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Profiling the City
Through the rearticulation of city sections, a bold, new structure is established. A few levels are chosen that represent topographical landscapes with evident uses: forest, paddy fields, water bodies for retention, purification, fish and shrimp farming, urban platforms and so on. Water and forest structures, two main topographical landscapes, form a robust, embedded blue / green mesh that protects existing and new urban development. Ca Mau, the blue and green city par excellence, is (re) defined by this balanced topographical interplay.
Profiling the Countryside
(Re)profiling-always in respect of the cut-and-fill principle-can be a main key in the strategy to adapt to climate change. It can transform the territory by developing new sections. The wetness and soil conditions (re)created by sectional operation could be systematically exploited by replanting forests and mangroves.
Mangroving the Territory
By mangroving the territory, that is, a systematic plantation scheme of mangroves and adapted forest types, a new ecological frame could emerge, potentially balancing resilience and sustainability with dynamic exploitation.
A Mosaic of Water Surfaces
The monumental scale of conversion to shrimp and fish ponds transforms the territory instantly and drastically into an endless mosaic of water surfaces that are separated by variations of narrow and wide tree-planted strips.
Demise of the Mangrove
In the early 20th century, the Ca Mau Peninsula's alluvial territory consisted of and was generated by salt-water mangroves (Mui Ca Mau) and fresh-water mangroves (U Minh). During the last decades, the reduction in forested area is alarming, while shrimp farming exploits the opportunities that increased salination offers.
A Mural Conveys Socialist / Realist Expectations
The new Petro Vietnam Industrial Park' mural conveys social-ist expectations after doi moi-meaning after proceeding to a market economy. The mural frames dynamic and energetic fishermen, farmers, workers, scientists, students and others, in an imaginary industrious and prosperous commercial centre with Ca Mau as thriving in an unique, ecological environment.
Distorted Water Regimes
The source of the Mekong River, high on the Tibetan Plateau, was and continues to be systematically modified by dams, which, in turn, reduce water pressure in the Mekong Delta and the canals that are linked with the Mekong. Consequently, fresh water from the Mekong doesn't penetrate as deeply into the territory through the canal system as it once did. Sea-level rise causes increased salt water pressure from the opposite side in an elaborate canal and river system. Ca Mau, once at the edge of the fresh water system, today is caught between these contradictory forces. Meanwhile, a program of sea dyke construction is starting up.
CA MAU: Mangroving a Deltalic City (2014)
Location: Mekong Delta Region, Vietnam
Designers: RUA, Superjacent (January-April 2016) as consultant to SISP (Southern Institute for Strategic Planning) Kelly Shannon, Bruno De Meulder, Claudia Rojas Bernal, Christina Hood, Donielle Kaufman, Michael Waibel, Tracy Collier, Erik Heikkila, Molly Fancler. Kelly Majewski, Anthony Paradowski, C.hris Torres
Commissioned by: Ministry of Construction, Hanoi
Area: 4,060,400 ha
Period of Design: 2014– present
VIETNAM
The Evolving Challenges of the Mekong Delta
The Mekong Delta is a cultural landscape formed and transformed by its sophisticated and dynamic water management. However, the contemporary paradigm of land and water management is currently undergoing a fundamental shift that climate change will inescapably further articulate. Living with floods (in opposition to a defensive living behind dykes) and the interconnected canal system is no longer as evident.
The entire hydrological regime of the Mekong River has been and continues to be re-engineered by Vietnam’s riparian neighbours. The delta is already bearing witness to the impacts of climate change, including sea level rise, saline intrusion, massive inundation, and periods of intensive drought and rising temperatures.
Impacts of Climate Change on the Delta's Landscape
Sea level rise, saline intrusion, massive inundation, and periods of intensive drought and rising temperatures have begun to affect the region and reveal devastating consequences on productive landscapes and settlements. These changes threaten the traditional water management systems that have defined the region's cultural and economic landscape for centuries. The revision of the plan for the Mekong Delta Region seizes the opportunity of climate change to realign the plan with the evolving characteristics of the territory.
Strategic Revisions for the Mekong Delta Plan
The main question of the new proposed regional plan was how to organize a constructive interplay between unavoidable landscape dynamics and the social, economic, and cultural dynamics of the region. The main asset of the delta, especially in view of the expected worldwide food shortage, remains its enormous agri- and aqua-cultural potential.
This plan emphasizes the need to balance the natural water systems with human activities, ensuring that agricultural productivity can be sustained even in the face of significant environmental changes.
Emphasizing the Delta’s Agro-Ecological Identity
Such a territorial identity is largely the outcome of the interplay between land and water, or more precisely: topography (including bathymetry), soil qualities (such as alluvia, saline, and acid sulphate) and conditions, and salt and fresh water parameters (volumes, qualities including carried sedimentation, heights and extents, tides, and seasonal variations).
Recognition and accentuation of the delta’s underlying geography, which has been classified into six broad agro-ecological sub-regions, can re-establish its core identity, counterbalance the relative homogeneity of the region’s urbanism, and re-articulate the productive landscapes of the delta’s dynamic ecological sub-regions.