Landscape Architecture Portfolio

MSc Landscape Architecture

Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

The River and the Mosaic Garden in the Dunes

Out of the Core Delta Futures Lab

The River and the Mosaic

Regenerative Cycles in Production Landscapes

Nominated for Archiprix 2023 and KuipersCompagnons Awards

Published by Blauwe Kamer magazine, issue of September 2023

MSc Graduation project. Grade 9.0/10.0

Paraná River basin, Brazil - Individual - September 2022 - June 2023

Supervised by Dr. Steffen Nijhuis [S.Nijhuis@tudelft.nl]

The Paraná River, second longest in South America, has always been a migration axis for flora and fauna, and, most recently, a strong economic artery for the continent. However, in 2019, a severe drought struck the Upper Paraná River Basin (UPRB) in Brazil, causing unmeasurable economic and ecological losses.

Land use in the UPRB consists of vast mono-crop plantations of sugar cane and grazing fields for meat production. While lucrative, this typology has minimal water retention capacity, resulting in a vulnerable, easily disrupted, hydrologic cycle. The system has transitioned from a state of stability to disruption, with rainfall rushing downstream during the wet season and causing aquifers to deplete rapidly

‘The River and the Mosaic’ is about regenerating water cycles in deeply exploited plantation landscapes. A significant conclusion is: if not approached from a purely technical point of view, drought prevention can leverage a landscape’s resilience, ecological value, cultural and leisure opportunities, and economic autonomy as a whole.

Financial support from:

The 2019 drought event in the Paraná River Basin

abnormally dry

severe drought extreme drought exceptional drought 500 km

Data sources: Lehner, B., Grill G. (2013); Tapiquen, C. (2015); drought areas adapted from Naumann, G. (2021) by the author.

Problem Statement

Land use in the basin

mono-crops grazing fields

eucalyptus plantations

The 2019 drought event

100 km

Data sources: Projeto Map Biomas, 2021

Little water retention due to:

Graphic comparison: the Netherlands at the same scale

Habitat fragmentation

Loss of riparian buffers

Uncontrolled urban sprawl

Loss of soil life, less infiltration

Excessive evapotranspiration

Excessive soil erosion, river eutrophication

Constant compactation of soils

Landscape planning: principles for water retention in the Upper Paraná River Basin

The region needs regional frameworks that can withstand climatic disturbances: by storing water during the wet season, by providing for its nonhuman beings (ecological resilience), and by creating more diverse economic opportunities. The materialization of these ideas departed from a rainflows analysis, which clarified different hydro-topographic categories in the region. Then, corresponding spatial principles were designed for each of them.

Rainflow analysis

Hydro-topographic classification

Flatlands

Spatial principles

Regenerate dry riverine islands bringing water in through landforming

New bypasses reinforce the framework and buffer pressure

Use tributaries to regenerate dry marshlands

Slopes

Headwaters

Contour planting controls erosion and retains water

Connecting isolated forest reminiscents increases landscape connectivity

Controlling urban sprawl preserves open spaces for transformation

Areas where the aquifer is more exposed are dedicated to protection and recharge

Connecting isolated riparian reminiscents strenghtens each of them

Recreate green buffers around water springs

Regional design: A group of selected sub basins

Testing the spatial strategies on a selected group of sub-basins, chosen due to their representative topography, land use, and proximity to the main body of the Paraná River. An initial analysis provided a grip on the main features (cities, infrastructure), land use, soil types and aquifers, steepness, and the hydro-topographic categories (headwaters, slopes, flatlands) from the rainflow analysis. Three zoomins along a same tributary show how the spatial strategies and regional design exist at human scale, what is their spatial experience and how they shape negotiation between economy, culture, and ecology.

01. Mapping remaining green patches and dry marshlands

02. Completing gaps define the river as a solid green corridor

03. Places for rainwater retention and new bypasses

05. Final regional framework design: a site-specific application of all spatial principles

04. Landscape connectivity and water retention with planting

A. Headwaters: The Central Market Square as a Park

How can a water spring exist right in the middle of a big urban agglomeration? Can its presence help people learn about the biome they live in?

01. Unbury the spring, design reservoirs and vegetal filters for rainwater runoff 02. Four circulation axes consolidate the distribution of the program

A fifth axis crosses the park longitudinally, for meandering strolls

Planting strategy with native fruit trees attract both small animals and

A. Headwaters:

The Central Market Square as a Park

Section cut through circulation axis and imagined ecological relations.

A. Headwaters: The Central Market Square as a Park

Physical model of the park. Above: spring garden (left) and corner with the avenue showing the soccer square and entrance (right). Below: complete maquette (left) and entrance to street market, under the shadow of the new canopy (right).

B. Slopes: contour planting and agroforestry system

How can plantation slopes retain more water? How to remediate soil erosion? Can agriculture enrich the ecological value of a region?

Year 0.0

Current situation: dig the topsoil to form a ditch

Year 1.0

Native climax species start sprouting under the shadow of the pionner trees

Year 0.0

Introduce native sun-loving pioneer species

Year 0.5

Rain infiltrates the ditch, activating the dormant seed bank

Year 1.5

Small animals start inhabiting the corridor

Composition: developped contour planting with agroforestry system and resting spaces as buffer transitions.

Year 5.0

Bigger mammals can start circulating along the corridor

C. Flatlands: leisure and ecology in a regenerated marshland

Can ecology, leisure and economy coexist in marshland ecosystems in less destructive ways? How to design with water flows, aiming at creating advantageous situations for different species?

Lessons learned from water flows experiments, in interdisciplinary collaboration with the Department of Water Management (TU Delft):

Experiment 01

Convex barriers are needed in order to bring water flows into the dry marsh.

Applying lessons for a site-specific proposal:

Experiment 02

Convex barriers absorb the waterflow’s momentum, creating calm environments.

Experiment 03 Concave barriers increase the waterflow’s momentum, creating dynamic environments.

Experiment 04

Sets of parallel barriers create calm and homogeneously wet environments.

Testing setup Using riverine soil, plaster barriers and flowing water, with support of a Water Manager.

C. Flatlands: leisure and ecology in a regenerated marshland

Section cut through pedestrian bridge at the leisure area.

Section cut through barrier between swimming lagoon and main body of the Paraná River.

Garden in the Dunes

A visitor centre in Bierlap

Bierlap is a site located within the limits of the Meijendel park, in the surroundings of The Hague. As more and more tourists are visiting the park, the administration seeks having a visitor centre with basic functions, such as toilets, a kitchen, a small amphitheatre, and so on.

Since the visitor centre would be located within a very natural and unbuilt area, its buildings are supposed to be small and placed within a garden, which would then merge the new features with the preexisting nature.

The project presented here is a promenade through three different atmospheres that are representative of the park: it departs from the “arid” hawthorn field in the middle of the site, goes through a dense patch of vegetation, and ends in a clearing in the middle of the tall trees. The program was carefully distributed along this promenade, providing visitors with a comprehensive experience of the different existing atmospheres within Bierlap.

Bierlap, The Hague, NL - Individual - 2 months long Supervised by Prof. René van der Velde [J.R.T.vandervelde@tudelft.nl]

On-site mapping - defining a promenade

Collective mapping team:

Daphne de Bruin, Lu Yi, Silvia Viola, Victoria Imasaki, Xinjian Jiang, Zhaolei Li

Brightness

From bright, through dark, back to bright

Enclosure

From very open, through very enclosed, back to open

Existing vegetation

From sparse, to dense and very dense, back to sparse

Brightest

Darkest

Visually and physically open Visually enclosed, physically open Visually and physically enclosed

Sparse grass

Medium grass

Dense grass

Bush

Sparse canopy

Medium canopy

Dense canopy

Design principles

The parts of the program marked by permanence (amphitheatre, resting space, kitchen) are placed under the shadows of the densely vegetated area. The clearing is occupied by a collective fireplace area.

01. Structural elements

Planting a grid of trees (Prunus avium) around the intervention area is a strategy to give unity to the scattered program. There is the same species at every vanishing point.

Evolution in time

02. Tree arrangements

woods rows grid clumps

03. Soil materiality

elevated deck gravel sand helm grass

new rows of Prunus new Poplar trees new Poplar trees

Upon completion

By 2040

New poplar trees are planted around the older ones, so that the visitors feel more immersed as trees get taller the more they approach the visitor centre. In the grid, new prune trees are planted around the older ones.

new birch trees

By 2070

Fifty years after, the oldest poplar trees came to the end of their lifespan. The prune trees of the grid are mature, with the younger ones still shorter than the oldest. This smooths the edges of the grid in relation to the surrounding nature.

The resting space is a walled “room” covered by the canopies of a grid of birch trees, which create a homogeneous and delicate lighting, proper to a peaceful atmosphere.

Detail: interface between small buildings and outdoors

The amphitheatre is a small gathering space, where two lines of hedge plants would create a sense of enclosure and direct the viewer’s view towards the centre of the space.

Detail: construction of the benches in the garden complex

Section A - resting space

Section B - amphitheatre

Visitor’s experience

When arriving from the hawthorn field, the visitor would cross a series of small hills punctuated by poplar trees and water puddles, as a reference to the history of the site - a place of small infiltration lakes and sandy dunes, which the first settlers tried to stabilize by planting poplars.

Entrance area

Enclosed garden

Resting space

Out of the Core

An interdisciplinary vision for the Greater Bay Area

Elective in the Urbanism Track of TU Delft

Greater Bay Area, China - Group work - 2 months long

Supervised by Dr. Diego Sepulveda [D.A.SepulvedaCarmona@tudelft.nl)]

Based on a series of lectures by experts in different issues of the megalopolis, students were asked to address challenges concerning the Greater Bay Area, at the Pearl River delta, between mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao.

Out of the Core departs from the acknowledgement that the region is composed of main cities, such as Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Macao, and peripheric cities. This division arose from the polycentric model of urbanisation, which generated stronger infrastructural and economic bonds between the core cities, and economic and social exclusion in the peripheric cities, not to mention the exposure to environmental hazards.

The project aimed at enhancing connectedness, protection and inclusion in peripheric cities. Some of the strategies include the creation of green axes along rivers, valuing of local specificities, diversification of crops, and implementation of flood defense infrastructure associated to other uses and with attention to spatial quality.

Team:

Landscape Architecture - Victoria Imasaki

Complete version available on https://deltamegaregions.net

Urbanism - Andria Charilaou, Anna Skentzou, Julia Daher, Shiru Liu

The Core: main cities, infrastructure, areas of investment

The posed problem Polycentric model in the GBA

Vision and Strategy

Core-periphery phenomenon

Tertiary cities: flood risk due to sea level rise

Main core cities

Main infrastructural lines

Areas of investment

High flood risk

Extreme flood risk

Sea level gradient

Secondary and tertiary cities as a collaborative economic tissue, where their specificities are valued

Economic concentration

Social exclusion

Environmental depletion

Agricultural belts

River waterways

Protection corridors

Connections between tertiary cities

Strong backbone of open spaces garantees landscape continuity and protection against floods

Detailing the vision

Legend

Proposed clusters

Agritourism innovation

Food production

Medical production

Product distribution

Connections between clusters

Ponds

Agricultural land

Flooding risk

River waterway

C Remodeling agriculture

D

B Wetlands, soft edges E Local integration through infrastructure

F Ecotourism

02 - Wanqingsha A B C D E F B C TU Delft - MSc Landscape Architecture - Out of the Core

Detailing the vision

Shalang and Guangkou Wanqingsha

Strategy: Synergies of medical production

Strategy: Ecotourism associated to flood defence

More local connections

Diverse agricultural land Green corridor Park Urban services

Medical production Training labs

Wetland Park Fish and algae production

Delta Futures Lab Research on

Urbanizing Deltas [Honours Program Masters]

Buenos Aires, Argentina - Group work - February 2022 - June 2023

Supervised by Dr. Fransje

Hooimeijer [F.L.Hooimeijer@tudelft.nl]

The Honours Program is an extra curricular academic track of activities allowing students to deepen their research-based knowledge in a certain field of interest. For one and a half year, I joined the Delta Future Labs, a joint research group in Urbanism and Landscape Architecture at the TU Delft.

The Delta Future Labs researches on urbanizing deltas around the world. Our study was on the Paraná River delta, close to the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Our challenge was to deal with the growing flood risk [due to sea level rise and worsening storms], while also juggling with pressure from urbanization processes and agriculture-based economic activies.

Such complexity calls for interdisciplinary approaches. We worked with a group composed of 5 disciplines: Landscape Architecture, Architecture, Urbanism, Hydraulic Engineering, and Water Management.

Team Spatial Design: Architecture - Fynn Mengel, Josh Snow, Patrycja Raszka, Shu Lai Landscape Architecture - Victoria Imasaki.

Financial support from:

Problem Statement

“The Paraná Delta is a complex system that, together with the Rio de la Plata estuary, holds the significance as a “geologic-hydrologic sedimentary dynamic entity” (Rinaldi, Abril & Clariá, 2006) within which a dense urban population of 22 million human inhabitants resides. The hydrological and urban systems reach beyond current administrative borders and should be considered as interrelated. Acknowledging the complexity of the deltaic system in question, this research intends to focus on the scenario(s) of current and projected extreme precipitation patterns [drought + flood] in the delta, so as to question the notion of “resilience” as the “capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change” (Walker et al., 2004) in the planetary trajectory along the Anthropocene towards a New Climatic Regime (Latour, 2017). Locating the study in the Lower Parana Delta at the interface between urbanization and sedimentation, this research attempts to develop a vision with principles from “landscape-based urbanism.” Utilizing the multi-disciplinary composition of the research group, this research questions the possibility of a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary design approach for the Paraná Delta.

This has resulted in the following research questions: How do we design resilience for the Paraná Delta in an interdisciplinary approach? What disturbance and changes is the Paraná Delta experiencing? How does interdisciplinary research define and react to the field of problems in the deltaic system, specifically the Paraná Delta? Why does designing for resilience matter?”

Context

“Approximately 160 million tonnes of sediment are transported yearly (Boschi, 1987), composed of clay (28%), silt (56%), and sand (16%). Such an advancement of the delta results in the forming of new islands in the Rio de la Plata; the delta is expected to reach the Palermo section of Buenos Aires by 2130 (Pittau, Sarubbi & Menéndez, 2004), posing new urban challenges negotiating between city and water.”

From top to bottom: eucalyptus plantation and human occupation in the delta; fire due to drought and waterfront in small informal settlement; interdisciplinary workshops in Delft. Full version available on https://lnkd.in/epUgj-2f

Sample of interdisciplinary design output

Input from Hydraulic Engineering

Dike for coastal flood defense [5.4m rise]

Calculated by Ir. Sirilotta Moonen

Interdisciplinary design

Hydrological Engineering + Landscape Architecture

01. Dike + public park

02. Overtopping situation: room for water allows for a shorter dike

03. Less threatened areas: dunes + marshland

Diploma in Architecture and Urbanism

University of São Paulo, Brazil

Université de Lyon, France

Selection of drawings and designs illustrating the scope and products of the programme.

The Pool at the River’s Mouth

Redesigning the confluence of rivers Tietê and Tamanduateí

Winner of the Novos Olhares Prize

Exhibited at the 27th World Congress of Architects

Problem field:

Flood prevention, urban design, water-sensitive design, public building

Graduation project

São Paulo, Brazil - Individual - 6 months

Supervised by Prof. Luis Antonio Jorge [luisajorge@usp.br]

Urban growth in São Paulo happened in a glimpse, and was steered by car-oriented urban planning. This left the city with choked and channelized rivers, which cause severe floods during the yearly summer storms.

This project proposes a different approach to hydrology: it underlines the confluence of two rivers by creating a wetland, which is surounded by public facilities that profit from its embedded landscaping potential. The established logic is inverted: car lanes get buried, because the priority is now given to accessible and public spaces, such as soccer fields [01], a canoeing school [02], and a swimming pool complex [03].

Section cut of proposed building for the public swimming pools

Minhocão

Turning a highway into a park

Problem field: infrastructure retrofit, urban parks, urban design

São Paulo, Brazil - Group work - 6 monthsSupervised by Prof. Francine Sakata

Built in the 1970s, the Minhocão is an elevated highway that crosses the city center of São Paulo. As it is frequently criticized for the fact it creates dark, suffocating and neglected spaces around it, there is more and more discussion about the possibility of it becoming an elevated urban park.

This proposal goes against the trend of either arguing for complete demolition, or complete preservation of the structure as it is. We evaluated the positive and negative aspects of each strecht of the highway to remove only the most harmful ones.

Team: Amanda Moreira, Caroline Lonhof, Paula Gerencer, Pedro Mendonça, Victoria Imasaki

Typical

bicycle rack

urban furniture

acoustic treatment varying green spaces

new pavement

pedestrian zone bikelane

urban lighting

access to the elevated park

Redevelopment of an area where the highway got demolished

Vertical conections between demolished and preserved stretches

Vertical access modules when crossing green areas

section for a preserved stretch of the highway

The River is the Axis

Designing for informal settlements

Problem field: housing, informal settlements, urban desing, landscape design

São Paulo, Brazil - Group work - 6 months

Supervised by Prof. Eugenio Queiroga

How to intervene in a settlement that grew exponentially without any sort of previous spatial planning?

Our group acknowledged the delicate balance between maintaining and removing. Our approach was to remove only the settlements under threat of landslides or floods.

The image depicts our approach to the margins of the rivers in the neighbourhood. Informal settlements along them are re-developed into social housing. Such development would become as a ‘belt’ preventing the hills behind from being occupied by new settlers, avoiding further losses during landslides.

vegetated retaining wall rainwater reservoir

Team: Anna Pompéia, Felipe Suzuki, Tomas Vannucchi, Victor Maitino, Victoria Imasaki

unchanneled stream

leisure spaces shared street sewage system commercial groundfloor protected area

Resedá Pata-de-vaca Ipê-amarelo Magnólia amarela Jacarandá mimoso

Elaborations

Outdoor leisure space, with bleachers of varying depths descending towards the water. A “natural water mirror”, with running water from the stream, allows different forms of interaction and enjoyment.

Proposed system for the stairs that go up the steep hill, improving vertical mobility between the existing alleys and managing stormwater runoffs.

Professional Experience

Selection of projects in which I participated, in the fields of architecture and landscape architecture