hanoi studoi final booklet

HANOI (VIETNAM) WATER URBANISM

Landscape Urbanism Studio Spring 2011 I MaHS-MaUSP-EMU 2010-2011 I KULeuven Belgium

FINAL REVIEW - 23 May 2011

Historically, Vietnam’s water paradigm was one of (1) integration of different actors, forces, aspects of life and (2) adaptation and a certain degree of accommodation of the forces of nature. Today – in a period of economic liberalization and transition from tradition to modernity – water is often regarded from a singular and dominating perspective (be it political, technical or commercial). As both urbanization and climate change challenges increase, water issues are on the rise while the plural and adaptive manner to deal with them is side-lined in the name single actors or single sector dominance.

The design research will focus on Hanoi, capital city of Vietnam and its evolving relationship to water. Historically, the relation of urbanization to water holds a privileged position in the millennium-old city. Hanoi is spatially structured by water – in the form of the mighty Red River – Hong Song or Song Ca (Mother River) – and an extensive (yet disappearing) network of natural and man-made lakes. The Hong Song was historically a lucrative trade route to China. The river is 1149km long, of which 510km flows in Vietnamese territory (and includes a basin area of 60,000 sq. km). The river empties in the Gulf of Tonkin – just over 100km downstream. In Hanoi, ancient traditions of phong thuy (the science of wind and water) placed special reverence on water bodies and the relation of settlement to them. Hanoi once had a strong relationship to the river and an interconnected network of natural and man-made canals and lakes. Ancient ingenuity in agricultural irrigation methods are disappearing traces of the city’s urban periphery, yet remnants of its regulating water structures remain.

The main issue to be developed concerns the relationship of new development in relation to the river (which has water levels varying from 1.5m in the dry season to 14.13m in the wet season) and the lakes. Due to development pressures, there is an unfortunate disappearance of water bodies (filling of lakes for land speculation, encroachment along canals, rivers and lakes), resulting in the city and region’s decreased capacity for water retention, a loss of public space and an increased vulnerability to flooding. At the same time, the city’s protective dykes are being raised and extended. The main research question is what is a possible future for a renewed water network – ecologically, spatially, culturally, etc. – which goes beyond a reliance of defensive dykes and re-qualifies the lakes and canals.

Landscape Urbanism Studio Spring 2011 I MaHS-MaUSP-EMU 2010-2011 I KULeuven Belgium2

HANOIDESIGN CONTEXT

Masterplan for the growth of Hanoi to 2050

Landscape Urbanism Studio Spring 2011 I MaHS-MaUSP-EMU 2010-2011 I KULeuven Belgium 3

The Spring 2011 Landscape Urbanism Studio has worked within the frame of the European Master of Urbanism’s (EMU) collective agenda concerning urban deltas. The main objective of the Hanoi-based design research was to develop an innovative approach to urban design, engineering and management that could function at an intersection of two major contemporary problematics: (1) climate change and (2) accelerated urban growth and urban mutation. Design research focused on the development of innovative, contextually embedded approaches to urban waste/storm water and urban flood mitigation that can be incorporated into the existing framework of master-planning in Vietnam. It aimed to integrate the approaches of design, engineering and management that currently operate as separate jurisdictions within a standard master-planning framework.

This studio started with an intense period of fieldwork and workshop in close collaboration with Vietnamese students and professionals. During a 2 weeks stay in Hanoi, a mixed group of nearly 50 participants was divided into small teams according to ‘theme’ (built, culture, nature, technique) and ‘site’ (going from the Red River Area in the east, to the Day River valley and the Bavi Mountains in the West) in order to get a thorough understanding of the issues and challenges in Hanoi’s wider region . The result was presented to a jury of academics, professionals and government officials in Hanoi.

Furthermore, the studio has had a considerable advantage to built upon the vast body of study material from earlier design studio’s in Vietnam, the ongoing research of OSA’s “Water-urbanisms” under the guidance of Professor Kelly Shannon, and a solid amount of literature that has been gathererd over the years.

This research from the fieldtrip and workshop continued back home, where the KUL students were reshuffled to continue their work and test it on particular sites in the immediate periphery from Hanoi.

The overal objectives of the studio were to:•address the regional/metropolitan scale and the interplay between different scales;•deal with different time-scales;•design public space in its relation with the urban strategy and strategic projects; •design for complexity (e.g. incorporating transformation, uncertain programmatic conditions, etc.); •integrate strategic considerations into the design concept.

The work today aims to present alternative modes of urbanisation (tissues, public spaces, landscapes,...) and reconfigure the region’s structure to accommodate the forecasted growth in concepts that are resilient to dynamics of water.


HANOISTUDIO OBJECTIVES AND METHODOLOGY

María del Carmen Mendoza Arroyo Director at Urban design and regional planning Lab at ESARQ-UIC, Barcelona, Spain

Pierre BélangerProfessor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Department of Landscape Architecture, Cambridge, USA

Bruno De MeulderProfessor at ASRO-OSA K.U.Leuven, Belgium

Guido GeenenCo-founder of WIT Architecten and Professor at ASRO K.U.Leuven, Belgium

Ha Nguyen Partner at arb Architects, Switzerland-Morocco-Vietnam

Martin Prominski Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Landscape at the University of Hannover, Germany

Kelly ShannonProfessor at ASRO-OSA K.U.Leuven, Belgium

Berno Strootman Founder of Strootman Landschapsarchitecten and guest teacher at Academie van Bouwkunst Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Lodewijk van NieuwenhuijzeDirector at H+N+S Landschapsarchitecten, Amersfoort, The Netherlands

10.00 Welcome & Introduction 10.30 Group 1: LANDSCRAPERS: framing the voids

11.15 Group 2: MANIPULATING TOPOGRAPHIES ON THE RED RIVER

12.00 Group 3: THE SOUTHERN GATE OF HANOI: sewing linearities, shaping hierarchies

12.45 Lunch

13.30 Group 4: THE OPPORTUNIST, COMMENTIALIST, MUTUALIST

14.15 Group 5: NAVIGATING HYBRID LANDSCAPES: Hanoi Lakes revisited

15.00 Coffee break

15.15 Group 5: URBAN CLIPPING: A strategy of negotiation along the edge condition

16.00 Conclusion 16.30 Deliberation 17.00 Reception

18.00 Lecture Berno Strootman

20.30 Dinner


HANOIJURY MEMBERS

10.00 Welcome & Introduction 10.30 Group 1: LANDSCRAPERS: framing the voids

11.15 Group 2: MANIPULATING TOPOGRAPHIES ON THE RED RIVER

12.00 Group 3: THE SOUTHERN GATE OF HANOI: sewing linearities, shaping hierarchies

12.45 Lunch

13.30 Group 4: THE OPPORTUNIST, COMMENTIALIST, MUTUALIST

14.15 Group 5: NAVIGATING HYBRID LANDSCAPES: Hanoi Lakes revisited

15.00 Coffee break

15.15 Group 5: URBAN CLIPPING: A strategy of negotiation along the edge condition

16.00 Conclusion 16.30 Deliberation 17.00 Reception

18.00 Lecture Berno Strootman

20.30 Dinner


HANOIFINAL REVIEW: PROGRAMME

Hanoi is structured around a system of rivers going from North to South: Nhue, To Lich, Lu, Set, Kim Nguu and the Red River as a dominant figure at the territorial scale. These rivers and a large number of lakes define a network that serves as a filter, carrying the water south of the city, where it collects in the lowest point of the city’s landscape (the Yen So area). Here a number of open spaces, connected to the river system of the city, have the potential to provide space for the water and the people of Hanoi, and challenge the causes of floods and pollution.

The project aims to structure and link these spaces in such a way that they deal with both the pressure of water and urbanization. The landscape is restructured so that it has the ability to purify and collect the water and release it back into the productive landscape. The existing structures are used to create a new landscape in which the need for purification and open space are integrated. Urbanization becomes a binding element which connects the different spaces - a strongly defined built form and public transport line connect and engage the existing urban tissue. A wide variety of public spaces is linked to the built form and aims to serve both the local functions as well as address the need for open space of the city.

The built form puts a strong line in the landscape at one side, while at the other side the landscape and urban tissue merge together. The structuring lines from the landscape are continuing in the built form, while the rhythm and orientation of the urban fabric and the landscape inform one another. By defining the edges, we aim to create a specific relationship between landscape and new urban tissue. Due to the proposed open space structure, the informal urban tissue that characterizes Hanoi can take place between the two clearly defined edges.

LANDSCRAPERS: framing the voids

Andrea Curtoni (Italy)Jana Grammens (Belgium)Jeanne Mosseray (Belgium)Maarten Wauters (Belgium)


HANOISTRATEGIC PROJECTS

We envision the red river as a solid mass of living organism that evolves through seasons and where different ecological scenarios occur for people living within its vicinities. Yet its proximity to Hanoi City puts pressure on the Red River and its delicate ecology. How can the city live with the river? This is the question we intend to address through a manipulative approach of the Landscape.

Concept (Horizontalities and Verticalities):

The dyke as an opportunity for infrastructureOver the years the role of the dyke has changed from a flood protection structure to a transport link between villages with the introduction of access road on its crest. Utilizing its solid mass, electric poles have also been planted over its lower slopes sometimes running parallel with the road. Widening the dyke from the outside and raising its crest is our strategy to create new public spaces.

The dyke as opportunity for structuring the ecological linesHow does the dyke adapt itself to the different scenarios created by this living organism called the Red River? The green filters inside the dyke function differently through the different seasons when the river level is above 4

meters high, 7 meters and 11.6 meters. Different types of vegetables are used for cleaning the water while serving as food and ornamental plants as well

Our design is about the identity of the agriculture villages, the ceramic settlements, and flower growing communities inside the dykes and to establish connections public spaces in the cityA finger approach in the design the spaces along the dykes creates a zigzag landscape which is an opportunity for interlocking new functions. By enlarging the dyke the opportunity of using the top platform as an infrastructural base upon which the city comes to the river is being created. Public and private functions can come aboard this space at the edge of the river.

MANIPULATING TOPOGRAPHIES ON THE RED RIVER

Andrew Aremo Alele (Uganda)Carme Machí Castañer (Spain)Thuc Quyen Trinh (Vietnam)Quynh Anh Tran (Vietnam)



The landscape of Hanoi is engraved with a natural system of rivers that works in parallel with the Red River - flowing North/South. In the southern area of greater Hanoi, the big infrastructural lines (Highway 1 and a the train line) follow the direction of the rivers. The whole works as bundles of North/South elements, strongly guiding different kinds of urbanity (both historic and more recent). Moreover, a more subtle (slowly disappearing) mesh of irrigation lines, canals and streets can be observed in the landscape. This mesh works with the natural East/West flows of water between rivers, which have carved the landscape, creating places with higher topographies, where rural villages have settled. Within this very rich landscape, we can perceive distinct hierarchies, one of the North/South urbanizing linearities, and the other of the (now) latent East/West mesh structure. As a first step in our approach, we perceive linear developments along the North/South backbone elements being the most suitable form of urbanization for the geographic specificity of Hanoi. These linear development are very different in character and grain as they are guided by very different landscape and infrastructure elements (from east to west): the Day River, a dyke, a suburban/agricultural road, a local link to a ring

road (under construction), the canalized Nhue river, a train line, the national highway 1, the Red River dyke, and the Red River. The second step in our approach is to invest in the mesh structure, in order to link and sew the North/South linear developments, creating bundles that are complementary to each other, working as a whole.The idea is to emphasize parts of the mesh, weaving from East to West, forming figures in the landscape of public spaces, creating breathing spaces in a city that is very quickly urbanizing. Simultaneously, these figures can start pacing and creating a rhythm within the linear developments wherever they meet. It is an agricultural park we are perceiving in these branches of mesh, that carries vegetable production, fisheries, public spaces/functions and when necessary, public housing embracing villages engraved in the East/West system, acting as their extension.

THE SOUTHERN GATE OF HANOI: Sewing linearities, Shaping hierarchies

Eliana Barbosa (Brazil)Natasha L Calderon (Santa Lucia)Teodora Constantinescu (Romania)Lyne Jabri (Lebanon)



CONTEXTHanoi is under a huge amount of growth pressure, likely to facilitate deep-reaching radial development under the current masterplan. The planned web of highways and satellite towns appears initially as an urban/rural rhythm. It however shies away from a dialogue with existing north-south (NS) natural and infrastructural elements, particularly along ‘the NS strip’ of the eastern bank of the Day River Flood Plain.

VISION We envision a ‘Growth Corridor’ within the NS Strip to further accommodate Hanoi’s expansion requirements emphasizing diverse and stimulating urban fabrics.This Corridor would be structured by the Eastern Dyke of the Day River and Hanoi’s 4th Ring Road, would acknowledge Hanoi’s radial strategy but also counterweight it by valorizing the existing NS dyke infrastructures, water and productive systemsand would serve to:

activate existing settlements and anchor new development; adhere to and re-enforce canal, retention pond and dyke landscape logics; lessen the possibility of ad-hoc land speculation and outbuilding of the Day River’s Eastern Bank.

DESIGN CONCEPTA Growth Corridor would better mediate differing rural/urban conditions, connect to existing infrastructural lines and service the rapidly increasing mobility needs of an expanding Hanoi.Our strategy, ‘The Opportunist’, employs a tram route that stitches about the Eastern Dyke and Hanoi’s 4th Ring Road. The Opportunist seeks a path that strategically links existing while anchoring new development nodes and piggy-backs upon existing or planned infrastructures.

In this sense, the Opportunist activates a Growth Corridor that reorients and strengthens the Dyke-Ring Road in-between zone. These opposing structures tend to emphasize contrasting dynamics of fast-slow, hard-soft, dry-wet and formal-informal areas. The Opportunist radiates a logic of higher density development by addressing context related urbanism in step with these dynamics. When the Opportunist touches the ring road, strategic crossings are emphasized. When touching the dyke, water systems and relations to the dyke are enforced.By engaging in a spatial dialogue with these contrasting dynamics, the Opportunist has the potential to exert notions of a livable, connected, diverse and landscape aware urbanity.

THE OPPORTUNIST, COMMENTIALIST, MUTUALIST

Christopher Colja (Slovenia / Australia)Tim Devos (Belgium)Valerie Raets (Belgium)Ine Leen Sorgeloos (Belgium)



In Hanoi, ‘’the city of lakes’’, lakes used to play an important role both in the lives of the city and its inhabitants. A number of lakes are losing their battle to urbanization by shrinking, diminishing, changing in shape and even functions. However, remaining lakes together with other water bodies create a dynamic water system , changing in function of the wet and dry seasons.. With a wider lens on different typologies of lakes and the flood prone landscape, the project explores this dynamic water system as a strength and ‘’guiding force’’ of future development of Hanoi, structuring the city and its voids.

The chosen site – located to the south of the city – explores different strategies and concepts, based on creating new lake/water/ecological infrastructures for the urban fabric to secure their existence and that of the essential urban voids. This is done by identifying and strengthening the natural system of the voids, preserving, reconfiguring and giving new functions to the existing lakes, reviving the lost lakes as well as creating new ones.

With a focus on different lake typologies (permanent, seasonal and spongy lakes) and hierarchy of water system based on site topography, the project is tackling the ‘’burning’’ issue of water management in the city of Hanoi. Along with this, it introduces an ecological spine

defined by a widened linear canal park, a civic spine aimed at protecting and encouraging native wildlife habitat to form, integrate existing villages, link major public spaces and facilities, wetlands and central lakefront district, and define intimate outdoor spaces, while dealing with re-structuring of the voids to inform tissue typologies: low rise development around neighborhood lakes balanced within green corridors and along civic lakes by clusters of high-rise development articulating the skyline.

NAVIGATING HYBRID LANDSCAPES: Hanoi Lakes

Shibu Bosu (Bangladesh)Sonja Lokic (Bosnia-Herzegovina)Daniel Nyandega (Kenya)



A reading of the territory in terms of water structures clearly reveals a landscape inextricably linked to the controlled flow of water. Within the greater Hanoi, between the river dikes are spaces for the containment of floodwaters, voids that should not be built on. As the city rapidly urbanizes, these will become more important as a counter figure to the city.The territorial concept for this project lies in the definition of the edge condition along these voids, each with its different qualities and varying spatial configurations. Choosing the ‘Day River’ edge condition, the creation of new urban tissue along this border condition was subsequently investigated by the group.The fertile land inside the dike abounds with trees and vegetation, representing a green mass. Outside, the patchwork of rice fields is steadily giving way to urban development. The dike physically articulates the edge between these two worlds.The dike itself operates both as an infrastructural and a landscape element. While fulfilling its infrastructural role to contain floodwaters, its form closely follows the meandering shape of the river. The ambition of our vision is to strengthen this edge by considering it as an intermediary space between the unfixed agriculture and the fixed urban development. The apparatus is a series of ‘clips’ that play with the strong

edge of the dike.These ‘clips’ are conceptual frames that serve a purpose to make connections between two spatial conditions, or more. Each clip has its own specificity: by relating to the specific geography of the area, and also by accommodating specific programmes with spaces for community life. In some instances these clips can become linear elements injecting programme into the spatial conditions that they mediate. Where two or more clips hook together, it creates an intensity of overlapping programmes at the juncture between them. The clip serves as a geographic anchor for otherwise floating, generic urbanism. Together, the system of uniquely specific clips becomes an articulated urban figure, representing a bottom-up strategy that can anticipate and add value to new urban development.

URBAN CLIPPING: A strategy of negotiation along the edge condition

Amber Kevelaerts (Belgium)Matteo Motti (Italy)Conor O’Brien (Ireland)Arthur Shakhbazyan (Russia)



Landscape Urbanism Studio Spring 2011 I MaHS-MaUSP-EMU 2009-2010 I KULeuven Belgium

STUDIO GUIDANCE:Bruno De Meulder - Oana Bogdan - Yuri Gerrits

Foto’s booklet: Tim Devos

INFO:MAHS / MAUSP / EMU Master programs, Department ASRO, K.U.Leuven Kasteelpark Arenberg 1, B-3001 Heverlee, Belgium,Tel: +32 (0) 16 321391 Fax: +32 (0) 16 321984

hanoi studoi final booklet

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