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Monday, June 28, 2010
And here's the next batch.
SOAK: Mumbai in the Estuary by Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha looks at Mumbai’s terrain and the history of its making. It images the sea and the monsoon not as enemies and agents of flood, but as inevitable partners in the shaping of the ground of settlement.
It situates Mumbai in a fluid threshold between land and sea, a shifting saline and fresh water gradient of creeks, and a monsoon surface of holdings. The ground between land and sea is understood to be a filter in section drawings, photographs and models that present this alternative representation of Mumbai’s terrain.
SOAK also showcases design interventions that holds waters rather than channel it out to sea; that work with the gradient of an estuary. It calls for visualizing the city as a fluid field of rain-soaked surfaces, monsoon holdings and overflows, of public-private negotiations.
Rather than fighting the monsoon, it encourages us to design with and enjoy the soak.
Here's a brief excerpt from BBC's Coast on artificial coastlines and mobile floating harbours constructed in secret all over Britain for the Normandy invasion.
“Sugar Beach is the second urban beach proposed for Toronto’s downtown waterfront, and the latest addition to the amber necklace of Toronto’s lakefront beachscape. It is a sequel to HtO, the waterfront’s first beach park. The proposal for Jarvis Slip playfully recomposes other signature elements of the city, with Toronto playing the role as its own design precedent. The omnipresent horizon of the lake and adjacent industrial buildings recalls Georges Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières (1884). Tinted by sugar spray carried on westerly breezes from the neighboring Redpath Sugar Factory, a series of hard rock candies with colored stripes and dozens of pink umbrellas are scattered across a sandy wedge of beach along the Jarvis Slip. Integrating the future Waterfront Promenade, along with a plaza for programmed and unprogrammed events, the design playfully adopts some of the most enduring elements from Toronto’s emerging landscape identity—beaches, bedrock, trees, and water—as well as the urban horizon and a trace of the city’s past industrial mood.”
“Oyster-tecture is a project created for Rising Currents, an exhibition jointly sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art and the PS1 Contemporary Art Center that commissioned design responses to climate change and sea level rise on the NYC waterfront. Our team, led by Kate Orff, participated in an 8-week design and planning workshop at PS1 with a team of local engineers, ecologists, and high school environmental activists to develop the proposal. Inspired by local restoration efforts underway, we propose an offshore wave attenuation oyster-reef and a water-based inland to protect the city’s waterfront from climate changed-induced sea level rise and storm surge. By improving water quality, attenuating waves, and building habitat, Oyster-tecture introduces new strategies for water-based recreation, ecologies, and economies to the residents of New York.”
“This atlas addresses the New Dutch Water Defence Line (Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie) on a themed basis. Its position in the landscape, the forts, the inundation system, the geomorphology, the strategic system and recent developments can be read off in maps rendered so as to give an understanding of all aspects of the defence line landscape. The defence line reveals itself as a many-tentacled military defensive system of forts, group shelters and polders which can be flooded at the threat of war. The maps show the cohesion of the defence line as a landscape-strategic structure as well as the topographic composition of this structure in layers and components. The more detailed maps of the forts display the wealth of historic places, insertions in the landscape and defining elements.”
In the Safe Trestles Beach Access competition, our favorite finalist is The Long Trail, submitted by Ken Smith Landscape Architect.
Writes the design team, “Our approach is straight forward incorporating ADA access and providing a safe at-grade crossing. The path follows the topography by tracing desire lines. Existing use patterns are utilized for a minimal footprint of path infrastructure. This strategy encourages ecological restoration, reduces runoff, improves water quality, and provides additional habitat.”
The Tarlair Swimming Pool is a tidal pool cozily tucked into a cove on the northeast coast of Scotland, near Macduff. First opened in the 1930s, it became a popular, even fashionable, social meeting place. During low tides, it provides safe areas for swimming and wading, and at high tides, the sea replenishes its waters by engulfing all areas of the pool. Built in the Art Deco style, its expressive curves, white washed geometric tea pavilion and Suprematist pool stand in awesomely beautiful stark contrast against the craggy landscape.
Tarlair has fallen in disrepair since it was closed in 1995. In 2007, it was awarded A List status, the highest rating, by Historic Scotland in recognition of its “simple yet stylish design, early date and magnificent location.” This status gave the pool legal protection but not immediate funding for restoration.
See also the tide pool of Saint-Malo.
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