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Ecosistema Urbano

Critical Need Being Addressed

Only 1% of the world’s freshwater is accessible for human use and, in coming years, several factors will raise global demand for it: increased desertification, resource privatization, and booming population, agricultural and industrial pressures. Because 40% of the water consumed globally is used in building facilities, as architects, we believe it is important to develop strategies for small-scale water reuse and conservation to be applied at the local level and to mobilize communities to become involved.

Description of Initiative

We have developed and constructed a prototype installation for public park space known as Plaza Ecopolis. Linked to a kindergarten, a macrophyte lagoon purifies both grey and black waste water from the nearby building, then this water is reused for the irrigation of the entire park. We propose the application of more macrophyte lagoon design initiatives throughout urban and suburban areas.

All projects will be developed on government owned, residual spaces, however, future community macrophyte lagoon systems will be managed by either
a) neighboring members of the community who are concerned about their water consumption and who are interested in a joint effort project to optimize their resources.
b) local , public municipalities who are interested in treating waste water for reuse with public macrophyte lagoon installations in order to reduce government spending at treatment centers.

To support our community macrophyte lagoons, which initiate physical networking at project sites, we are proposing the creation of an online social network to allow community members to share their What if Water, Community Macrophyte Lagoons experiences with each other globally.

We believe that sustainability is most effectively spread through educational channels. As architects, we express our ideas and knowledge in visible, tangible ways when designing the city responsibly. Considering global concerns about future access to clean water, we believe that architects must implement more solutions for water treatment that double to promote environmental education. We think it is important to make water-conservation processes visually incorporated into pubic space so communities understand the initiative’s importance.

The ultimate goals of the What if Water, Community Macrophyte Lagoons initiative is to promote public understanding of world water issues, encourage a more respectful attitude towards environmental conservation, and develop an informed, engaged community that will bring its knowledge far beyond the limits of our project sites.

BFI Summary Assessment

Ecosistema Urbano is an architectural firm located in Madrid, Spain led by Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo. The core of their proposal centers on contributing to an emergent practice of urbanism that responds more fluidly to the nature of contemporary urban problems. “Creative Urban Sustainability” is the theoretical framework that scaffolds their endeavors, which include built prototypes, an online platform for citizens to engage with their cities and Web 2.0 tools for design practitioners to engage with each other. The idea is simple: combine innovation, creativity and action to generate urban solutions.

Three projects they recently launched highlight their approach. The first is the Plaza Ecopolis pilot, a demonstration site focused on water issues and on transforming local cultural norms. It features a macrophyte water treatment system integrated into a complex of buildings (including a kindergarten) built around a plaza. The second is the What If Cities web platform that asks citizens to imagine what their cities could do and be. Anyone can download it as open-source software and modify it for his/her town/city. It is currently being used in France, Germany, Spain and Italy. The third is a blog and TV station they launched as a solution generator and mode of exchange for fellow design practitioners.

Building a new relationship between the physical and the digital space is important to their practice. They want to overlap these territories to create new ways of informing urban design and city life that point us toward a sustainable world. Electronic social networks are helping open up many new possibilities, as we are seeing in the remarkable youthful political vitality emerging in the Middle East and beyond.

The explorations of Ecosistema Urbano could help accelerate innovation through a radically enhanced democratic participation in urban life and through ramped-up cross-disciplinary collaborations. Their TV station could be used as a kind of culture-jamming vehicle to get large amounts of people to think differently about issues such as water scarcity or energy use. It is too early to tell, but it appears that they are on the cusp of pulling together these different tools, along with some more traditional ones, to advance a genuinely new urbanism. All of these tools were applied in various forms for the Ecopolis pilot but in general the system of tools has not coalesced entirely yet.

Whether their vision and their use of these technologies and processes will be enough to ignite the necessary enthusiasm and participation of whole communities is an open question. Their strategy is a bit hard to map because they seem to be relying heavily on their intuition to drive their next steps. They are straddling the intuitive world of artists with the discipline of architecture. This can be a tough sell to the world of urban planning and policy development, in which a very linear unpacking of strategic approaches is the norm. However, there is no doubt Ecosistema Urbano has great potential to inspire and engage architects to become far more active agents of change, helping design a new sustainable city.

PEOPLE: Ecosistema Urbano

[ecosistema urbano] is an innovative agency focused on the understanding of the city as a complex phenomenon, from a special point of view between architecture, urbanism, engineering and sociology. The team’s field of interest is defined by something they call ‘creative urban sustainability’, from where to react to the present situation of cities through innovation, creativity and particularly action. Its principal members have been educated by different European universities (Madrid, London, Brussels, Rome, Paris) and come from diverse urban environments. They have been engaged in teaching as visiting professors and were giving workshops and lectures at the most prestigious institutions worldwide (Harvard, Yale, UCLA, Cornell, Iberoamericana, RIBA, Copenhagen, Munich, Paris, Milan, Shanghai ...) while situating urban action and intervention at the most local settings of cities in Europe, the Americas and Asia. Since 2000, their work has been nationally and internationally awarded in more than 30 occasions. Since 2007 the team is involved in research projects on the future paths of urban design called “eco-technological cities”, financed by the Spanish Ministry of Industry. In parallel, they have created a communication platform through new communication technologies that develop social networks and manage online channels around the subject of creative urban sustainability (www.ecosistemaurbano.org).

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