Amalgam Park: The coalescence of recreation and water treatment: Public bath house with swimming pool complex, water purification facility and marsh park in Havana.

Amalgam Park: The coalescence of recreation and water treatment: Public bath house with swimming pool complex, water purification facility and marsh park in Havana.

Jakuc, M.M.

Milani, S. (mentor)
Geerts, F. (mentor)

Architecture

Architecture

2009-06-29

Problem statement: Historically, water had been extracted from some of Cuba’s major aquifers at a higher rate than they were recharged, but in recent years the pace of water extraction appears to have intensified. Surface waters diverted into man-made reservoirs can interfere with the natural recharge of aquifers. High evaporation rates from tropical region reservoirs can have adverse environmental impacts by increasing the concentration of minerals in irrigation water. Surface waters have been contaminated by industrial wastes and by the chemical runoff associated with the use of increasing amounts of chemical pesticides and herbicides. Scant water distribution management, alarming condition of infrastructure together with high contamination of water resources constitute a scenario, where the need of establishing elementary infrastructure for water treatment opens possibilities to reformulate the image of infrastructure as a by-product of settlement and to relate it to its public role and use, as well as to the whole ecological process. The area of Puentes Grandes district in Havana character calls for fully specified design; sufficiently open to integrate recreational dynamics of natural ecosystems. Goal: The intention is to design beyond the polarized situation where architecture and landscape can be included as systems in an urban design. In the city scale the design solution should aggregate the development of neighbourhood of river Almendares banks and enforce its natural ecosystems. In the more local scale, design intention is to develop a formula capable of fusing previously separated morphologies of industrial production, hydrological infrastructure and public, green, recreation area. Method description: Finding self-referential accommodation in a landscape that has lost its coherence; examining the site in order to discover possible rules for intervention; rediscover the landscape with its critical properties. Use landscape as both structuring element and medium for rethinking urban conditions, to produce everyday urban spaces and architectural solutions. Relevance: Take the floor in discussion concerning the issue of how dense urban forms emerge from landscape and how urban ecologies support performance spaces. Search for new basis for emergence of form geared to the technological and ecological realities of the contemporary city.

architecture
landscape
Havana
baths
park

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:211369c0-f533-4857-8be4-2345dbd39b5a

2009-11-10

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2009 Jakuc, M.M.