82 CLIMATE CHANGE
in urban areas often divert even more water into impermeable city streets, making flash flooding even more likely. Tere are viable solutions, says
Linardatos, talking about the benefits of increasing green spaces to form ‘sponge cities’ – an idea that was largely rejected in London. ‘Large plots of high-value land would need to be sacrificed in order to form the open spaces and wetlands for flood water storage,’ he says. ‘Tis may have been one of the reasons that Tames Tideway Tunnel was seen as the preferred solution, instead of the transformation of London to a sponge city, when options for controlling the contamination from sewers in the River Tames were assessed. Te new super sewer aims to resolve one of the consequences of flooding from sewers rather than tackling the problem at its root. When HS2 came along,
the government bought land and gave compensation – we’d have to do the same to create a sponge city, but the value of the land would make it so expensive.’ Te idea has been successfully adopted
elsewhere, however, such as the Shenzhen Guanlan Riverside Plaza in China, which won World Architecture Festival’s Landscape of the Year 2024 award. Here, a mix of hidden underground rainwater storage and a rainwater garden provides a green lung in the city while preventing flooding. ‘Green spaces that are designed to control floodwater in extreme storm events can also deliver other benefits, from cleaner air to wildlife habitat,’ notes Linardatos. Parks and public spaces can also be used
to protect communities from extreme tides and rising sea levels, without the need for depressing concrete fortifications. Fish Tail
park in Nanching, where Turenscape created a 126-acre park on the flood plain of the Yangtze River, regulates storm water, provides habitat for wildlife, and offers an array of recreational opportunities. On a larger scale, Te BIG U project by BIG, the first phase of which was completed last year, came out of a competition from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to find design solutions that would protect New York from events like Hurricane Sandy, which flooded large areas of the city, causing dozens of deaths and $42bn in damage. Te resulting project encompasses a programme of works that will protect the city, with raised parkland alongside floodwalls and gates. Not only does it protect some of the poorest areas of the city as a priority, but the resulting green spaces, such as Asser Levy Playground, Stuyvesant Cove Park and Battery
PROJECT
THE KING ABDULLAH PETROLEUM STUDIES AND RESEARCH CENTRE
The King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Centre (KAPSARC) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is home to hundreds of international researchers in energy studies and their families. The community is planned around a dry riverbed providing mitigation for storm water, transformed into a linear park and central oasis, with indigenous, drought-tolerant plants irrigated with recycled water. Several of the sculptural, stainless-steel roofs extend toward the park to create flowing shade canopies, and streets are designed for air flow and cooled with fountains. Of the 191 homes, 188 were awarded LEED Gold certification.
Architect HOK Client KAPSARC
PROJECT THE THAMES HOSPICE
The Thames Hospice in Maidenhead was surrounded by a large lake, a canal and the River Thames, on a site that was partially high-risk Flood Zone 3 and partially medium-risk Zone 2. The ground under the hospice buildings was raised out of reach of foreseeable future flooding, while a surface water drainage
system included large attenuation tanks located beneath the car parking areas, which have been designed with permeable surfacing to provide a safe place for water to go.
Engineer Price & Myers Client Thames Hospice Architect KKE Architects
PHOTOS: ALAN KARCHMER
PHOTOS: STÅLE ERIKSEN
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