2011 Traveling Fellowship for Architecture, Design, and Urban Design
Designed for Water: Infrastructures Taming the Water and Producing Energy

Masoud Akbarzadeh’s research is based on a cultural and technical moment of infrastructure transition that is taking place globally as water becomes increasingly more valuable. Modern hydropower megaprojects have caused widespread social, cultural, and environmental damage. Akbarzadeh’s research explores new relationships between traditional water-based infrastructure and emergent urban forms along river way sites in Brazil, Iceland, Iran, Italy, and Switzerland. His work focuses on the creation of multiple smaller-scale hydropower stations, which support local environments and populations through the design of new forms of urbanism and energy extraction in a living river system.

Masoud Akbarzadeh
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Architecture

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Jury
Gary Haney (Chair)
Mary Margaret Jones
Frank Lupo
Thomas Phifer

Architecture today merges with technology and sustainable design. If the hydropower plants can be integrated into the building units, the future of urban design and architecture will not be separated from energy production. Perhaps, the plan of the future cities will be based on the idea of energy production units. In other words, each unit in the urban block will turn into a little energy production engine that will not only provide energy for its own use, but it can also support the surrounding units. Therefore, the role of architects and designers in integrating such units into the body of cities and building structures will become more critical.
Masoud Akbarzadeh

Hydropower is one of the cleanest and most efficient ways of generating energy on earth. However, harnessing the energy of water usually involves blocking the water streams in natural environments, which causes a number of undesirable social and environmental impacts. People relocation, land inundation, and deforestation are only some of the destructive impacts of such interventions in nature.

Decommissioning large-scale dams around the world affirms the recent global moves toward reducing the impacts of such infrastructures. However, the need for the production of clean energy motivates engineers to look for less destructive approaches to harness the water energy such as micro hydropower technologies, designing more efficient turbines, and combining various renewable resources.

Aside from being a valuable source of energy, water constitutes a deciding factor for almost every settlement on Earth. It affects the morphology of urban spaces and the social, economic, and recreational life of their habitats. Water strongly affects the geometric formation of the cities as well as the aesthetic quality of the urban spaces. [1]

Recent developments in the field of sustainable design are leading to energy independent buildings in the urban environment.

Since hydropower is one of the cleanest sources of renewable energies, harnessing water energy for the use of individual buildings, similar to harnessing solar and wind power, might be possible in the very near future. Perhaps, the formation of the future communities and cities will highly depend on the integration of water infrastructures with the fabric of the cities.

Designing sustainable cities that harness water energy as well as other sources of renewable energy requires close collaboration among engineers, architects, and planners. Only then can hydropower technology be combined with careful and creative design solutions for the use of individual buildings.

The lack of integration between architectural design and hydraulic engineering, together with the idea of incorporating hydropower facilities into the infrastructure of the future cities, motivated me to visit various hydraulic facilities around the world. The present report is the result of these visits and provides a very brief introduction to the hydropower technologies and infrastructural design of such facilities, hopefully inspiring architects, engineers, and students to learn from or criticize the existing structures and to participate more in the future in the design process of such infrastructural elements.

Most hydropower facilities around the world consist of similar elements: a reservoir that stores the water for power generation and a power house, which is the house for the turbine that converts the mechanical energy of water into electricity to be sent to the grid. In this regard, finding and visiting hydropower facilities that perform differently from the common and conventional facilities, or are designed uniquely compared to the other stations, were among the main goals of this report.

Hydropower facilities are one of the most prominent manmade interventions that involve some irreversible environmental impacts. However, the integration of these mammoth structures with their surrounding environments was, from a design point of view, the driving force behind visiting some of these facilities in this report.

Visiting existing models that incorporate hydropower facilities into the fabric of the city can provide insight for designers and planners to use these ideas for the design of future cities.

Notes

[1] Jasenka Čakarić, “Water Phenomenon – Urban Morphology Transformation,” Architecture and Civil Engineering 8, no 4. (2010): 375–88.

East-west view of Band e Mizan and its multiple water intakes. © Masoud Akbarzadeh.

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Water intakes for the water mill units. © Masoud Akbarzadeh.

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Construction site for the foundation units of the MOSE barriers. Courtesy of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport - Venice Water Authority - Consorzio Venezia Nuova.

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The housing structures under construction in Malamocco. © Masoud Akbarzadeh.

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Transporting the prefabricated gates to the corresponding housing structure in Lido inlet. Courtesy of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport - Venice Water Authority - Consorzio Venezia Nuova.

Top-down view of the spillway, Vatnsfell dam, Iceland. © Masoud Akbarzadeh.

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180-meter access tunnel to the cavern of central Ferrera power station. © Masoud Akbarzadeh.

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Brazil

Rio de Janeiro

Iceland

Vatnsfellsvirkjun
Hrauneyjafossvirkjun
Sultartangavirkjun
Búrfell
Reykjavík

Iran, Italy, and Switzerland

Shushtar
Venice
Verona
Schöftland
Grisons
Chur
Bärenburg
Thurfeld
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Masoud Akbarzadeh
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Architecture

Masoud Akbarzadeh

received his MArch degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prior to entering graduate school at MIT, Akbarzadeh pursued an honors program in Civil Engineering at Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST), from which he received his Master of Science in Earthquake Engineering and Dynamics of Structures degree in 2007. In September 2011 through June 2012, Akbarzadeh will continue his studies at MIT, with the intent to earn a Master of Science in Architectural Design degree in Computation and study the computational and design aspects of hydropower cities. His professional plans include teaching and establishing a professional practice that focuses on the design issues of transformative large-scale infrastructure.