different facets of water
Verlust der Mitte - Architectures of centrifugality and centripetality in the hinterlands of London and Buenos Aires
LOCATION: BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA YEAR: 2017 - THE BERLAGE CENTER FOR ADVANCED STUDIES IN ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN, TU DELFT
TEAM: MANOLIS VENIERAKIS
TUTORS: filip geerts
EXHIBITIONS: the berlage: project global exhibition, faculty of architecture, tu delft 09/2017
The project presents the water supply infrastructure in Buenos Aires in three sequential scales -city, metropolis and province- showing it affects the relationship between the metropolis and the hinterland.
The first pumping towers and treatment plants were constructed in the nineteenth century as urban monuments to promote the new technological facilities that prevented epidemics. Contemporary such infrastructure has withdrawn to mere functionality: from the river intake and conversion to potable water, to the sewage treatment and return to the river, alongside the separate river basins feeding the metropolitan network.
The water system at the provincial scale, as characterized by the different hydrographic regions, still faces contamination issues, due to chemicals, pollutants and intensive irrigation. Water has been the catalyst for the province’s development – water from the city. While the agriculture and livestock farming in the pampas of the province literally used to feed the city and its economy, the river intakes in the metropolis and coastal areas supply the hinterland with water. Despite the latest facilities, industry remains highly polluting, a fact that results in contaminated water sources, turning the water cycle from intake to return, into a vicious circle. The human manipulation of nature and the forces of physical environment are facets of a single problem, both opposing and reinforcing each other.
Within this framework, an architecture celebrating technological achievement with all its bells and whistles in a tradition of allegorical hyperbole, merely showcases the essential possibility of solving the issues of water supply, just as the supposedly backstage pragmatics of contemporary water infrastructure never by itself guarantee the prevention of a future epidemic.