Water in the City

This week my collegues and I had been investigating how an urban area with a pond can be improved and be sustainable. We worked in Van Brakelplein an area of Groningen, The Netherlands.

After visiting the area few times and interview some inhabitants we concluded that the main problem was the lack of public space to socialize. The area is very calm and could be a nice place to live but it needs more little shops and business which attrack new people and increase the life on the street.

In our project we must include also modifications in the area which promote a sustainable life and contain the pond. In that way, the proposal was focused in the pond like the main element to attrack the inhabitants and use the houses around it to create renewable energy with solar panels.

Here I attached a video we had made to show the idea better.

The three layers blue (water), green (green spaces) and red (urbanism area) are combanied with the three PPP' (Planet, Profit and People) to develop the project.

To increase the quality of the spaces and the connection between them we redistribute the elements as you can see in the following picture. (Blue: water, Green: Green spaces, Brown: resting area).

The new position depends on the traffic flow, the orientation and the necessity of keep the same quantity of water. Chanching the position of the water we get more public space which is used like sports, resting and playground areas.

Main points/changes that we made in the area:

-Remove the parking lots in front of the houses and around the pond.

-Build up a parking in a empty space in the street Admiraal de Ruyterlaan for the inhabitants. This parking is just for hybrid and electric cars although it is free. On that way we want promote these kind of cars in the area.

-Build a greenhouse autosustainable in front of the school. The kids can use this space to grow vegetables and get used to the nature. And the roof of the building must be green.

-Place solar panels on the college and school roof to generate electricity for the houses.

-Introduce new changes in the area around the pond to attract new people.