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Toronto firm revives Saudi oasis |
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Natural stone weirs were built to introduce oxygen into the water of the Wadi Hanifah as it passes over and through them, thereby helping to reduce the amount of pollution. JOHN GODDARD
Published On Thu Nov 25 2010 A Toronto architectural firm has completed an unprecedented urban renewal project in the Middle East, with far-reaching implications for the world's cities. Moriyama & Teshima Planners converted what was essentially a giant open sewer through Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia, into a water-purification system and recreational wetlands. The project "eloquently demonstrates an alternative ecological way of urban development," one international jury member said in presenting the firm with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture at a ceremony in the Arabian emirate of Qatar this week. "We really have pulled something off," company vice-president Drew Wensley said Thursday by phone from Kuwait. "We've been invited (twice) to present the project at the United Nations," he said of company president George Stockton and himself. "The UN really sees urban centres now as points of attention because they all have the same problems in terms of crowding, water quality and the environment. . . . "We're really in the process now of finding how we can effectively change our cities using this environmental infrastructure." Moriyama & Teshima Planners made a name for itself among the Saudis in the late 1990s by designing their national museum in Riyadh. At the time, the local development authority was pondering the main impediments to the city's growth. "The biggest threat to human health and your ability to expand is (the environmental degradation of) the Wadi Hanifa," Wensley and others advised. A wadi, in Arabic, is a riverbed, usually associated with underground aquifers and often flowing with water part of the year. The Wadi Hanifa is Riyadh's original lifeblood. It is a 120-kilometre-long oasis that nurtured the first Saudi kingdom and served as a camel train destination. Over the decades, however, the wadi deteriorated into a dangerous dumping ground and sewage canal - "a scar on the face of the capital," one judge of the award put it. Wensley, Stockton and others at the Toronto firm, including Jason Moriyama, a son of one of the founding partners, developed a master renewal plan in 2001. The plan itself won an award in Washington, D.C. Then the physical work began, beginning with removal of 1 million cubic metres of waste - "The easy part," Wensley said. Working with engineering firm Buro Happold UK, the Toronto team has since converted the wadi's entire length into a natural water-purification system, flood-control mechanism and network of recreational parklands. Although not drinkable, the water is recycled for agricultural and industrial use, saving millions of dollars in ocean desalination treatment. "There's a lot of science behind it," Wensley said with understatement. "We did this on a massive scale that has really never been done before.The point we want to share with the world is that these are low-tech solutions that have great returns. We can do this on any scale around the world." In Toronto, Moriyama & Teshima is redeveloping the Havergal College campus for girls and building the Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Centre, due to open next year on Wynford Dr. The architecture award, sponsored by the Aga Khan, is adjudicated by an international jury of peers. Wadi Hanifah facts:
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