Air, Architecture + Other Climates
[50.9193° : Climate Futures] - 21/22
John Cook, Ben Pollock + Laura Nica

Nicholas Tsangaris

Year 2 MArch

Filtering through Nature

Dungeness, UK

The project is an ‘soft’ infrastructural landscape intervention on the site of Dungeness, serving as a ‘proving ground’ for a full-scale, year-round, natural reed-bed sewage treatment system. The aim is to tackle current sewage treatment processes that are failing due to ageing, a carbon driven economy and an industrial scaled use of chemicals, as well as prevalent and illegal sewage dumping into our public water bodies.

The nature themed project will be based around the idea of an 100-year life span that will start with the re-forming of the landscape to facilitate the reed beds and quickly shift standard sewage treatment towards them. The reforming will be achieved through the use of timber posts that will monitor, manage and access the reed beds as well as control waterflow and sedimentation. In turn, the thatch will be harvested, dried, processed and turned into a natural based typology for the site. This idea emphasises the temporality of the scheme that may eventually wash away due to the low-lying land. The posts will also form the foundation for the structures on site which will facilitate the thatch processing, as well as space for training based around the contemporary and experimental use of thatch in buildings. The posts will also support new infrastructure based around bird watching tourism generated from the large natural landscape.