RIVERINE CITY

The riverside has a unique and very powerful nature that needs to be understood from different perspectives in order to give a careful response to the previsions of its future development. It is also an area of historic relevance. Citizens from Quilmes have a good consideration of the riverside although they are aware of its current bad condition.

In order to address the needs of this part of the city and understand the ecosystem of the riverside, a full strategy for flood management is devised. Currently there is no protection against floods in this part of the city, the entire neighborhood of la Ribera is periodically flooded. The protection of the existing neighborhood of la Ribera and the consolidation of the highway itself as a protection against sudestada composes a first phase in the hydraulic protections that would help prevent floods in all the current urbanized zones. These protections go together with a rain drainage system that consists on the creation of new interceptors of rainwater, the new river and the channel parallel to the highway. The interceptors are variable in its capacity and naturally drain the water from all the city into La Plata River. In the case of sudestada and heavy rainfall at the same time, the interceptors would take water into three main reservoirs, where, once reached full capacity it is pumped into the river.

On a second phase, as private developments take place in the floodplain, a system of vegetated berms colonizes the riverside in order to protect the new urbanized areas, following a ‘pier’ logic that has been used historically for the development of the area along Otamendi and Iriarte streets. These berms would be terraced in order to reduce its visual impact, reaching a maximum height of 1.75m from the level of the floodplain. The berms are new roads that help structure the landscape and are most of the times accompanied by drainage channels converted into green corridors and integrated in the new system of parks. The new buildings would seat on top of these high grounds for enabling safe access.

WATER CITY + PARK CITY = ECOLOGICAL CITY