WATER TANK PROTOTYPE
Fall 2019
w/ Emma Scott
Instructor: Juan José Castellón
With over 20,000 rooftop water tanks across New York City, these containers play a critical role for the city's expansive infrastructural systems. The Water Tank Prototype reimagines the relationship between a building's water tank and roofscape. The water tank operates seamlessly across four scales and serves as a new home to threatened community gardens. At the unit scale, the prototype holds water for everyday building use, garden irrigation, and passive/active cooling systems; at the building scale, the garden collects and diverts water back to the prototype, prohibiting detrimental runoff from straining the overloaded sewage system in a rainstorm, favorably serving the City’s Green Infrastructure Plan; at the neighborhood scale, the prototype functions as a community space, flexible and adaptable to the needs of its occupants; and at the city scale, the prototype deploys across the skyline as community garden lots are replaced with ever-increasing development. What results is a symbiotic connection across these four scales in which the prototype harmoniously interacts, never taking only for itself, but engaging with water and social systems to make the city a more cohesive whole.
Fall 2019
w/ Emma Scott
Instructor: Juan José Castellón
With over 20,000 rooftop water tanks across New York City, these containers play a critical role for the city's expansive infrastructural systems. The Water Tank Prototype reimagines the relationship between a building's water tank and roofscape. The water tank operates seamlessly across four scales and serves as a new home to threatened community gardens. At the unit scale, the prototype holds water for everyday building use, garden irrigation, and passive/active cooling systems; at the building scale, the garden collects and diverts water back to the prototype, prohibiting detrimental runoff from straining the overloaded sewage system in a rainstorm, favorably serving the City’s Green Infrastructure Plan; at the neighborhood scale, the prototype functions as a community space, flexible and adaptable to the needs of its occupants; and at the city scale, the prototype deploys across the skyline as community garden lots are replaced with ever-increasing development. What results is a symbiotic connection across these four scales in which the prototype harmoniously interacts, never taking only for itself, but engaging with water and social systems to make the city a more cohesive whole.
