7 minute read
Landscape-led waste water infrastructure
Years ago, navigating my way through Tokyo’s dense urban grid, surrounded by anonymous highrise towers, I stumbled across a beautiful tranquil park. The dull hum of traffic was replaced by the laughter of children playing, a t'ai chi class below rustling trees, an elderly couple gossiping, all amongst the steady churning of water below.
The park was raised, allowing glimpses into open tanks of water, visibly changing in colour and texture, reflecting pieces of the city’s skyline in different ways. Having lived in cities all my life, I realised that this was the first time I had seen a water treatment plant, sparking my fascination with the possibilities to improve both human and planetary health by integrating landscape design with heavy infrastructure.
Wastewater treatment is one of the most pressing health hazards of our time. All too often we have become accustomed to conveniently forgetting about our waste, flushing it away ‘out of sight, out of mind’.
In the UK, we rely on an antiquated combined sewerage system, a lot of it built more than 150 years ago. Population growth, more frequent storms due to climate change, blockages from non-flushable products entering the system, and poor maintenance, have all led to our sewerage system becoming increasingly overwhelmed. As a result, sewage regularly overflows into rivers and the sea, leading to sickness in those who come into contact with it and destroying delicate ecosystems. The Safer Seas and Rivers App by Surfers Against Sewage reports that 75% of UK rivers pose a serious threat to human health, and issued nearly 4,500 pollution alerts around the UK in October 2023 alone. We urgently need to upgrade the sewerage system across the UK, and this could be an exciting opportunity for a landscape led approach that forces infrastructure strategy to go beyond just being purely functional, to improve everyone’s quality of life and bring additional long-term environmental, social and economic value.
Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s combined sewer system for London, designed following the Great Stink of 1858, incorporated a multilayered approach to infrastructure. The new sewerage system required the reclamation of marshland along the Thames, providing an opportunity to holistically integrate landscape, public realm, and transport at different levels. At Victoria Embankment a new road and pedestrian walkway were built above the new sewer to help ease congestion, alongside a cut-and cover tunnel to accommodate the new District Line, and new landscaped parks, amenity and civic spaces. This part of London, which owes its existence entirely to Bazalgette’s holistic approach to infrastructure design, remains one of the most dynamic parts of the city to this day, popular with Londoners and tourists alike.
More than 150 years later, the Thames Tideway, a 25km super-sewer which is currently under construction, incorporates a similar holistic approach to infrastructure design. Land reclamation along the River Thames is usually prevented by planning policy, but the pressing need to upgrade London’s sewerage system resulted in this being approved, leading to a unique opportunity for three acres of new public realm along the riverfront at seven different locations. Importantly, these new public spaces connect the general public with the sewerage scheme, helping to communicate the long-term value that this megaproject (the construction of which has been expensive and disruptive) will bring in improving the health of both Londoners and the Thames. The new public realm, designed by Gillespies and Hawkins\Brown, evokes a sense of civic pride and celebrates a sewerage system that will benefit Londoners for generations to come. The design physically connects the public with the water through ‘floodable’ spaces, in which the public will be able to ‘dip their toe’ in the cleaner river for the first time, encouraging an awareness of the importance of maintenance and care for our infrastructure and environment. Projects such as Thames Tideway are all too few and far between, but they show us what is truly possible with design-led strategic thinking across disciplines and scales, and the longterm value that a holistic approach to landscape and infrastructure can bring. It is not just large-scale projects that can benefit from a landscape-led approach. Whitney Water Purification Facility and Plant, in Connecticut, USA, designed by Steven Holl and Michael Van Valkenburgh, is a water treatment facility that communicates the water treatment process through its landscape. The facility creates a publicly accessible, ecologically diverse landscape on top of the plant, reflecting the different treatment zones through planting. For example, a field of wild mosses is punctured by bubble skylights, reflecting the bubbling of water in the ozonation zone, and agitated grass mounds are penetrated by streams corresponding to rapid mixing and high turbulence. The facility has proved popular as both a recreational and educational space, sparking curiosity and reconnecting the public with their essential infrastructure.
The long-term economic, environmental and social value of holistically incorporating a landscape design into our essential infrastructure is clear. So why don’t more infrastructure projects take a holistic design-led approach? The National Infrastructure Commission’s (NIC) Value of Design in Infrastructure Delivery report found that one reason for this is a ‘deep-seated perception that good design adds cost and poses risks to delivering projects on time and on budget’, when in fact the same report shows there is much evidence to the contrary. As designers we are taught to invent briefs and question strategic decisions, but in practice, by the time a client approaches us many decisions have already been made, leading to frustration for all.
Over the past four years I have been working as a member of the National Infrastructure Commission’s Design Group to explore opportunities to holistically embed design into strategic decision making and champion design excellence across all infrastructure projects.
The NIC’s Design Group launched the UK’s first ever Design Principles for National Infrastructure in 2020.
The four principles – Climate, People, Places and Value – aim to guide the planning and delivery of all major infrastructure projects, and have since been adopted by the government’s National Infrastructure Strategy.
As our cities continue to grow, our planet continues to overheat, and our existing infrastructure is increasingly overwhelmed, we urgently need to upgrade our water infrastructure.
Earlier this year, I curated the NIC’s first ever Design Symposium, which included a roundtable discussion hosted by the Landscape Institute around Water and Floods, with the aim of embedding the design principles into all infrastructure projects, whilst also bringing design-led recommendations to the government. These recommendations were incorporated into the National Infrastructure Assessment, published in October 2023, which includes recommendations around nature-based solutions for drainage and waste-water treatment, as well as ‘a step change’ to deliver and appoint board-level design champions and embed wider design leadership and culture in all nationally significant infrastructure projects from the earliest stages.
As our cities continue to grow, our planet continues to overheat, and our existing infrastructure is increasingly overwhelmed, we urgently need to upgrade our water infrastructure. There is an important opportunity for a holistic landscape-led approach, which transforms our essential infrastructure from purely functional structures to beautiful places that improve quality of life for generations to come. Let us take pride in our waste-water landscapes, and lead the way in creating delightful places which care for our communities, ecology and planet.
Madeleine Kessler is an architect, curator and urbanist dedicated to designing joyful, people-centred places that contribute positively to our planet.
