Swedish observe White Arkitekter has accomplished the Exercisfältet Stormwater Pond in Uppsala, Sweden, offering water purification and flood safety whereas additionally making a biodiverse panorama for native residents.
The pond is situated in Exercisfältet, a former navy coaching space that has lately been topic to a considerable amount of improvement that has diminished water infiltration.
As an alternative of treating the pond as a purely infrastructural undertaking, White Arkitekter took the chance to create a biodiverse setting across the pond to “have a good time the enjoyment of being a part of nature”.
“With all the brand new calls for on public areas that include local weather adaptation, it is crucial that panorama architects have interaction creatively with technical necessities,” lead architect Charlotta Råsmark informed Dezeen.
“We have to create areas that may be downside solvers and locations for magnificence, pleasure and pleasure on the similar time,” she continued.
To the north, the pond’s “metropolis facet” follows the road of the brand new housing blocks with a concrete wall offering flood safety.
Reverse, the south-facing “nature facet” follows the undulating types of the panorama, and the entire pond is wrapped by a winding picket pathway with a weathered metal balustrade.
Untreated wooden and metal have been used for the walkways, each to minimise the leakage of chemical compounds into the water and to mix in as a lot as attainable with the encompassing panorama from afar.
The pond itself was made as small as attainable to maximise the inexperienced house for recreation round it, in addition to offering house onto which the water degree can safely rise within the occasion of heavy rainfall.
“To cease the fast decline of biodiversity, we have to make more room in city areas for ecosystems that many individuals discover messy and unattractive; the town greenery cannot solely be about tidy lawns and borders,” Råsmark stated.
“However a messy ecosystem in a metropolis context should even be welcoming to the typical metropolis dweller and that is the place the significance of clearly seen design is available in,” she continued.
The pond has been designed to accommodate the continued improvement of the encompassing space, changing into half of a bigger inexperienced belt stretching from the centre of Uppsala to lake Mälaren to the south.
The Stormwater Pond at Exercisfältet has lately been longlisted within the mixed-use undertaking class of Dezeen Awards 2023.
In China, studio eLandscript took an analogous strategy to integrating the ecological and the city, combining the creation of a stormwater pond with a brand new wetland park on the location of a former energy station.
The pictures is by Måns Berg.
