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A Post-Diluvian Future
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A Post-Diluvian Future
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While most of the world follows the standard from dust to dust, ashes to
ashes cycle, Bangkok prefers something wetter: from water to water. Almost 300
years after rising from the marshy banks of the Chao Phraya, it appears Bangkok
will return to its watery origins. A recent UN study estimates that much of the
metropolitan area will need to be abandoned by the middle of the century.
Bangkok’s population is growing by approximately
100,000 residents per year, just as the city itself is shrinking below sea
level 4“ per year. While most cities in this position could simply increase
urban density by building up, this would only hasten Bangkok’s subterranean slide. It is the blinding growth of
Bangkok’s built environment combined with the
over-exhausted aquifers 2 m below the city surface that is causing the city’s physical depression. We are left then with a
Post-Diluvian dilemma currently facing many world cities: do we sink or swim,
flee or float?
With the city sinking 10 cm below a sea level that is rising by 40 cm
annually, the safest place to create new architecture is above water. As it
happens, Bangkok is surrounded by fields of water; brackish, polluted water
remaining from an oversaturated shrimp farming industry whose very growth precipitated
its own demise. Erstwhile shrimp farmers, who can no longer sustain shrimp life
in their polluted plots, are currently selling their water-fields to developers
who bury the water in housing racts, or to the government, who hopes to restore
the once thriving mangrove ecosystem. While the government’s aspirations would yield considerable environmental
benefits to the metropolis, they cannot compete with the prices developers
would pay for the equivalent water field. Developers, though paying the shrimp
farmers slightly more, constitute an entirely negative environmental force by encouraging
urban spread and commuting, by stifling the possibility for open space, and by
simply burying brown-field environments with expensive flood-susceptible, cold
weather foreign architecture.
Each party is thus engaged in a win-lose proposition: suburbs will
impair government mangroves, water will submerge suburbs, and shrimp farmers
will lose their livelihood. City dwellers, developers, shrimp farmers and the
environment all lose more than they gain.
This negative economy of loss occurs because Bangkok is still laboring
under a very ante-diluvian mindset where flooding is considered a crisis and
not a constant. Bangkok has always been flooded and the latest apocalyptic
predictions only suggest that flooding will return with increased consistency. Once
the city is submarine, can we even call this phenomenon flooding? Flooding
implies a passing phase rather than a fixed environment, and yet, at the
current juncture, water is much more predictable than land. In order to
initiate a Post-Diluvian perspective that designs for water we must abandon the
Metropolis in favor of the Wetropolis, and Architecture in favor of
Aquatecture. Towards a Post Diluvian Future will propose a Post-Diluvian
prototype community that transforms principles from Thailand
ashes cycle, Bangkok prefers something wetter: from water to water. Almost 300
years after rising from the marshy banks of the Chao Phraya, it appears Bangkok
will return to its watery origins. A recent UN study estimates that much of the
metropolitan area will need to be abandoned by the middle of the century.
Bangkok’s population is growing by approximately
100,000 residents per year, just as the city itself is shrinking below sea
level 4“ per year. While most cities in this position could simply increase
urban density by building up, this would only hasten Bangkok’s subterranean slide. It is the blinding growth of
Bangkok’s built environment combined with the
over-exhausted aquifers 2 m below the city surface that is causing the city’s physical depression. We are left then with a
Post-Diluvian dilemma currently facing many world cities: do we sink or swim,
flee or float?
With the city sinking 10 cm below a sea level that is rising by 40 cm
annually, the safest place to create new architecture is above water. As it
happens, Bangkok is surrounded by fields of water; brackish, polluted water
remaining from an oversaturated shrimp farming industry whose very growth precipitated
its own demise. Erstwhile shrimp farmers, who can no longer sustain shrimp life
in their polluted plots, are currently selling their water-fields to developers
who bury the water in housing racts, or to the government, who hopes to restore
the once thriving mangrove ecosystem. While the government’s aspirations would yield considerable environmental
benefits to the metropolis, they cannot compete with the prices developers
would pay for the equivalent water field. Developers, though paying the shrimp
farmers slightly more, constitute an entirely negative environmental force by encouraging
urban spread and commuting, by stifling the possibility for open space, and by
simply burying brown-field environments with expensive flood-susceptible, cold
weather foreign architecture.
Each party is thus engaged in a win-lose proposition: suburbs will
impair government mangroves, water will submerge suburbs, and shrimp farmers
will lose their livelihood. City dwellers, developers, shrimp farmers and the
environment all lose more than they gain.
This negative economy of loss occurs because Bangkok is still laboring
under a very ante-diluvian mindset where flooding is considered a crisis and
not a constant. Bangkok has always been flooded and the latest apocalyptic
predictions only suggest that flooding will return with increased consistency. Once
the city is submarine, can we even call this phenomenon flooding? Flooding
implies a passing phase rather than a fixed environment, and yet, at the
current juncture, water is much more predictable than land. In order to
initiate a Post-Diluvian perspective that designs for water we must abandon the
Metropolis in favor of the Wetropolis, and Architecture in favor of
Aquatecture. Towards a Post Diluvian Future will propose a Post-Diluvian
prototype community that transforms principles from Thailand
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