CLC Lecture Series

Sustainable Waterscapes for Liveable Cities in the Future

URA Function Hall, Singapore

29 July 2011

As part of the continuing CLC Lecture Series, Mr

Herbert Dreiseitl, landscape architect and founder
of Atelier Dreiseitl, spoke on the benefits of
sustainable waterscapes and gave real-life
illustrations of how they could be integrated into
cities.

With climate change and other issues, people are

afraid of the environment, said Mr Dreiseitl.
Historically, there has always been a connection
between cities and water and between architecture
and water. But looking at cities today, we have
somehow created a world which is very interesting
but we have a very little time and very little space
left over for water. The question is how to give
space back to water and how to find a partnership
with it.

Mr Dreiseitl began with some observations about water in nature. Water can build up
or destroy, and it behaves differently in a forest and in a built-up area. In a forest, the
water that runs off is a small percentage. But in urban areas where much of the
surface is sealed, large volumes of water go straight into canals and from there to the
ocean.

Streams and canals are often purely functional in design; yet in places where this is
not the case, the exercise is mainly decorative. Therefore, Mr Dreiseitl challenged
cities like Singapore to go beyond beautifying canals to integrating water cleansing
systems. Landscape architecture with urban planning is a very important tool to
manage the environment, he noted.

It takes guts

Mr Dreiseitl shared some examples of ecological waterscapes around the world that
he had helped to design. Zhangjiawo New Town in Tianjin, China, was designed to
harvest every drop of rainwater on site, starting from the rooftop and open areas
between buildings. Treated en route to the canal, some of the water was also
circulated through cleansing biotopes to eliminate phosphorus and nitrates. Rather
than hiding this water treatment technology, it was designed to be part of the visible

1
landscape. For this reason, Mr Dreiseitl explained: You cant do it at the end. You
cant do urban planning first, then architecture and finally some engineering. An
integrated, inter-disciplinary approach needed to be taken from the start.

In addition, a convention-challenging attitude was needed, he said. A case in point

was the Potsdamer Platz project in Berlin in 1998. To collect all the rain water from the
rooftops, the rooftop gardens required a special substrate with no fertilisers added, to
prevent nitrates contaminating the water. Together with the local university, the team
tested 12 different types of rooftop materials. All the water was then collected in
cisterns in the basements of the buildings. The water was then channelled into an
open lagoon system with different levels, and the overflow went into a stream. Many
people predicted the project would fail. For such a cutting-edge project, Mr Dreiseitl
emphasised the importance of courage, leadership and passion.

The same principles were applicable in subsequent projects. You have to think
strategically about many things, noted Mr Dreiseitl, for instance the arrangement of
streets, slopes, different areas of a city and catchment areas which would affect
zoning, the location of parks, drains, filters and so on.

It takes science

In all of his examples, Mr Dreiseitl highlighted the importance of science and

engineering, including long-term simulation with precipitation drainage models, proof of
retention volumes, infiltration, evaporation and peak flows. In particular, such
calculations would be crucial in preventing flooding.

In Singapore, where two-thirds of the land area was water catchment and much of the
surface was sealed, flooding would be caused when a high peak occurred just after
heavy rain, Mr Dreiseitl observed. The question was how to shape and work the
surface so that water would be released more gradually, at a rate akin to a natural
curve. Opportunities needed to be created for the city to slow down and filter the
water. This was a vision that Active, Beautiful and Clean (ABC) Waters Programme
should ultimately aim for, said Mr Dreiseitl.

Part of his involvement in the programme involved master-planning the watershed for
Bishan Park. When he first assessed the park, he saw that water was perceived
almost like an enemy. The canal was often full, with high water levels. There were
fences on both sides of the canal but children would still climb down into the canal to
play, and terrible accidents could happen in heavy rain.

Mr Dreiseitl recounted that the PUB took the initiative to go in a different direction. In
seeking integrated solutions, the National Parks Board and PUB were prepared to
overlap territories, responsibilities, maintenance and budgets.

When I do projects, said Mr Dreiseitl, I want to be sure that they work. For this
reason, he advised the audience not to rely purely on statistics. The best approach
was to use a real case. At Bishan Park, a test ridge was created one year before
actual implementation. It served as a research tool for his team, the clients and also
later for the construction companies to understand the technology. The team brought
bioengineering from Europe but knew that they had to source for local plants. They
rejected plants that grew too fast and thus required heavy maintenance. They also
considered how the plants grew and how strong their root systems were, as the
objective was to prevent erosion. When they finally reconstructed the waterway,
2
concrete from the canal was crumbled and recycled, for example in the construction of
an artificial hill in the park.

Still on the subject of flood control, Mr Dreiseitl suggested taxing waste water
differently from storm water, as was the practice in Germany. In his opinion, applying
this cost-by-cause principle would encourage the private sector to adopt ABC
guidelines for factories and other large facilities.

It takes people

We have to not only be more intelligent

with our infrastructure, we have to involve
the people, said Mr Dreiseitl. For Tanner
Springs Park in Oregon, his team
conducted a workshop with 300 citizens to
draw up a vision for the next 25 years.
Acknowledging that this model might be
difficult to adopt in Singapore, he
nevertheless encouraged planners to find a
way to engage the younger generation,
perhaps through NGOs and schools.

In the case of Tanner Springs Park, the people did not come up with the design but
brought a spirit of the place, a genius loci, which was important for decision-makers to
be sensitive to. The sense of ownership extended to citizen volunteers taking care of
the park so that the city spent half what it spent maintaining other parks.

Mr Dreiseitl noted that some of the biodiversity had returned to Bishan Park. In this
way, waterscapes could help children to learn and connect with the environment. Mr
Dreiseitl put it in the simplest terms: Its important to see how a frog or a dragonfly
really looks like.

It takes beauty

Himself an artist, Mr Dreiseitl also encouraged planners to look for opportunities to

bring art and function together so that art would not be an addition but something
which made function beautiful and easy for people to understand. He cited a simple,
small-scale project in Germany where rainwater was recycled not only for watering
planters and flushing toilets, but also to feed a waterfall that combined with air flows to
create an artistic effect.

Another example was McLaren Technology Centre in London, where wind turbines
produced a colossal amount of heat. Instead of cooling towers, a massive cascade of
rainwater about 50 metres wide and dropping 4 to 5 metres was used to lower
temperatures. Visually, it was also very interesting.

Conclusion
After summing up his lecture, Mr Dreiseitl commented on the growth of Asian cities.
Im convinced that Asia has so much potential and so much need to develop better
cities, he said. He pointed out that traditional Asian culture possessed much wisdom
about water; historic gardens and towns in China and Japan, for instance, all took
3
water and waste water management into account. It saddened him to see how this
wisdom was ignored as these places industrialised and development quickened. He
therefore hoped to play a part in helping Asia to develop a culture of urbanism where
even high-density, fast-paced and modern cities learn to live with the environment.

About the Speaker

An internationally renowned, sculptor, artist, and interdisciplinary planner, with 30
years of experience, Mr Herbert Dreiseitl is the founder of Atelier Dreiseitl. Inspired by
water, he seeks to awaken a new understanding of sustainability, using public art
intrinsically within overall landscape planning solutions, bringing universal themes of
ecology and well-being to light. He has realized ground-breaking contemporary
designs in the fields of urban hydrology, water design, storm water management,
urban planning, and landscape architecture. He is active in lecturing worldwide and his
work is widely published. Mr Dreiseitl is the author of several books, such as Recent
Waterscapes Planning, Building and Designing with Water.

2011 Centre for Liveable Cities

All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without prior written permission of the Centre for Liveable Cities.