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The built environment needs to adapt to the rising challenge of water, as Richard Coutts explains
Water has always shaped our built environment and will continue to do so. We depend on it; we use it; we live with it; and, consequently, we must also respect it.
In both its absence and abundance - drought and flooding - water will pose one of the most serious challenges to society in the 21st century and beyond. However, it can, through considered design, be used to create beautiful and resilient cities.
This winter, the failure of recently constructed UK flood defences in northern England was exposed during floods in Cumbria and Yorkshire. Combined with a higher frequency of storm events over the last decade, this has contributed to a growing realisation of the uncertainty around weather patterns and an awareness that reliance on traditional flood defences alone is not working.
With Environment Agency Deputy Chief Executive David Rooke asking for a "complete rethink", it is timely that Aquatecture: Buildings and cities designed to live and work with water by myself and Robert Barker was published by RIBA in January (http://bit.ly/1xSCnte).
Fundamentally, 'aquatecture' seeks to make space for water in developments rather than trying to keep it out. The book illustrates how this is being done with examples from around the world, as well as providing examples of the opportunities that water can offer.
It is intended as a non-technical introduction to designing with water for policy-makers and professionals, based on an updated version of our Long-term Initiatives for Flood-risk Environments (LifE) Project, and the findings of complementary research undertaken for the Environment Agency, Technology Strategy Board and World Bank.
It also introduces the reader to a range of new techniques that rethink the way we tackle water through design and planning, such as flood-resilient and amphibious building, zero-carbon development, sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) and new methods of waterfront design.
The book is organised into four disciplines - infrastructure, landscape, planning and aquatecture - that are explored individually then brought together in case studies at the scales of region, city, neighbourhood and building.
The LifE approach
In 2005, we established the LifE Project, an integrated design approach to planning and building that seeks to reduce flood...