Stormwater: Designing for Flood Management in Public Open Spaces examines twenty-six European parks, squares and streets built as amphibious landscapes — sites that expect water, absorb it, and are designed around its arrival rather than against it.
About This Book
Urban ground has a limited capacity to absorb water, and extreme weather is testing that limit everywhere. Stormwater — rain that cannot soak away and instead runs off streets and roofs — has become the agent that exposes the underlying fragility of built fabric. Bianca Maria Rinaldi, Manuela Ronci and Emma Salizzoni respond with a systematic atlas rather than a warning: twenty-six European best-practice case studies, organised across four categories of urban parks, neighbourhood parks, squares and streets, each presented with photographs, project description, and drawings prepared specifically for this book. The premise throughout is that water can be treated as a design medium — that landscapes can adjust dynamically between drought and sudden abundance, and that flood management and public space are the same problem.
Key Features
- Twenty-six European case studies across four categories: urban parks, neighbourhood parks, squares and streets
- Written by Bianca Maria Rinaldi, Manuela Ronci and Emma Salizzoni of Politecnico di Torino
- Drawings prepared specifically for this publication, alongside photographs and project descriptions
- Projects by Agence Ter, Bureau Bas Smets, Michel Desvigne Paysagiste and Henning Larsen, among others
- 180 colour illustrations
What You'll Discover
- How amphibious landscapes are designed to hold a sudden abundance of water and then read convincingly through months of its absence
- Comparative design strategies drawn across four distinct categories of public open space, rather than treated project by project
- Where flood management shifts from engineering infrastructure to landscape architecture — and what changes in the drawings when it does
- The specific technical and spatial moves used by practices including Agence Ter and Bureau Bas Smets to absorb stormwater in dense urban settings
About the Author
Bianca Maria Rinaldi is Professor of Landscape Architecture at Politecnico di Torino. Manuela Ronci is a researcher at Politecnico di Torino. Emma Salizzoni is Professor of Landscape Architecture at Politecnico di Torino.
Specifications
- Dimensions: 21.0 × 28.0 cm
- Pages: 296
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783035628999
- Publisher: Birkhäuser
Perfect For: Landscape architects and urban designers working on climate adaptation, councils and practices briefing water-sensitive public space, and students looking for built precedent rather than principle.