Vanessa Teng

'LIVING WITH WATER' | THE URBAN SANCTUARY

The River Hull acts as a constant reminder to the community that flooding is an ongoing threat. My proposal seeks to promote a new vision: 'living with water', a paradigm shift that values water as an asset that embraces life with water by bringing waterscapes into the city. This project focuses on incremental and systemic interventions at specific locations in two phases. The city’s pavements and roads that faced flooding in the ‘2007 Flood’ are repurposed and converted into canals to direct and collect rainwater, creating the first urban fishery in the UK. They not only play a considerable role in preventing pluvial flooding, which is Hull’s most significant threat, but also serve as public commons for urban users. The vacant and underused sites throughout the city that have not received any development in the past five years are repurposed as Aquaponics Towers. Providing abundant economical and environmental resources, generating energy and providing clean water for the community, recasting Hull as the first eco-coastal city in the UK. The ecological vision creates a healthy, interconnected city with restored urban ecological systems and an economically vibrant city that embraces its life-blood: water.