Living With Dynamic River

Climate change introduces problems to address. The severe water crises as periodic flooding have become widespread. Yangtze River is chosen as the example site of this project as China has been suffering from flooding for a long time, especially for the cities in the southeast. Nanjing, the previous capital city of China has more than 2000 years history of living with the Yangtze River. This project describes the evolution process of the river system, analyses the relationship between river and city from 2000 years ago to the contemporary city. The project proposes not only deal with sustainable water strategy in 100 year-flood and 200-year-flood but also to encourage the engagement of the water and the community. Unlike traditional intervention plan which blocks people from the flood, this project brings people back to the side of the river again and creating a new relationship between water and city. The design is based on the experience of adaptive strategies, which have been evolving in the long history of people's survival under hazardous conditions, is an inspiration for us to confront the future uncertainties. The idea of the contemporary sponge city has also been referenced. But the contemporary water management neglect the social interactions and activities. Thus, this project combines the successful historical and contemporary water management, the project focus on changing and extending the river edge form along the river, reorganizing the different types of possibilities and activities, creating the communities on a sustainable path to living with water.