Year: 2018
Co-Author: Arch. Daniela Fernández
Renders: Arch. Nicolás Franco
Framework: Final architectural thesis project
Mentor: Dr. Arch. Bernardo Martín
Award: 2019 Urban Planning National Prize. Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (MVOTMA)
Tags: Urban Planning | Architecture | Sustainable Drainage | Research
A project that reflects on a possible sustainable future for the city of Montevideo. It is located in the neighbourhood of La Aguada, a primary area of the city that has long since become a depressed and neglected area. A complex enclave resulting from multiple mismanagements, the passing of time, conjunction with inclement weather and its impacts.
The first part of the work, called Essay of a Hidden Stream, deals with the urban scale. Through a meticulous analysis of the area, it attempts to understand the sum of layers that make up this enclave through successive "zooms in". These make visible multiple areas of opportunity with which to generate a substantial transmutation in La Aguada neighbourhood.
A Master Plan structured in stages is proposed Based on the urban analysis. This aims for new contemporary public spaces which address the problem of visibly abandoned buildings in the area and simultaneously improve the resilience and the capacity to react to flooding, thus minimising the impacts that these currently cause.
The first stage of action is the Canarias Stream sub-basin. Through this, a little of the history of this streambed, emblematic in the conformation of the city of Montevideo, emerges for all to see.
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The work is articulated as a didactic tool in itself, gradually introducing the reader to the complexity of the subject matter addressed. The aim is for the reader to gradually become aware of the elements that make up the problem. A problem that we see as an opportunity to work on.
To this end, a visual language is established in three colours - red, blue and greyscale - for an immediate visual syntax of the information, thus encouraging an associative reading. Red is assigned to the problem and its analysis, blue to the proposal and greyscale to additional information. ----
The second part of the work, called Basil Farm Water Square, develops one of the possible architectural projects that make up the urban proposal originated in the Essay of a Hidden Stream.
It proposes the creation of an Open Interpretation Centre, the aim of which is to make visible what the city itself has destroyed and whose repercussions it still experiences today.
The Canarias Stream is thus reintroduced, in a different format, into the urban fabric, together with its associated natural ecosystems.
The four proposed new public spaces are planned as squares associated with existing flood hotspots. They are designed as a didactic space linked to urban waters while at the same time helping to prevent the existing urban drainage from collapsing in the event of heavy rainfall. Thus, temporarily, these spaces channel, store and then deposit the water that cannot be retained within the existing system into the proposed separate drainage system. To this end, the proposed new plazas offer adaptive multi-purpose spaces that modify their functions depending on whether or not they are retaining stormwater.