Sponge City China

The Sponge City Project consists of a multidisciplinary team of six MSc students from the disciplines of Hydraulic Engineering, Water Management, Architecture and Urbanism. Last summer 2018, the Sponge City Project Team went to China to work on the implementation of the Sponge City programme, an initiative launched by the government of China to deal with urban flooding problems, due to changed in land use pattern and climate change. By 2030, the Chinese government is expecting 80% of urban areas will follow these standards. One of the main challenges was making this project truly interdisciplinary, with their individual expertise being integrated in the process and the resulting design. Based on a Research by Design approach, the team developed an integrated design system for the ErQi International Business District, in Wuhan. This meant the combination of analytical thinking, focused on the translation and the interpretation of data, and design thinking, with a focus on the development of new knowledge and spatial translation. Participating in this project presented the opportunity to work on an actual assignment together with the Chinese stakeholders such as the designers and developers, while still maintaining the academic freedom to formulate their own design in an interdisciplinary way.

Sponge City Team:

Mesut Ulku (Architecture), Sui Xinxin (Water Management), Michael van der Lans (Hydraulic Engineering), Thomas Dillon Peynado (Urbanism), Jiechen Zheng (Hydraulic Engineering) and Camille Fong (Water Management).

Project team
Final report (download)
Results from MengQiao Bridge Design
Results from Water Road Design