Soil Resistance, The Invisible Landscape

Abstract

Urban planning must help mitigate the effects of climate change, moderate the global rise in temperature and control the misuse of energy and hydrological resources. This research is based on a case study of the daylighting project on the river Kjørbekk in the Municipality of Skien in Norway. The project substitutes the actual storm water management in old pipes, to a visible nature-based solution (NBS), corresponding to a landscape infrastructure capable of retaining, infiltrating and transporting water and generating a new landscape of urban and territorial cohesion.

The human-made underground is a challenge for urban projects that have traditionally focused on the physical definition and legislation of what is visible, paying less attention to the invisible underground. The project reveals inherent underground constraints such as old landfills, polluted industrial ground, existing fresh and sewage water systems, fiber cables, electricity, etc. This has been necessary to map as a `contemporary archaeology´ in order to enable the design of the new waterways as well as the areas of retention and infiltration. The transformation of the old infrastructure into a new storm water management project corresponds to a system change that has demanded a design of a process over time, including both private and public actors. The urban project is under a paradigm shift which includes uncertainty and where the dynamic and the management of risk becomes a part of the project.