Comments on: Waffle cities: landscape planning, urban design and architecture for flood-prone regions and global warming

By: Waffle levee flood planning for the Mississippi | Garden Design And Landscape Architecture Blog – Gardenvisit.com

Tue, 24 May 2011 18:06:40 +0000

[…] was pleased to see that our post on Waffle cities: landscape planning, urban design and architecture for flood-prone regions and global … has been verified as feasible. The snippet (courtesy of London Evening Standard 20.05.2011) shows […]

By: LIZ

LIZ — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 09:36:48 +0000

Another Dutch master Mondrian made geometry and colour interlinked – I see waffles associated
with his 2D designs, and to give more perspective to the drainage how about Jelly moulds in grids to represent the red yellow and white

By: Christine

Christine — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 03:15:45 +0000

Perhaps a Gardenvisit entrant to the Waffle City competition might also enter a building in the Building Design competition?
[ http://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/uk/competition-to-design-building-for-flood-hit-lake-district-yacht-club/5010351.article ]

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 07:31:21 +0000

The space around Ken Woolley’s Bangkok Embassy can certainly be regarded as an example of how one of the depressions would be treated in a future Waffle City.

By: Christine

Christine — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 05:43:54 +0000

ps. I should have said the photographs ‘do not do the design justice…’

By: Christine

Christine — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 05:27:39 +0000

Yes waffle inspired landscapes, waffle inspired architecture [ http://www.en-derin.com/artworks/steampunk-futuristic-cities-homes-and-factories ] and waffle inspired cities all have something to contribute to how we might rethink how to manage floods.

One of my favourite ‘waffle’ buildings and landscapes is the Bangkok Embassy by Ken Woolley.
[ http://www.austembassy.or.th/bkok/AboutUs_building.html ] There are very few pictures available on the internet and while these do the design justice the web gives a description of the essence of the design.

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 07:13:18 +0000

The problem with having one big dam is that if it fails to hold back the water then you have one big flood. If however you have lots of small dams (ie compartments in the waffle) then there are more likely to be lots of small floods then one big flood.
There was a fashion for late-medieval moated manor houses in many parts of north Europe and I think it would be worth encouraging designers to consider what urban areas might look like if planned on this basis:
– the water courses would have visual, ecological and recreational roles
– the embankments would be green transport routes, visual barriers and acoustic barriers
– the greenspace on the sides of the embankments could be used for urban agriculture (including the Deichlamm Lawrence mentions, above)
– embankments could supply ground-source heat pumps and a thermal contribution to climate control within buildings (ie by insulation).
– bees would flourish on the embankments so that we could dispense with refined sugar (which causes more ill-health than hard drugs) and have a good supply of honey for our waffles
So lets design Waffle Cities!

By: Christine

Christine — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 04:59:21 +0000

Yes it seems there was a relationship between the January 1974 flood in Brisbane
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Brisbane_flood ] and a spectacular flood in the inland lakes
in February 1974 with “a peak 15 890 GL”. The lakes are also considered to be sites of net sedimentation deposition from flood waters. The paper below looks at these impacts on fish populations in the lakes.

From a cursory reading of the paper on ‘Hydrological persistence and Dryland River Ecology’
[ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1099-1646(200009/10)16:5%3C385::AID-RRR592%3E3.0.CO;2-W/pdf ] the retention of floodwaters increases the extent rather than the volume of subsequent events: (p393)

“Thus, while the volume of the 1991 flood was 36% of that in 1989, its maximal extent (22 April 1991) was 64% of that in 1989 (7 July 1989).”

It is fascinating to understand that the issue of flooding we are evaluating for the city of Brisbane is system wide with almost nation wide implications. Undoubtedly it also has impacts for RAMSAR wetland management, and thus has an international dimension.
[ http://www.ramsar.org/cda/en/ramsar-home/main/ramsar/1_4000_0__ ]

This said, I don’t think the ecological data should deter the generation of ideas, as there are many flood situations, so the more ideas the better.

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 08:38:07 +0000

I see that making Brisbane into a waffle would not protect it from floods – but what if the entire catchment of the river were to be planned as a waffle? Wouldn’t that deter the Great Flood Lake from its course of meandering havoc through eastern Austalia? The general principle for water management is to detain and infiltrate the water as close to where it falls as possible. If you let the water accumulate it causes trouble.

By: Christine

Christine — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 02:25:28 +0000

Much of the flooding Brisbane experienced was due to water releases from Wivenhoe Dam [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cOgP8lgCL4 ]
which at the time of the flood peak was at 190 + of capacity [ http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/wivenhoe-water-releases-wound-back/story-fn6ck45n-1225986185721 ] after falling to critical levels of 15 percent capacity during the recent drought. [ http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/8691144/q-a-dam-expert-analyses-wivenhoe/ ].

The difficult issue for dam managers is that the majority of water in the Wivenhoe catchment comes from extreme weather events ie. cyclonic and monsoonal weather events and above average rainfall during the ‘wet’ season.

This water is potentially the supply for the city (with a rapidly growing population) for up to the next ten years. The catchment, if I understand the situation correctly, is also managed on the basis of statistical averages, whereas flood events (like the mythical family with 2.2 children) ignore averages.

The localised flooding where I live came not directly from the river but from the backed up stormwater system (city infrastructure) as the river rose. Mapping to identify the different sources of flooding in each area would be necessary to design appropriate defence mechanisms.