Our research in water began with an interest in its deeply social history. Yet, we soon noticed the element’s decreasing visibility from the fabric of our daily lives. By digging deeper to uncover the infrastructure in place to handle the storage and distribution of water, our attention was drawn to Paris’s waterways and subterranean channels. Research highlighted the existing system’s inability to deal with increasingly volatile weather patterns, from depleted water sources during times of drought, to an incapacity to handle large amounts of water run-off during heavy rainfall.
Sited on a social housing development designed by Denis Honegger in the 1950s, the Centre project relieves pressure from Paris’s sewage system by acting as a water catchment for its surrounding neighbourhood through a rain garden and network of shallow channels inscribed along the city’s pavements. Water is distributed across the entire site to porous drainage areas defined by the site’s existing trees. These are linked by pathways for residents, which flux in width following the rise and fall of water levels.
Four kilometres away, the Periphery project envisions a natural alternative to Paris’s existing infrastructural facilities through the introduction of a primary treatment plant and series of constructed wetlands. The scheme is interested in the conditions of the edgeland and its underlying tensions between the constructed and the natural. The passage of water, which begins with the sewer and ends with its release to the ground, is marked by a sequence of infrastructure and planting with increasing levels of wilderness.
As a whole, our group aims to redefine the forms water reserves take today: through an understanding of treatment processes as integral to the handling and storage of water, both projects are linked in an attempt to return water back to the ground.
