Blue Carbon City (2022)
Image by Blue Carbon City design team.
BLUE CARBON CITY – RESILIENT MARINE COMMUNITIES
Landscape design concept for Labrador Park, Singapore
Team members:
Asuka Fujii, Bader Al Shawaf, Maoko Yoshino, Mónica Seppänen, Souichiro Takabatake
Coastal cities are the most vulnerable towards the threat of rising sea levels and flooding. In response to the risks presented by climate change, we propose a dynamic design that adapts to these unpredictable conditions by working with nature rather than controlling it. The Blue Carbon City -landscape design plan introduces a blue carbon ecosystem of seaweed, microalgae, seagrass, corals and mangroves as "nutrients" for urban resilience.
Blue Carbon, named by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2009, refers to "carbon captured in marine ecosystems such as seaweed beds and shallow waters. The Blue Carbon City design proposes integrated coastal management that recognizes the importance and economic rationale of using natural ecosystems like mangroves to protect coastal communities. In some cases, restoration of coastal habitats and ecosystems can be a cost-effective way to address challenges such as sea-level rise, intensified storms, coastal inundation, and salinity. This is why the role of blue carbon as a new CO2 sink for climate change mitigation is highly anticipated.
The Blue Carbon City designs key adaptation strategy is ecosystem-based adaptation. The riverside ecotone is restored and it is planted full of mangroves to regenerate the once lush mangrove sites of Singapore. Healthy wetland and river area help groundwater to get absorbed in the surrounding landscape like a sponge, which then filters through layers of soil and gravel to offer drinking water as well as becoming a reserve for dry seasons.
The 300-meter rocky beach and the surrounding Labrador Park were declared a nature reserve in 2002. We will incorporate some seaweed and seagrass to form an ecotone in this nature conservation space and contribute to a new park within it. Therefore, the management and placement of coral reefs will be carried out at the same time to improve and enhance their habitats due to their significant ecological value.
We want to establish a planting plan to help promote the growth/protection of ecosystems, focusing on species that are in danger of disappearing biologically. Next, for the economic aspect, we aim to utilize species that can be expected to provide a variety of ecosystem services in our design, including but not limited to, edibility, medicinal and craft use. As for the coral reefs, they will maintain and improve the clean water quality environment through symbiosis with newly placed seaweed and seagrasses, each of which will form a mechanism to assist in the supply of nutrients.
One of the most important mitigation strategies in the Blue Carbon City is the wetland and riverside mitigation. Taking advantage of this, the Blue Carbon City -design looks to reinstate Singapore’s mangrove forests by setting two main sites for the mangrove regeneration.
The riverside ecotone offers an accessible and ecologically constructed tetrapod boardwalk that connects the wetland and mangrove areas together and allow people to interact with the environment without bothering the ecotone inhabitants, and provide marine life with places to grow. Cycling highway boardwalks are built to connect the Blue Carbon City to the larger Singapore city area for an easy access transport option.
Finally, the concrete base can be made from coral aggregate made from coral reef carcasses, which can then be used as a concrete material to achieve a sustainable cycle.
The residence communities have vibrant permaculture gardens around the housing areas. This mitigates the need to produce food through highly industrialized means and lessens the amount of chemicals used in the soil. The gardens are co-maintained by the Blue Carbon City -community and they help to connect humans to the cycles of soil, water, nutrients and microbes like the algae in the architecture. A strong bodily connection to the cycles of life work as a feedback connecting human actions to the positive consequences in the immediate environment.
The communal living structure of the Blue Carbon City is built to invite its residents to make it their own together with the larger community of inhabitants, visitors and workers. The area hosts a hub of Blue Carbon -culture combining knowledge across disciplines, time zones and species. New ways of living, creating, researching and conserving are continuously developed as the numerous human–non-human ecotopes of the area provide inspiration, material and embodied knowledge experiences in the wetlands, rivers and coastal sea. The Blue Carbon City changes through time as the environment around it changes. It is adaptive and resilient as it has been designed to change and flow freely as the rivers that runs through it.
The design concept was created as a part of a course in Kyushu University for the City of Singapore.