Landslide Memorial Landscape @ Aranayaka

University of Moratuwa (UoM), Faculty of Architecture, Department of Architecture, Moratuwa

Project idea

Natural Disasters A natural disaster is a major adverse event resulting from natural processes of the Earth; examples are floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, storms, and other geologic processes. A natural disaster can cause loss of life or damage property, and typically leaves some economic damage in its wake, the severity of which depends on the affected population's resilience (ability to recover) and also on the infrastructure available. An adverse event will not rise to the level of a disaster if it occurs in an area without vulnerable population
Global context When considering the global context, there are many types of natural disasters which affect the people in many ways. They can kill people, damage the properties of the people and make damage to the people.
Sri Lankan Context As a country Sri Lanka has few major natural disaster events compared with the global context. They are mainly Flood, Storm, Landslides, Tsunami etc. Some of these disasters are occurred in very high frequently and some are occurred in very low frequency. And also, the damage cause by those disasters are also different, some are less damaging, and some are highly damaging.

Landslides
So according to the above classification, it is clear that the landslides are the most damaging and frequent natural disaster happen in Sri Lanka

Need of the Project
Today there are many institutes which provides awareness about the natural disasters, how to avoid them and how to get rid of those disasters. (NBRO, Disaster Management Center) But even they conduct different type of lectures and other awareness programs people never use those tricks and methods for their housing and cultivations. People concern about those mitigation and other awareness types just after those disaster happened and died many peoples. But within one month they forget the incident after the NEWS about the incident stopped telecasting. So, people need different type of awareness where people can feel and see the real condition of those natural disasters. So, this landscape is to provide visitors the conditions and feeling of a Landslide and make them fear to those disasters among this landscape.

Objectives of the Project.
To provide awareness for the visitors about the landslide mitigation types and techniques.
The main objective of the project is to provide awareness about the landslides, how to mitigate them, how to do cultivations through mitigation, what are the mitigative plantations and how to escape from a landslide.
Provide the feeling of roughness of a landslide for the visitors The awareness about the landslide is given by the giving the feeling of the roughness of a landslide to the visitors. Through this, visitors getting fear about the landslides and concern about the mitigation types.

Project description

Landslides are a one of natural phenomenon that happen to stabilize the soil cycle. The time period of the landslide depends on rain fall and stability of soil and the slope. This happen once in a very long time period, but due to the human activities like Deforestation, slope cutting, cultivations and many other activities this time period has become uncalculatable. This become a very huge disaster because the people construct their houses in those slope areas and do their cultivations. So, when the landslides happen, many people die and damage the properties of the people.
We can’t stop the people who are constructing the houses on those hilly areas because we have limited spaces for housing and other purposes.
even though we can’t remove people from the hilly areas, or stop the landslide, we can avoid the activities of the people which catalyze the occurrence of landslide. For that many things can be done. There are proper ways of doing the cultivations in these areas, and proper construction types and also different plants that should be planted in those areas. Those practices must be practiced by the people who living in those areas.
But even those practices are taught by the NBRO and DMC, they are not using those practices correctly. And also, when a landslide happens in certain area, the people get afraid and use to practice those practices for a while. But after few months they use to live their normal life without considering those practices.
So, the solution is showing the people about the dangerousness of a landslide in an unforgettable way. The incident and the damage must be shown to the people to get afraid to landslides. So, my project is Landslide memorial landscape, which shows how dangerous the landslides are.

The main spaces of my design are,
parking area (The garden of exposure)
Photo gallery wall (the gallery of peril)
Cracked Pathway
Debris flown area
Waterfront Rest Area
Shrine Memorial Area
Mitigative Pathway (experiencing the mitigation)
Name wall of the dead people
Fallen rock and the awareness centre

Master Proposal
Master proposal is mainly based on the mitigation of landslides in this area. Aranayaka is still a landslide prone area where landslide can be taken place at any time. So those prone areas and older landslide area is going to be protected with the mitigation techniques and methods. The mitigation techniques are mainly done with soft and hard techniques. Main soft mitigation type is plantation. Mitigative plants were selected for the plantation and the hard mitigative techniques were selected and proposed for the highly prone areas for the safety of the visitors and the villagers. Plants are selected with the blending with the remaining forest patch of the area. several bushes and plants were selected for the mitigation purpose. The mono culture plantation which were one reason for the landslide, must be avoided in the area. after tea cultivation, maara trees were introduced after landslide, again make the mono culture cultivation, so, avoid that, several maara trees were removed and planted with different plant types. The scar of the fallen rock also continuously runs till the top of the old landslide scar. It is highly maintained as a scar which can be observed from the far to attract more people to the site.

Technical information

Management Plan
The landslide area has been planted with maara trees by spreading seeds. It has been avoided the natural succession and also the monoculture farming. Before the landslide there were tea plantation, it is also monoculture farming. And again, they have done monoculture. So, this is clearly again calling for a landslide. So, the 1st thing to do is site clearance. Not the whole site, it can be done in several stages in several zones.
• Few maara trees from each zone must be removed to avoid monoculture.
• Then plant the trees & shrubs which mitigate landslides and monoculture. And also, the plants must blend with the remaining forest cover.
• Water management in the area is also very important in this project. So, there must be a proper drainage system throughout the site area. • Most of the plants using are bushes. They should not be managed, only the watering & fertilizing must be done in the early period. • Parking area is consisting trees and rocks.
• Cracked pathway must be well managed, because the crack can be covered with mud and other particles due to rain and other reasons. so, it must be well managed by removing those particles at least once a month.
• The memory wall consists of photographs of the incident, so this area must water proofed, otherwise the photos get destroyed.
• Other pathways are not necessary to be properly maintained.
• Buried area also not necessary to be maintained, it must be with wilderness.
• Waterbody also having a less maintain. It is a natural wetland area where visitors can relax by sitting and looking at the waterbody. So, it must be nature looking.

Service & Drainage Lines
The Drainage pattern of the site is very important because it is still a landslide prone area. So, the drainage pattern is done by considering all the factors regarding landslide mitigation. upper part of the slope is protected with the landslide mitigation techniques and also the drainage system has been constructed to drain all the excess water out of the site. Also, the lower part of the site having existing waterbody, all the excess water from the upper and lower part of the site is drained to that stream.

Planting Concept
Vegetation flow of the macro and micro mosaic plays a major role within this mosaic. There are three major issues can be identified of the existing pattern those are,
1. Invasive species are attacking the fertile soil.
2. Native vegetation patches are fragmented by cross contour mass developments.
3. Rich vegetation patches are burnt and replaced with unorganized chena cultivation.
Therefor the planting will be done under the concept of, Open up the macro space for native pattern agents while removing the invasive plants gradually and stabilize the shifting mosaic with green reinforcement is the ultimate of the planting concept.

Vision
• To mitigating landslide by using more bio-engineering methods
• To respect the natural ecosystem at the site
• Provide alternative income for residents
• Create the liveliness at the place

Important issues to be considered in planting for mitigation.
• Nature based landslide mitigation measures can be integrated with structural measures in slope rectification to form a hybrid system.
• Main objective of introducing vegetation is to enhance the stability against shallow failures and also controlling the surface run off.
• Selection of vegetation should be based on number of factors such as, anchoring effect, control of surface erosion and draining of excess water etc.
• Grasses or small shrubs like species can be used in to control the surface erosion.