After the Great Storm of 1900 hit Galveston, Texas, the city protected itself with a seawall, and the town was raised to a new ground level. Everything was raised, houses, churches, offices, trees, gardens.
Dredged sand was used to raise the city by as much as 17 feet (5.2 m) above its previous elevation. In the seven years operation 2,156 buildings were raised on jacks, manually and with the use of mules . Catwalks were built connecting houses and buildings, and canals were dug through town to allow the dredge barges to bring in the sand.
To test both structural and aesthetic concerns for their new structures in the early 20th Century , the Board of Water Supply used scale models.
From NYC Water
The FLoating Instrument Platform (FLIP) is a naval research station designed in 1962. It is towed horizontally to open water then flips vertically to provide a stable platform mostly immune to wave action.
The tilting is actioned by directing water into ballast tanks. The position is reversed by sending compressed air in the tanks. Because the bulkhead becomes the deck, the FLIP has rooms with doors mounted on the floor, portholes in the ceiling, and sinks and toilets mounted for both configurations.
Developed during the cold war, it continues to provide a uniquely stable platform for research missions that include ocean acoustics, marine mammal studies, geophysics, meteorology, physical oceanography, and laser propagation experiments.
In the 1920s, Villa Epecuen was established as a tourist village along the shore of Lago Epecuen, Argentina, famous for its therapeutic powers thanks to salt levels second only to the Dead Sea.
It became a bustling resort and by the 1970s the population was more than 5,000.
At the same time the Lago Epecuen began to swell with increased rainfalls and in 1985 the enormous volume of water broke through an earthen dam inundating much of the town under four feet of water. By 1993, the town was covered in 10 meters of water.
Nearly 25 years later, in 2009, the wet weather reversed and the waters began to recede. Villa Epecuen started coming back to the surface.
Pictures by Juan Mabromata
Source
This small house has been perched atop a rock in the middle of the Drina River, near the town of Bajina Basta, Serbia, for the past 45 years.
The rock it is standing on was a resting place for swimmers back in the 1960s—the house gradually took shape over the years and was built with materials transported with boats and kayaks. The larger pieces were simply placed in the water upstream, and captured as they floated down past the building location.
From Design-taxi
Copenhagen’s harbour, one of the few in the world to be clean enough to swim in, is in the process of undergoing a change that will be expected to transform the marina into a recreational, educational and ecologically friendly area.
The “blue Plan” (by tredje natur and PK3) focuses on establishing a unique relationship between the user, the harbor, and an activity. It will include the construction of five artificial islands off the docks: the house of water, fugleøen (bird island), krøyers pøl, sportsøen (sports sea) and operaparken (opera park).
The house of water, based on the idea of educating the public on global water challenges and solutions, is made up of soft rounded concrete hills with several pools and baths, heated inlet pools and sauna caves.
From Design Boom
Stiltsville is a group of stilt houses located south of Cape Florida on sand banks on the edge of Biscayne Bay, Florida.
Supposedly the first shack in the 1920s offered gambling, which was apparently legal if located at least one mile offshore. By the late 1930s and early 40s, a handful of other social clubs were built, whose members also appreciated the legal leeway that came with distance from the mainland. From an all-time high of twenty-seven structures in the 1960s seven houses remain today.
The Stiltsville buildings, now owned by the National Park Service, are part of preservation plan being developed.
This visual blog presents images and projects related to the WATERSHED+ art program.
WATERSHED+ is a public art program hosted by City of Calgary's department of Utilities and Environment Protection.
WATERSHED+ aims to develop awareness and pleasure in the environment, not by changing water management practice, nor developing a uniform visual language, but rather by creating a climate of opportunity for water initiatives to build an emotional connection between people and the watershed.
WATERSHED+ presents a unique approach to public art by embedding artists and artistic practices within UEP core activities, participating as members on infrastructure design teams, contributing to project design, development of events, community education, etc.
You can visit us at:
watershedplus.ca
This program was devised by Sans façon (Charles Blanc & Tristan Surtees) with a team composed of Matt Baker, Emlyn Firth, Yan Olivares of Yes Architectes, Eric Laurier and Bert van Duin.
