HYDROSCRAPER WATER PURIFICATION HIGH-RISE TO REGENERATE AND RECOVER URBAN WETLANDS

City School of Architecture (CSA), Colombo

Project idea

the project focuses on an alternative approach to design a sustainable green high rise of 15-20 stories consisting of office & recreational complex within the urban context of Batharamulla.

This pilot project embraces the changing urban ecosystem though the proposed creation of a new typology - integrating 3 distinct core functions of a research center and water recycling plant together with awareness, the three elements that harmoniously links together. The result is a complex which addresses multiple systems within the urban ecological context of its immediate surrounds.

Project description

The project based in Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte, the administrative capital of Sri Lanka, addresses the depletion and pollution of wetlands in the area. These wetlands are a key component of urban sustainability and assist in retaining the Eco system. In addition to this, they act as a flood retention area. Wastewater that is discharged into wetlands is largely responsible for the 1.2% annual depletion of these wetlands.
The HYDROSCRAPER is a small-scale water purification project that is concentrated on a radius of 2km around the building. The hydroscraper was developed through the concept of a deconstructed factory, where it acts as an anti-factory that produces outputs that minimize the negative impact on the environment.
The project further draws from the severed relationship between humans and the environment due to the over-influence of machinery in most aspects of functionality. Global warming and increased levels of pollution are a growing reason for concern, and the hydroscraper is designed to act as an aberrant machine that could reunite the humans and environment and in turn reverse the negative impacts on he environment.

Technical information

The elements of the purification process are used as contrasting features by using water movement and sound as elements in the public activities that make the process conspicuous. This is achieved by maintaining the connections at various levels between the public and the process. The water-slide tubes going through the water purification process, the water-parks connecting to the urban landscape and the aeration fall in the main exhibition space facilitate this connection.
The highlighted features of this project are the controlled wetland within the bio-dome that focuses on research on wetlands and water quality, and the micro algae purification plant located at the top of the structure which produces clean water, biomass and oxygen that is mixed with stem and emitted through a chimney connected to a wing turbine.
The chimney presents itself as an abstraction of a factory exhaust while the white smoke acts as a signaling element to the public that assists in raising awareness on the issue at hand.