/-01 Building Hope
[Academic] Masterplan, Mixed-use Utility
In regions facing infrastructural and ecological destruction, design can be a tool of intervention. This work illuminates opportunities for design to be utilized as an agent of empowerment, amelioration, and hope. In an effort to interrupt compounding systems of oppression, an exploration of novel hydro-electric and ecological pavilions of refuge are proposed as speculative models of stable utilities and service provisions. Situated within a vital socio-cultural and ecological spine, these speculative models aim to provide sustenance, support, and hope.
Awarded 2023 CASA-ACÉA Student Work Showcase Top 5 Masters projects | CASA.ACEA
Published in Building 22 | Edition 23
Exhibited in 2023 RAIC Conference, Building 22 | Edition 23 Gallery Exhibit
“Decades of reduced freshwater inflows to the Wadi, creeping urban development, environmental pollution, intensive use of herbicides and pesticides and human disturbance have crippled, and profoundly altered this fragile environment.”
- UNDP
Construction underway by the UNDP in the Wadi provides the opportunity for proposed interventions to be easily integrated into the scheme. The three sites of the Sea Gate (Core Area 1), Visitor’s Centre (Core Area 2), and the Upper Gate (Core Area 5), are most viable due to their connectivity to surrounding neighbourhoods, their proximity to reinvigorated waters.
Proposal
The proposed speculative intervention combines natural resources, innovative technology, and architecture to build sustenance, support and ultimately hope. Alternative renewable sources of stable utilities, service provisions, shelter, and communal space aim to provide empowerment and agency to the people of the region. Initially set among the centrally located water artery of the Wadi, the proposal is to serve as a model for future expansions along other bodies of water within available lands.
Sustenance is highly dependent on water and electricity, interconnected, as clean water is a scarcity highly impacted by the availability of electricity. The challenge is to extract clean water from alternative renewable resources non-reliant on supplemental resource generation. The proposal addresses these scarcities through four components: buoys, terminals, transitory shelters, and spaces of play. Modular buoys harvest electricity, terminals harvest water and supply services to surrounding communities while transitory shelters and grow gardens provide support for locals. Spaces of play progress beyond sustenance to support building hope for a better future.
Implementation
Construction underway by the UNDP in the Wadi provides the opportunity for proposed interventions to be easily integrated into the scheme. The three sites of the Sea Gate (Core Area 1), Visitor’s Centre (Core Area 2), and the Upper Gate (Core Area 5), are most viable due to their connectivity to surrounding neighbourhoods, their proximity to Wadi Gaza, and their reinvigorated waters.
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