Sneha Ramachandran

UR3009

Submerge: Embracing the monsoon landscape

Flooding has been a historic event in the city of Baroda and is often a feature associated with the river Vishwamitri.The design imagines incorporating flood as an essential element of the city’s landscape. The project uses this dynamic and site-specific condition of fluctuating water levels to create opportunities for flexible and submersible landscapes by supporting the flood water.The design focuses on retrofitting three broad strategies- alleviate, attenuate and embrace to manage flood risk and create flood adaptive environments. These three spatial tactics are further broken down into larger tools that help the urban and natural environment to adapt to flooding and reduce its impact.  

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Transect Study (Observe): Variation in experiential quality of each site

Transect Study (Record)

Finding & Founding (Analysis & Inferences): To identify areas of highest flood risk and those with the most attributes related to issues caused by rain, storm water and surface run-off. Overlaying all the layers of risk helped identify the areas of highest risk attributes.

Design Strategies (Collective Investigation & interventions): The river, from the city is connected through a network of detention basins and submersible spaces. Two zones of intervention were chosen for further analyses and proposal.

Zone 1: Alleviate (Fatehgunj) Objective: To increase the water-carrying capacity of the river or provide additional areas that can be flooded to reduce peak flood levels and limit exposure to flood risk.

Zone 2: Attenuate (Sama Talav) Objective: To reduce the velocity of water through natural structures. Further increasing the time for water to move along the pathway and providing an opportunity for infiltration.