Floodscape

Abstract

The project consists out of a newly designed ‘casco’, or framework landscape that addresses threats of flood control and ecological impoverishment on the one hand and gives space for urban development and economical/agricultural growth. The project location is the region of Bratislava, the capitol of Slovakia, which lies along the Danube just east to the border with Austria. The Danube flows from the Alps and passes the Carpathian Mountains, which lay north of Bratislava. Downstream of Bratislava the Danube flows onto the Little Hungarian Plain, covering parts of Slovakia and Hungary where the Danube slows down and splits into three different flows creating an inland delta. This inland delta contains one of the largest groundwater bodies of central Europe. Throughout time this delta was a very dynamic landscape, it was here where the river changed from a river running in a narrow valley through a mountain landscape to a river flowing freely in this large inland plain. It would often find a new path to flow through during a flood creating an interesting dynamic flood landscape with a wide floodplain full of alluvial forests and oxbow lakes (old river arms). Because of manmade interventions like dikes and dams the river has no longer a wide floodplain or the potential to diverge its course, changing the natural dynamics. In the current situation the river acts largely as a channel after it passes Bratislava.