The Architectural Association is organizing a visiting school in Mexico City titled, “Recovering Waterscapes”, which focuses on the challenges created by the changing city on this scarce resource. The event is scheduled to take place on the 5th-14th of January 2011 at Universidad Iberoamericana. More event description after the break.
The scarcity of water, the increasing cost of the resource and its short-sighted management, together with infrastructural changes currently taking place – major drainage and wastewater treatment works plus plans to control and prevent flooding and landslides – all present opportunities in the recovery and management of water. In order to integrate water back into the landscape of Mexico City and trigger the regeneration and reconfiguration of the urban realm, all issues associated with water will be addressed, infrastructually, historically, politically and architecturally.
The workshop will aim at defining different strategies, based on the exploration of local conditions, engineering techniques, material processes, experimentation with digital and representational tools and the use of prototypical concepts within the Landscape Urbanism methodology developed at the AA. These strategies will inform the development of proposals at urban, landscape and architectonic scales in order to create alternative civic scenarios for specific areas in the city. As a result, it will encourage critical discussions and identify possible solutions.
The work will respond to specific questions posed by the analysis of the current situation in the city and will seek the possibility of recovering existing or extinguished rivers (currently used as open-air sewage systems) and other bodies of water (lakes, ravines, etc) as part of the city’s landscape.
A series of lectures, talks and seminars will be organized alongside site visits to major infrastructural works around the city. Invited lecturers and critics include Charles Waldheim (Harvard GSD) and Eva Castro (AALU).
