Catherine Callaghan
ARCH-4980.4 | Ted Ngai, Lecturer
JAKARTA
[Network of Water][Flow of People]
CAT CALLAGHAN
Jakarta, the capital city of the island nation of Indonesia, has traditionally had a strong relationship to water. In the past sixty years, rapid population growth has degraded the rivers systems which have become highly polluted with household and industrial waste. This problem has been largely ignored by both the government and the general population, leading to an even greater taxation on this invaluable natural resource with devastating social and economic expense.
In order to address this problem, a strategy has been devised to reverse the attitudes and actions that people take towards their waterways, while raising general awareness of the issue.
A self-propelled sensor network explores the city’s rivers, alerting the populace and directing floating bio-remediation units to locations where action is required. By forcing an acknowledgement of the effect that individuals and neighborhoods have on water quality, the networked system seeks to reverse the repellent nature that water currently has on people, while revealing the impact that architectural landscaping can have on the perception of and reaction to reality.