COMPETITION / Connecting with Clean Water

Masters students Salim and Amirhesam won the CISC Architectural Student Design Competition with their design for a water harvesting tower.

Salim El Filali & Amirhesam Monshi’s “Connecting with Clean Water”

Canadian Institute of Steel Construction Architectural Student Design Competition, Award of Excellence

On the banks of the Omo River in Ethiopia, close to the Kenyan border, many tribes are facing a major water crisis that threatens their everyday lives. Climate change and the construction of a major dam (Gibe III) have caused many drought problems in the river which, in addition to these problems, is contaminated by human waste. Everyday, women and children have to walk several kilometers to find or dig a water hole to fetch water for their families. This crisis is the source of many conflict between rivaling tribes, with men fighting for points of access to clean water point. The region is in need of bridges to connect one side of the Omo River to the other, which could potentially activate the village economy as well as facilitate the flow of humans and herds.

The Warka’s traditional water harvesting system is a structure of a special fabric that liquefies water vapour or humidity, and is subsequently collected. Because of its gaseous state, the collected water is completely clean and therefore safely drinkable. Inspired by the Warka technic, our strategy was to create a central diagrid tower that will not only hold the bridge through a tension cable system, but will harvest water and integrate a program of five storeys for farming and collecting the water stored in the water tanks. The diagrid steel structure system is a perfect fit for supporting the water harvesting fabric because of its framing system, where the steel members bear a water piping network that collects the water coming from the fabrics on the diamonds voids. Moreover, we incorporated south-facing photovoltaic panels to collect energy for lighting and operating water pumps.

Our proposal is to build a bridge with a tower that can harvest water—a tower that can connect people, a tower that can provide fresh food, a tower that can create energy, a tower of life, a tower that will connect both sides of the threatened river while connecting people with clean water.