Re-Imagine Water Flows: From Building to River Basin

Exhibition installation for WATER PRESSURE: Designing for the Future,
Hamburg

Reimagine Water Flows is an installation that rethinks current water systems by investigating water management which ripple across different scales to present alternative sustainable models. Through a large-scale mural, the installation investigates the water challenges for a building, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (MK&G), the city of Hamburg, and for the larger Elbe River basin.

This work was specially commissioned for the exhibition “Water Pressure: Designing for the Future”, by MK&G and Jane Withers Studio. The exhibition examines the current global water crisis, displaying works which explore the possibilities to mold a profoundly different future. The twenty-six-meter mural narrates extensive research through a series of stories that reveal the complexity of the current water systems across historical and contemporary lenses, touching on geographical, ecological, and anthropological events. This research is translated into a speculative design to readapt the MK&G to the cyclical nature of water, producing a speculating ecologically sound urban model which can make Hamburg more climate resilient.

The idea for this commission originates from the current policy for an annual tax that all properties in Hamburg—including the MK&G building—pays to the city to dispose of excess rainwater. The city’s expansive and expensive urban network of pumps and stormwater drains protects the museum’s building from floods, an increasing risk amid climate change. However, they simultaneously discard precious water amid the growing threat of droughts, which is of great concern for the German city. To adapt to climate resilience, fresh water simply cannot be discharged into the sea; it must be collected and recycled.

This research focuses the conversations to question present-day practices. Additionally, the propositional interventions proposed for the MK&G building offer possible strategies that single individuals, businesses, or other institutions can implement. Though the symptoms of poor water management and the deleterious effects of climate change are most perceptible at a territorial scale, the mechanisms for just change informed by local cultural contexts exist at the scale of urban and building design, urban policy, and individuals' conscientious water use.

Special thanks to:

Professor Wolfgang Dickhaut, HafenCity Universität Hamburg, Professor Antje Stockmann, HafenCity Universität Hamburg, Dr Marianne Temmesfeld, Unser Wasser– Bürgerinitiative zur Rettung desTrinkwassers

Location

Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (MK&G), Hamburg

Year

2024

Team

Eva Pfannes, Sylvain Hartenberg, Takuma Johnson, Jesse Honsa, Thore Elberling, Emma Kibel

Project by

OOZE architects & urbanists

Event

Exhibiton at Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe- WATER PRESSURE: Designing for the Future

Curator

Jane Withers Studio, MK&G

Commissioner

MK&G - Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Jane Withers Studio

Support

Stimuleringsfonds, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe

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Reimagine Water Flows- Entire Mural © Ooze 2024

Reimagine Water Flows. Photograph by Henning Rogge

MK&G and Its Five Waters

The existing MK&G is a machine for water processes in the service of visitors, workers, the fauna and flora in the courtyards, and the objects on display and in storage. Tracing the supply and discharge of water in the building is an important step towards more resilient and future-proof ways of using the common good, which is water. Currently, four systems supply water to the building from the municipal water supply network for different uses: sanitation, central heating, fire safety, and humidification of
the exhibition and storage spaces. A fifth system is the stormwater system, which channels rain off the museum’s large roof surfaces and courtyards. All the wastewater, including rainwater, ends up in the city sewerage system and is delivered to a centralised treatment plant at a high price. Throwing water away, this linear process fails to take advantage of the potential to conserve it through circular management on-site.

MK&G and Its Five Waters and MK&G 2030. Photograph by Henning Rogge

MK&G 2030

How could the museum transform its water ecosystem, becoming a producer of water for its own communities and for the city as a whole? As an important cultural institution in the heart of the city with generous open spaces, the MK&G has the potential to develop new imaginaries of regenerative and holistic practices. In this proposal, both rainwater and wastewater are collected, redirected away from the municipal networks, and filtered and treated naturally instead, to be reused for non-drinking water use inside the building, for irrigation, and for the recharge of the Hamburg aquifer underground. A new public space in the form of a functional water landscape, which serves as a creative and inclusive space for leisure and cultural exchange connected to the museum, is part of this intervention. It uses specific species of plants that absorb water and filter pollutants to recycle water on-site, contributing to the prevention of droughts and floods. These cost-efficient nature based technologies also have the added advantage of environmental cooling, improved air quality, and increased biodiversity. The specific tools include constructed wetlands for wastewater recycling; green roofs, cisterns, bioswales, and retention areas for rainwater harvesting; permeable paving and injection wells for aquifer recharge; and green façades to maintain a cooler environment inside the building. These interventions could present Hamburg with potential paths towards a climate resilient future.

Thirsty Hamburg

Hamburg is a city of water. This map depicts the city’s water infrastructure: not only its rivers, streams, and canals, but its stormwater drains, fire hydrants, water towers, treatment stations, and green areas, which connect the clouds above to the aquifer below. Almost like an X-ray, patterns of streets, city blocks, and significant landmarks like Hamburg Airport are still recognisable. These systems are historic artefacts, built to respond to historic moments of crisis: fires, floods, epidemics, and industrial pollution. New perspectives are demanded by the new crises related to climate change and environmental degradation. The map invites individuals to imagine and speculate on how such problems could be addressed by learning from the triumphs and stumbles of the past.

Thirsty Hamburg. Photograph by Henning Rogge

The Elbe

The Elbe River basin is one of the largest watersheds in Germany, covering roughly 27% of the country’s land area. It begins in the mountains of Czechia and empties into the North Sea beyond Hamburg. This map of the watershed emerges not through drawing boundaries but by overlapping water-related phenomena. Viewed closely, the map identifies specific events, from groundwater pumping stations to wastewater treatment facilities, from polluting open-pit mines to historic “hunger stones” that denote droughts in the river. From afar, the map illustrates the spatial distribution of underground groundwater aquifers, tributary flows within the Elbe watershed, and international environmental risks such as droughts and floods. It depicts a story of exploitation and mismanagement while also recognising the Elbe as a territory.

Re-Imagine Water Flows: From Building to River Basin Exhibition installation for WATER PRESSURE: Designing for the Future, Hamburg

MK&G and Its Five Waters

MK&G 2030

Thirsty Hamburg

The Elbe

Re-Imagine Water Flows: From Building to River Basin

Exhibition installation for WATER PRESSURE: Designing for the Future,
Hamburg