sequential valleys, forming
an elongated city. Its development is inseparable from the rise
and fall of the coal mining industry. A segment of the strip,
contained between Mons and Charleroi and called ‘le Centre’,
was urbanized exclusively to support coal extraction, despite
the absence of a naturally navigable waterway - infrastructure
usually used for such industrial transport.
The intensification of mining and industrialization from
the 19th century onwards led to the extraordinary development
of anthropogenic water engineering elements [canals, boat lifts
and moving basins]. At the same time, however, the impressive
110 artificial system significantly transformed the territory’s
existing hydrological system. The existing network of small
rivers, which constituted the structuring logic of the pre-
industrial villages, was blurred by artificial topography [‘terrils’,
or extraction heaps], ignored by the scattered development of
former coal exploitation site
former coal exploitation siege
new miners’ settlements and contradicted by new water-, road-
and rail- infrastructures. Moreover, a program of canalization
  EXPLORATIONS & SPECULATIONS

zone for industry

extension zone for industry
mixed use zone and partial covering of all rivers was initiated from the mid
abandoned industrial site
railway line in use 20th century as a way to prevent flooding in newly depressed
abandoned railway line
zones, due to post-mining ground collapses. Today, the region
can be seen as doubly orphaned, organized around an extinct
industrial logic, and disconnected from its local hydrological
order. The project proposes to reaffirm the presence of the
small river network through three projects. These interventions
adopt the river system as a dialogue between the artificial and
natural components of the territory.

Fig. 1  Le Centre: Mis-match Between Coal and Water

Walloon coal deposits; subsisting terrils and waterways (natural and
artificial [red]); coal mines, industrial sites, rail and water infrastructures;
coal exploitations and limits of concessions.
[2]

Q
[m³/s]

[3]

0 km 5

Fig. 2-4  Re-affirming Hydrological

Structures
The structuring role of the hydrological
network and the strengthening of its dialogue
with the disinvested industrial layer are
promoted through three interventions:
[4] [2] ‘Suspended waters’, systemizes the
principles of water retention on effluents by
creating new reservoirs at the foot of the
abandoned terrils. Water storage would
mitigate the effects downstream and also
create new centralities within the existing
urban sprawl.
[3] ‘le Centre vide’, proposes to requalify
the empty space of the main river valley as
the structuring element of the dispersed city.
The re-opening of the river course would
emphasize its importance and re-establish its
ecological importance.
[4] ‘Down to the river’ transversally connects
(within the northern area of dense urban fabric)
the elevated water canal (on the hill) with
the river in the valley below by transforming
vacant plots into ecological areas.
 RONDE VENEN, THE NETHERLANDS
water storage

central canal
polder area
purification
Living in a Hybrid-Dike

The so-called ‘Green Heart’ of the country is one of the last

‘voids.’ Urbanization is inevitable, yet there is a desire to keep
its strong natural landscape quality. The dike is one of the most
distinguishing elements of the Dutch polder landscape. It is
part of the country’s complex hydraulic management system
which also includes ditches, canals, purification areas and
water storage basins. The elements are simultaneously highly
engineered technical components and part of the every-day
landscape. The project proposes an economical and ecological
colonization which preserves the openness of the de Ronde
Venen in the Green Heart while adding much needed dwellings
for residents. The strongly geometric landscape (with its five
radial dykes) is developed as the matrix for both infrastructure
and architecture; accessibility and density are combined in a
112 dynamic structure of an evolving dike landscape.
The new super-dike structure is based on a series of
hexagonal cells that simulate an organic entity – adopting
and expanding according to market and ecological needs. The
project interweaves water machinery (purification and storage),
accessibility (by road and water), public parks (integrated in
the infrastructure) and new urban structures – all developed
  EXPLORATIONS & SPECULATIONS

in an earthwork that re-interprets the grammar of a polder

landscape. The structure connect the core de Ronde Venen
to its surrounding to work with country’s expanding, non-
agricultural economy, while also creating a sustainable
ecology.

0m 500

Fig. 1  Mega- (land) Infrastructure

The mega-structure sits within the typically-Dutch polder landscape. Its
geometric cell structure is likened to organic cells that grow and mutate
according to need – creating a new man-made nature.
Fig. 2  Water Storage & Purification
The hybrid-dike couples as water infrastructure and as a public park system. Water purification is
achieved through both high-tech and low-tech (constructed lagoons) means.

Fig. 3  Housing Landforms

The housing blocks are indistinguishable from the earthworks and interwoven with a productive
landscape of fruit trees.
 CATAPILCO RIVER, CHILE
Re - tracing Chile’s Central Littoral

As part of the central coast of Chile, the Valparaiso littoral

is characterized by high connectivity and heavy coastal
inhabitation – largely due to its proximity to the Santiago
metropolitan region. The road constructed along the Catapilco
River affords good accessibility to the surrounding towns,
whose differences are marked by the role they play along the
estuary and lagoon. Settlements founded within the flood plain
have become stigmatized spots and are terrain vague in an area
under high development pressure.
clean water stream clean water stream
A four-folded strategy is envisaged to encourage
sustainable transformations including the generation of new
ENVIRONMENT

economies, the reinforcement of a public network, site-specific

urban development and ecological enhancement. In the
towns of Laguna and Catapilco, located at the two ends of the
Laguna Catapilco
Panamericana
Coastal Road

0,8 km 2 km

17 km

114 waterway, transformations are developed in order to reverse

the latent dynamics engendered by decaying agricultural
SPECIES

production, real estate pervasiveness, and de-valorisation

of the estuarine landscape and the irrational accumulation
of recreational facilities by private developers. Catapilco’s
character is re-thought by re-organising the existing irrigation
system and introducing practices to diversify agricultural
  EXPLORATIONS & SPECULATIONS

production. More specifically, the addition of dams and the

partition of the existing one allows for the coordination of a
traditional irrigation system with the newly introduced crayfish
production hosted by a system of small ponds.
In Laguna, repeated flooding has led to the temporal
opening of the sandbar, accelerating the natural flushing
clean water stream clean water stream
of the estuary’s water into the ocean. The question of how to
sustain the delicate interplay between saline and fresh water
PROCESSES

is dealt with by the lagoon’s new stone enclosures, whose

Laguna Catapilco
position serves the double purpose of making possible the
Panamericana
Coastal Road

0,8 km

permanent opening of the sandbar as well as generating an

2 km

17 km

ideal environment for oyster cultivation. The enclosures’ layout

PRODUCTS

also creates new waterfront promenades and fishing facilities

Fig. 1  Visions: Ecological Enhancement and New Economies providing pavements and public stairways to the existing
The existing water network is re-organized to enhance agricultural urban fabric.
production, introduce aquaculture and reinforce the system of public
space.
1

Fig. 2  Strategic projects

0 1 km 2,5 km 5 km

Two strategic projects, each located at one end of the Catapilco River, respond to specific site
characteristics and re-activate the waterway. In the lagoon, ‘Tidal Orchards’ (1) are proposed for
oyster cultivation; near the river mouth, a ‘Watching Machine’ (2) weaves the water back into its
surrounding landscape by associating it to leisure itineraries and agricultural production. 0 km 1 2 3 4 5
 WATER CULTURES:
Essays on Water Urbanism
Quays as Keys [Bruno De Meulder]
Open Oproep: ‘Reconversion of the Antwerp Quays’ – winning entry 2006
Team: PROAP + WIT + D-RECTA + IDROESSE
Project authors: João Nunes, Carlos Ribas, Ana Henriques, Ana
Marques, Bernardo Faria, David Sampaio, Iñaki Zoilo, Kobe Vanhaeren,
Leonor Barata, Mafalda Meirinho, Jan Dervaux [PROAP]; Guido Geenen,
Bruno De Meulder, Philip Mallants, Tinne Vandeven, Joris Moonen, Brecht
Verstraete [WIT]; Antonio Poças, Andrea Menegotto [D-RECTA]; Roberto
Piccoli, Atilio Siviero [IDROESSE].

Water and Asphalt: The Project of Isotropy [Paola Viganò]

1. Paesaggi dell’acqua/Landscapes of Water
PROJECT CONTRIBUTIONS Research project of REKULA and Università IUAV, di Venezia, 2006.
Researchers: P. Viganò with U. degli Uberti, G. Lambrechts, T. Lombardo
and G. Zaccariotto.

2. Water and Asphalt: The Project of Isotropy I

Commission for 10 th Architecture Biennale, Venezia (2006) by Università
IUAV di Venezia
Project authors: B Secchi, P Viganò with M. Ballarin, M. Brunello, N.
Dattomo, D. De Mattia, E. Dusi, V. Ferrario, S. Giametta, E. Giannotti, M.
Gronning, T. Lombardo, P. Marchevet, J. McOisans (Centre de recherches
sur l’espace sonore & l’environnement urbain-Grenoble), M. Patruno, M.
Pertoldi, S. Porcaro, C. Renzoni, A. Scarponi, L. Stroszeck, M. Tattara, F.
Vanin, F. Verona, G. Zaccariotto, A. Zaragoza.

3. Water and Asphalt: The Project of Isotropy II

research project 2007-2008 PRIN [Research Projects of National
Relevance] by Università IUAV di Venezia
Project authors: B Secchi, P Viganò with L. Fabian, P. Pellegrini.

Pumps and Polders [Inge Bobbink]

Fundamental research into the many polders in the Dutch Delta region is
currently being conducted by the TU Delft chair of landscape architecture,
and is being collated in the so-called ‘Polder Atlas’ (Polderatlas), a project
to map the Dutch lowlands and provide basic landscape knowledge for
future designs. This research, aimed at understanding the ‘Fine Dutch
Tradition’ of the lowlands, will aid in identifying methods and designing
tools for the modern-day urbanized landscape. Moreover, given the
inherent artificiality of the landscape at issue, this research may even be
able to contribute to worldwide questions of water and delta landscapes.

Reinventing Waterscape Urbanism [Antje Stokman]

1. Sustainable Problem Solutions for Asian Urban Settlements and
Developments by Exemplary Analysis of Sewage and Waters of the
Urban Settlement Changde and its Chuanzi River Basin, China
European Asia Pro Eco Programme (Contract 2598/59-2005/109-285):
December 2005 – July 2008
Project partners: Wasser Hannover e.V. (Germany), Government of 2. ‘Islands + Bridges’
Changde City (China), City of Utrecht (Netherlands), Department of Project authors: Alexandru Rauta (Romania), Effi Eli (Israel)
Construction of Hunan Province, Changsha (China)
3. ‘ECOfrontiers/ ECOscapes’
2. Framework Master Plan (2007-2020) on Sustainable and Ecological Project authors: Le Quan Tuan (Vietnam), Martin Van Weverbeg
Water Resource Management in the City of Changde (Belgium)
Model project funded by Changde City and Hunan Province: January 2008
– November 2008
Project partners: Leibniz University Hannover, AllSat water consult GmbH,
agwa GmbH, ipp Pabsch & Partner mbH, ITWH Institut für technisch-
wissenschaftliche Hydrologie GmbH, Wasser Hannover e.V. (all Germany)

3. Wastewater basins as green infrastructure, Changde

Yingying Zhu (China), Landscape Architecture Diploma, Leibniz University
Hannover, Autumn 2007 [promoters Antje Stokman & Dirk Weichgrebe]

4. Wetland Park Xiajiadang, Changde

Nengshi Zheng (China), Landscape Architecture Diploma, Leibniz
University Hannover, Spring 2008 [promoters Antje Stokman & Markus
Boller]

117
South Asian Hydraulic Civilizations [Kelly Shannon]
1. Dhaka and Khulna region, Bangladesh
KUL Studio, Spring 2008 [guided by Kelly Shannon & Ward Verbakel]
Project authors: Sabina Favaro (Italy), Sahdia Khan (Belgium) , Karen
Landuydt (Belgium), Tin Meylemans (Belgium), Devangi Ramakrishnan
(India), Makarand Salunke (India), Wim Wambecq (Belgium).

2. Mumbai, India
KUL Studio, Spring 2007 [guided by Kelly Shannon & Chotima Ag-Ukrikul]
Project authors: Adriana Aguilera Diaz Di Pilar (Colombia), Ana Beja da
Costa (Portugal), Luciana Campos (Argentina), Yinh Chinh Chen (Taiwan),
Marco Degaetano (Italy), Sabina Favaro (Italy), Elisabeta Gjoklaj (Albania),
Janina Gosseye (Belgium), Min Jin Si (China), Julian Tiranishti (Albania),
Pei Chin Wen (Taiwan).

3. Galle-Matara region, Sri Lanka

KUL Studio, Spring 2006 [guided by Kelly Shannon & André Loeckx]
Project authors: Cecilia Braedt (Germany), Kris Huysmans (Belgium),
Nandani Heva Pedige Sumthra (Sri Lanka), Sadiq Toffa (South Africa),
Cathérine Vilquin (Belgium).

Between Pampa and River [Viviana d’Auria & Laura Vescina]

KUL Studio, Spring 2006 [guided by Bruno De Meulder & Laura Vescina]
1. ‘Landways + Bridgescapes’
Project authors: Ismael Cheik Hassan (Lebanon), Eliza Hoxha (Kosovo)
ANOTHER WATER URBANISM:
Vietnamese Urban Projects
Modernity in the Mekong [Matthew Neville]
1. ‘Organic Formalities’
AHO Studio - Norway, Spring 2007 [guided by Kelly Shannon, Espen
Hauglin & Cathérine Vilquin]
Project authors: Teresa Rijo Sotomaior Estrela (Portugal), Darren Gill
(Ireland), Irene Bargues Sentis (Spain), Synnva Kristine Ullensvard
(Norway).

2. ‘Rurban Dialogue’
KUL Studio, autumn 2005 [guided by Kelly Shannon, Katrien Theunis,
Miguel Robles-Duran]
Project Authors: Alexis Doucet (Belgium), Nandani Heva Pedige Sumithra
(Sri Lanka), Hasina Shrestha (Nepal)

3. ‘Canal_scape’
KUL Studio, Autumn 2005 [guided by Kelly Shannon, Katrien Theunis,
Miguel Robles-Duran]
Project Authors: Phuong Dang Nguyen (Vietnam), Liu Luxiang (China),
Ma Zhen (China)

4. ‘Blending Thresholds’
KUL Studio, Autumn 2005 [guided by Kelly Shannon, Katrien Theunis,
Miguel Robles-Duran]
Project Authors: Rehnuma Parveen (Bangladesh), Bahri Saka (Turkey),
Cathérine Vilquin (Belgium)

5. ‘Structuring Uncertainties’
KUL Studio, Autumn 2006 [guided by Kelly Shannon, Jade Salhab & Ward
Verbakel]
Project Authors: Benoit Burquel (Belgium), Carolina Hegler (Brazil),
Matthew Neville (Canada).

6. ‘Connecting Landscapes’
KUL Studio, Autumn 2006 [guided by Kelly Shannon, Jade Salhab & Ward
Verbakel]
Project Authors: Thaisa Faro (Brazil), Bruce Kimani (Kenya), Marlies
Lenaerts (Belgium), Xiang Zeng (China).

Water ]re]Cycling [Ngo Trung Hai & Kelly Shannon]

1. ‘Eco-Feeder’
EU-UEPP (Urban Environmental Planning Programme) KUL short course,
summer 2007 [guided by Bruno De Meulder, Kelly Shannon & Benoit
Legrand]
Project authors: Ngyuen Thanh Ha, Luu Hoang Ngoc Lan, Ho Doa Tri
Huu (all from Vietnam), Ward Verbakel (Belgium), Tse-Hui The (Australia).

2. ‘Third Space’
EU-UEPP (Urban Environmental Planning Programme) KUL short course,
summer 2007 [guided by Bruno De Meulder, Kelly Shannon & Benoit

Legrand]
Project authors: Nguyen Huong, Luu Duc Cuong, Dam Quang Tuan (all
from Vietnam), Thea K. Hartmann (Norway), Fabio Vanin (Italy).
3. ‘Merging Wetland & Public Space’
AHO Studio - Norway, Spring 2007 [guided by Kelly Shannon, Espen
Hauglin & Cathérine Vilquin]
Project authors: Lise Almquist, Aud Stine Askje, Katja Buen, Mons
Martinius Dahl, Charlotte Hvidevold Hystad, Bård Vaag Stangnes (all from
Norway).
4. ‘Green Lines & Red Dots’
Landscape Architecture Diploma, Leibniz University Hannover, Summer
2008 [promoters Antje Stokman & Kelly Shannon]
Project authors: Eva Nemcová (Czech Republic), Christoph Wust
(Germany)
[re]volutionary Land_structure | Infra_scape [Janina Gosseye
& Bieke Cattoor]
HCMC, Vietnam
Invited International Competition, January 2008 (second place)
Team: OSA + WIT + PROAP in collaboration with National
Institute of Urban and Rural Planning [NIURP], Hanoi.
Project authors: Kelly Shannon, Janina Gosseye, Bieke Cattoor, Bruno
De Meulder [OSA]; Guido Geenen, Roeland Joosten, Yuri Gerrits, Brecht
Verstraete [WIT]; Joao Ferreira Nunes, Carlos Ribas Da Silva [PROAP]; Thi
Kim Ngan, Nguyen Ly Hong, Ho Bac, Dinh, Quoc Thai, Vu Van Nga, Ha
An, Pham Thi Hue Linh, Nguyen Minh Phuong, Nguyen Thanh Tu, Ha An,
Pham Thi Hue Linh, Sam Minh Tuan, Nguyen Thi, Thu Phuong, Do Xuan
Anh Vu, Tran Tuan Anh, Hoan Long, Luu Quang Huy, Do Kim Dung, Tran
Anh Tuan, Hoang Tan Truc [NIURP].
Tan Hao-Lo Gom Canal Upgrading [Benoit Legrand & Kelly
Shannon]
Bi-lateral Development Project (Vietnam + Belgium) 1998-2006.
Team: Belgian Technical Cooperation [BTC], ASRO, People’s Committee
of Ho Chi Minh City [PCHCMC], Villes en transition
Project authors: Joseph Desmet, Pierre Lambotte, Yves Dervaux,
Benoit Legrand and Jan Van Lint [BTC]; Han Verschure, Jef Van Den
Broeck, Kelly Shannon [ASRO]; Le Dieu Anh, Pham Thi Thanh Hai.
Villes en Transition: Ludovic Dewaele, Jan Nibudeck [PCHCMC].
Lagoon Project
Team: Black + Veatch, Liege University, Ghent University
Team: Prof. Vasel [Liege University], Prof. De Pauw [Ghent University]
EXPLORATIONS & SPECULATIONS:
Excerpts of Water Urbanism
Canalizing and Colonizing the Campine [Maarten Van Acker]
KUL, ongoing Phd: ‘Conceiving infrastructure as a mode of urbanism’
[promoters: Marcel Smets, Bruno De Meulder]
Water and [re] Production logics in Amsterdam [Karl Beelen]
KUL, ongoing Phd: ‘Peri-urban trajectories: mapping as a designerly tool
of investigation’
[promoter: Bruno De Meulder]
Pani and Mati [Sabina Favaro]
Khulna region, Bangladesh
EMU thesis, Spring 2008 [promoters: Kelly Shannon & Paola Viganò]
Recovery and Reconfiguration of Morii Lake [Teodora Capelle]
Morii Lake, Romania
MaHS thesis,,Spring 2005 [promotor: Bruno De Meulder]
The shifted connectivity of Kete Krachi [Barbara Roosen]
Volta Region, Ghana
MaHS thesis, Spring 2008 [promotors: Kelly Shannon & Viviana d’Auria] 119
Pond City [Dao-ming Chang]
Taoyuan Metropolitan Area, Taiwan
EMU thesis, Spring 2007 [promoters: Bruno De Meulder & Paola Viganò]
Weaving Water and Rail [Ana Beja da Costa]
São Cristóvãe, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
KUL Studio, Fall 2007 [guided by Bruno De Meulder & Laura Vescina]
Project authors: Ana Beja da Costa (Portugal), Sabina Favaro (Italy) and
Barbara Roosen (Belgium).
Urbanity between Coalscapes and Water [Christian Nolf]
Le Centre, Belgium
EMU thesis, Spring 2008 [promoters: Bruno De Meulder & Bernardo
Secchi]
Living in a Hybrid-Dyke [Si Minji – China]
The Ronde Venen, The Netherlands
EMU Studio [TU Delft] , Fall 2006 [guided by Inge Bobbink & Otto
Trienekens]
Re-tracing Chile’s Central Littoral [Carolina Contreras]
Central Littoral, Chile
EMU thesis, Spring 2007 [promotors: Luisa Calabrese & Kelly Shannon]