public_infrastructure

John McGill

I am proposing an infrastructural public landscape and Olympic aquatics venue for La Boca/Barracas. Despite my initial hesitance to embrace the Olympic program, I now see it as an essential foil to concerns about the viability of such large and formally ambitious infrastructure in an economically depressed area. The water treatment facility and Olympic facility each justifies the other, formally and economically – neither could exist on its own.

The project is to be phased over decades. The water treatment landscape of terraced reed beds could be built first, becoming a part of the public consciousness and neighborhood identity. Once in place, the roof canopy, tram station, and sports facilities could be added incrementally to reduce the footprint of construction happening at any given time and to allow the site to remain functional as infrastructure and largely accessible to the public.

The water treatment facility would eventually process all of the gray water generated on site, with the potential to take on additional polluted river water (during flood season) or neighborhood gray water (in the dry season). Once treated, the water can either be reused on site, symbolically released into the river and out to the delta, or redirected to a series of small community gardens located in the existing park adjacent to the site. These multiple inputs and outputs allow the system to remain efficient throughout the year, using its the entirety of its massive capacity even as supplies and demands fluctuate.

The roof canopy shelters the sports program and tram station and provides public access to the river edge, spanning over the reed bed basins but making them an active part of the visual experience. The folding of the canopy surface enables it to contact and penetrate the earthwork, providing both structural integrity and programmatic continuity and making it part of a choreographed approach sequence from the existing soccer stadium. As it approaches the edge of the river, the triangulated geometry of the folded roof surface becomes more fragmented, allowing it simultaneously to create both large spans for weather enclosure of the swimming venue and smaller-scale access to the river and its edge. As a doubled, thickened surface, the roof collects rainwater in areas that are not covered by reed beds. It might also potentially support solar or wind harvesting to provide energy for all of the pumps needed for water treatment.