Project description by jury

Jakarta’s communities who live along the river have never been equipped with proper sanitation facilities, entailing a series of impacts on both the ecosystem and people’s health. The design proposed by this project reconciles the ecosystem of the river with the local community through an affordable, culturally aware and environmentally attentive solution. The idea is to revitalize existing vernacular structures, embedding sanitary features with an optimized plant-based filtration system. Floating platforms made of bamboo and wood are placed along the waterway in a diverse array of functions: a roofed space hosts a toilet and a washing area for the residents, water is provided through rainwater tanks, a coral allows for catfish breeding while several containers are used for hyacinth cultivation, essential to filter lead, mercury, strontium and other carcinogenic compounds found in the river. A deck that connects the edge of the river to the platform acts as a trash collector. A major asset of the project is to propose an easily replicable system so that environmental benefits can grow incrementally until the benefit at the scale of a city or territory becomes tangible.

Jury appraisal

The LafargeHolcim Awards jury Asia Pacific acknowledged the project’s endeavor to highlight the urgency in finding solutions for the urban poor in South East Asia. The project was found simple yet effective and well-contextualized. The proposed solution upgrades a vernacular typology to make it more functional and environmentally sound: a modest gesture that once implemented and multiplied across a larger scale can provide a remarkable impact on the environment and on people’s quality of life.

Wellness: in between top-down and bottom-up approach

The government considers the river as a risk and therefore opts to close the river with high walls or prefer to move all the settlements that are adjacent to the river. But this solution is unsuccessful since it’s never easy to move all the housing away from the rivers and it will be ineffective if the rivers remain polluted and choked with rubbish. On the other hand, the residents along the riverbank adapt to these conditions. What is really surprising is while people who live far from the river tend to see the river as a dirty place and threat of flooding, people living near it tend to see the rivers as a habitat for living. The re-adaption is the pilot project to reconnect community, culture, and nature.

Due to the high quality of the entries in the competition region of Asia Pacific, the jury selected not four but five projects to receive Next Generation prizes. The winning projects from India, Thailand, and Indonesia all share a strong focus on social sustainability.