Riparian Allegories: Athenian Riverscapes as climate-adaptive Urban Figures | Thesis on Urban Landscape Design

Site Context

The entire city of Athens will experience global warming, with corresponding local hotspots dispersed throughout the metropolitan area. Excessive ground sealing, the removal of open spaces, and high building densities all intensify the effects of global warming, further exacerbating already-existing social disparities.

A variety of green-blue infrastructures woven throughout the city’s structure could provide natural filters where pollution levels are currently skyrocketing, shade and cooling where heat waves are unavoidable, and retention space where flooding is most likely to occur. Thus, the scale-transcending proposal is an adaptation strategy that helps on a metropolitan scale while providing local relief and eventually programming landscape infrastructures to support climate equity.

The effects of global warming are made worse in Athens by careless and inappropriate developments, and damage is frequently amplified by cascading, overlapping effects. To effectively address vulnerability and create resilient social and urban infrastructure, socio-ecological strategies are therefore crucial.

Here, the incremental restoration of the primary design case study (Olive Grove) that is being proposed in contrast to future real estate justifications, essentially promotes the development of an unusual, inhabited but significantly reforested metropolitan park next to the western municipalities and impoverished downtown areas. This significantly increases accessibility to open, green public spaces that can support productive, socially inclusive activities like community-supported agriculture, alternative agro-living models, and shared water resources, all while effectively reducing the risk of flooding.

Design Process

As a result of forecasts regarding heat waves, fire danger, and flood and drought, metropolitan Athens is frequently placed in a state of climate emergency. An initial mapping based on climate data indicated the spatialization of climate hazards at the metropolitan scale. The transition from a natural landscape system to man-made grey infrastructure was understood through extensive historical mapping and fieldwork, which also revealed the water cycle’s symbolic persistence. The water cycle’s spatial and functional recollection were revealed.

To create a comprehensive landscape system of water retention, re-use, and remediation on a metropolitan scale, site-specific interventions were envisioned. The project looks at creative ways to view urban wastewater and rainwater as complimentary systems, thereby redefining the city’s approach to managing its water resources.

Elaionas (Olive Grove), an 11 km2 brownfield in the middle of the city, is the subject of the primary design case study. This region is the topographically defined flood plain of the Kifissos River, which was once home to the 10,000-tree ancient olive grove on the Athenian plain. It is a field in desperate need of social and ecological reconstruction as a result of its industrialization and subsequent decline.

Final Outcome

The site is redesigned as a flooded mosaic, a kidney of sorts, that will systematically afforest while retaining and treating stormwater runoff on a metropolitan scale. The existing agricultural plot layout and the large number of undeveloped but sealed surfaces are driving the design to include a three-fold water system that is interwoven with urban terraces and manufacturing clusters, acting as a water recycling and run-off treatment system.

The core concept of Elaionas is the preservation, reuse, and distribution of water, accounting for up to 8% of total water consumption in the city. This will be achieved by gradually changing the current mosaic to create a socially conscious, multipurpose, and inhabited Grove through a dynamic transformation process. The proposed design is just one of several possible results from a protracted transformation process that can anticipate and adapt to change.

One viable and resilient approach to the modern city of Athens’ adaptation to the new climate realities is to repair the hydrological network and reconnect the Basin. Long-standing dichotomies between grey-vs-green and leisure-vs-infrastructure space are challenged by interventions, which create innovative hybrid forms that serve as fresh models of a water-sensitive and socially inclusive urbanism.

Conclusion:  The project in its entirety serves as an example of how to revitalise abandoned riverscapes and use them as an allegory for a new, resilient urban vision that also adds ecological value, creates opportunities for productivity, and inspires new lifestyle choices in a densely populated urban setting.

[This Academic Project has been published with text submitted by the student]