par Dobre, Catalina 
;Casabella, Nadia
Référence Planning for resilient cities and regions Joint AESOP/ACSP Congress (15-19 July 2013: Dublin)
Publication Non publié, 2013-07-15
;Casabella, Nadia Référence Planning for resilient cities and regions Joint AESOP/ACSP Congress (15-19 July 2013: Dublin)
Publication Non publié, 2013-07-15
Poster de conférence
| Résumé : | The urban design and architecture faculties have traditionally disregarded the question of water management as a structuring element of the urban project. The rising risk of urban flooding due to the combined effect of climate change and the high rate of urbanization prompted some faculties to launch new programs dealing with the question. In Europe, the Postgraduate Masters in Urbanism from KU Leuven (Belgium) and TU Delft (The Netherlands) are the best known examples and have surely contributed to raise awareness in the academic milieu about water sensitive urban design.Traditional urban water management has fully ignored the landscape and ecological processes regulated by the water cycle (e.g. erosion, surface and groundwater levels, vegetation growth along drainage patterns, water chemistry…) relying rather on the construction of physical infrastructure to solve in centralized fashion issues of water supply and drainage inside cities. Alternatively, solutions for environmental mitigation are searched for, in order to reduce the impact of human settlements on the natural water cycle (Kotola and Nurminen, 2003), like managing storm water by means of “green infrastructure” or “new urban rivers” (Mahaut, 2011), while at the same time acknowledging the role water can play in enhancing the urban environment (Novotny and Brown, 2007). This green infrastructure builds upon and can eventually reinforce the urban armature of green, public spaces, next to provide multiple, desirable environmental outcomes (e.g. restored wetlands, bio swales and rain garden). Thus, the role of architects and urban designers is imperative in transforming these theoretical initiatives in practical actions.In Brussels, the challenge of water management is related to a series of factors that amplify the problem –the high rate of urbanization affecting the water’s natural network, large impermeable areas, and numerous obstacles for water run-off and artificialized rivers have all transformed Brussels’ water friendly valleys in areas with a high risk of flooding. Furthermore, the forecasted demographic ‘explosion’ expected from now till 2040 only adds urgency to the matter. The design unit Space Speculation (ULB Faculty of Architecture), proposed to investigate the potential of Brussels’ watersheds as catalysts of urban development during the 2012 spring semester. The main hypothesis was that the specific hydrological conditions that exist throughout the Brussels’ region (the Zenne valley and its tributaries together with the artificial channel built during the 2nd half of the 19th century) could become the armature for the development of metropolitan parks and public spaces, by interrelating different scales of intervention and impact. In this poster, we intend to reflect the whole design process, from description to project, from understanding the structuring part of the old city’s valleys during its development and for its present configuration, to the adoption of sustainable water management and water sensitive urban design practices accommodating growth to the ecological and hydrological characteristics of the wider region. |
