Inside

Jo Basset – Graduation Project 1718

Community: An outcome of human necessity

Infrastructures in cities have long played a major role in serving physical needs to communities across centuries. Places like fountains, roman baths, and communal ovens developed out of basic human needs [drinking, washing, bathing, cooking] and transformed into social spaces. There, people gathered everyday, not only for their daily routines and physical needs, but also to interact. My research investigates these daily interactions and gatherings around infrastructures that seem to have disappeared nowadays in public space.

My design is based upon an existing rainwater basin at the former Tempelhof Airport, Berlin. The rainwater stored inside the basin is toxic due to the fact that it runs off from the airport building, roads, cars, etc.  Stormwater runoff is a global phenomenon where rainwater is polluted once it falls and touches our toxic city fabrics. The water in this basin is not treated, and is released into the ocean with all the harmful pollutants.

What if a community decides to become self-sufficient by turning this infrastructure into a communal resource? Instead of only creating a passive infrastructure, my proposal involves people to actively take part of the purification process of the water. The 4 stages of filtration also result in 4 social spaces where people not only drink, wash, grow food, and cook, but also meet and socialize in the process. Finally the excess of water is returned back to the ocean in a sustainable form. I have chosen one of the 4 social spaces, the bath house, to design and visualize as a culmination point of both the water and the community to meet.

By creating a sustainable practice that culminates into a new lifestyle in urban development, the water of the pool is adapted, celebrated, and valued by the community in various spaces where it transforms routines and rituals into communal and interactive ones.

All images @INSIDE & Jo Basset

Find all images in the Graduation part of INSIDE Magazine 1718 and on the KABK website.