AUGMENTED WATERWAYS

student: Angeliki Koliomichou, AA LU0607 Architectural Association school of Architecture, London, UK Landscape Urbanism MA
Staff:  Eva Castro, Eduardo Rico, David Mah
http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/ http://aa-landscape-urbanism.blogspot.com/

Focusing on the most fertile area of Oman the Al Batinah region and having been intrigued by the prevalent water management commune systems, the desire for intervening in ownership regime, such as water rights and land shares, is emerged.

Being fascinated by the water politics and the social implications that this is engaged, a discrimination among the population distribution, the land value and the hierarchy of water usage is detected.

The problem that is laid within the urban form is strictly related to the proximity to water source and influence, inevitably, the spectrum of different functions like transportation, residential and production. The fore-mentioned inequality which stems from the current formula of water harvesting, drives the design forces for the overall suggested development.

Since the site is located in the desert, the decision making is determined by Beduin’s physiognomy and nomadic way of occupying the space.

Thus, the proposed vortical nexus produces an organism that encompasses shifting water nuclei based on immigrant tourists and inhabitants flow. This generic concept, as an exploration of distribution and re-allocation geometries, tries to depict the effect of people’s distribution at a permanent urban structure, working synaesthetically across a wide range of scales.

At the same time, a progressive argument upon dispersive systems in land portions is built and an alternative system of water rights segregation is engendered.

Angeliki_Koliomichou