Revitalize the River: A Regenerative River Landscape Proposal to Flåm, Aurland
Description
The increasing frequency and severity of flooding events due to heavy rainfall patterns and rapid snow melting, impacting human infrastructure and homes, underscores the urgent need for action. Such events are about to reach the extent where the effects can no longer be overlooked.
This diploma project delves into the transformation of the former delta areas, once filled and contaminated by tunnel masses and similar in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, these areas mainly contain industrial or touristic infrastructures, which obscure their ecological and floodable functions, functions that previously allowed water to expand and contract in several layers on land.
Context
Climate change is predicted to escalate the annual perception and rain season on the West Coast of Norway, already challenging the steep valleys with a limited regulated water course similar to this area. Within the same landscape context, many river deltas have historically been viewed as useless land, thereby being filled to improve future development of infrastructure and industry. Defining climate change as an important driver to change while implementing river and fjord dynamics as the main characters, the development strategy of the municipality is reversed. To enable a change in approach to these landscapes, containing areas of risk situations due to various hazards, the question is: How can we enable a population and tourist attraction like Flåm to coexist with the hazard without putting people at risk? Why are hazards almost always identified with catastrophes and limits to act?
Project
By embracing the fluidity of water and its potential within a large-scale landscape, the design presented in this diploma offers a beacon of hope for the floodscape of Flåm. The proposed framework for a flood-safe landscape allows diverse life forms to interact with their connected edges and fosters a variety of life in and along the river edges.
Concept
Though opening up the riverscape within the floodplain with different islands and edges, designing for potential expansions and contractions, invites different edges to be presented in the landscape where land and water meet. Hosting the two different waters, river and sea, while inviting life to the water edges, the area additionally facilitate different programs in the delta area.
Design
The design is separated into two parts, separating the delta area from the valley. The design set a framework for a flood-safe landscape, where the different types of life can interact with their important waterscape.
The delta area. The interventions utilize dikes and floodable islands constructed of previously structured land, to enable a stable floodable riverscape while keeping the important infrastructures such as railways, built areas, and land, in which people gather safe from flooding.
The valley. Utilizing the map of the historical meanders and their connected topsoil layers, the structures of the future meanders are linked to create a space for water to breathe within the cultural landscape.