The Water City
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| THE IDEA OF THE CITY |
As we know,Bangkok has a long history with the water culture and it is used to be known as the Venice of the East .However,with the development of the city, the water system has been replaced by the road system .And most of the canals that we can see today ,are in terrible conditions without a good use by the people.Few of the bigger canals still serve as the water express ,but with a very poor infrasture. For others ,which are narrower,they are just left unused ,filled with various pollutants.However,to some extent, the water space is actually the public space provided in the narrow city and it has a great potential to serve as a better use.It is not only for the surrounding citizens,but also it turns into a sightseeing routine for the tourists to go into the deep of the city.
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| TERRITORIAL MAP |
Therefore,in this project,I mainly focus on the existing water system,especially the small canals , in Bangkok and to explore the potential within the narrow space above the canals.Thus,at the first beginning,I made a territorial map ,pointed out the important public spaces near the waterway ,and tried to study very specifically about the conditions of the the canals by plans and sections.It includes the depth and width of the different parts of the canals ,the setback of the buildings on the bank ,the existing pathway as well as the public space near the canals.
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| Paris Taxonomy |
Then, during in the trip to Paris, I mainly observe about the riverside and was inspired by the vertical layers of the boundaries .For me there are three important factors for the boundary between the land and the water,including the vertical layers,edges and elements. For the edges and the vertical layers,they define the geographical location and the territory of the activity ，dealing with different transition and connections.And for the element ,it is to actually stimulus the activities of the users.Thus,I would like to use these three factors to think about my project in Bangkok,but based on the different scale of the canal space
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| Territorial perspective |
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| Project Taxonomy |
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| Plan drawing |
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| Section Drawing |
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| Image I |
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| Image II |
As we can see,extremely compressed by the surroundings ,most of the canals in Bangkok today are simply served as the back side of the city.Without a systematic planning,the space surrounding the canals is full of the diverse private articles coming from the neighboring residential areas.Thus,the space along the canals are already occupied to different extent ,and for the project ,it is to struggle for a circulating system for the public use in this narrowness and return the canals to the original use for transportation.The preliminary strategy here is to recreate a simply framework as the circulation system along the waterway to support the operation and use the red color to define the public attributes. Therefore,I first set the basic principle of the construction scales and sizes,making sure it won’t occupy too much space of the canals and the land.Inspired by the ergonomics the length of the unit of a single pipe is set as 1.2 meter and define a liner space of 2.4 meter wide as my specific territory. Then according to difference of the surroundings,I develop 9 typologies of the urban fabrics.Some of them will be served for the basic use of daily life ,such as the public toilets,boat parking lot,berth and garage.Some will work especially for the tourism,such as the visitor centers and bicycle rental .And others can be used at a symbolic meaning to cultivate the atmosphere along the waterway.
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