The call for ideas focused on the restoration of the River Andalién in the Bío Bío region in Chile, as a “mediator in the formation of a harmonious and dynamic balance between cities and nature.”

The proposals required strategic interventions at three scales, firstly at the river basin scale, secondly at the city-landscape interface scale and finally at a detailed architectural scale.

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The landscape of the Andalién River Basin presents itself to a contemporary viewer as having been fundamentally altered by anthropogenic change. This accelerated degradation combined with challenging climatic factors and socio-ecological conditions has led to issues manifesting

themselves throughout the basin: erosion, flooding, drought, forest fires, pollution, poverty and loss of biodiversity.

Currently, 72% of the basin area is used for plantation industries (pine and eucalyptus). Half of this area was burned during the forest fires that swept across Chile in 2017 leading to severe land erosion issues which aggravate flooding. The basin scale strategy identified five separate landscape problematics and respective slope stabilising solutions for each scenario.

The scale of the hydrological, urban and arboreal issues facing Conception allows us to go further than just treating technical problems but also gives us the opportunity to re-compose a landscape, creating new spaces, connections and relationships. The primary objective for this scale of intervention is to transform the relationship the city has with water. Due to the hydrological work done on the basin scale, the flood risk for Conception is dramatically reduced, allowing for a resilient floodable park that borders the city.

By creating this large continuous park system, three previously divided zones of conception are linked. The Andalien river is given space to overflow, bend and meander forging a diverse undulating landscape running.

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The construction of 2000 new homes by 2033 as part of the expansion of Conception is the occasion to re-think the relationship between the city and the river.

The expansion anchors itself in its wider urban context by borrowing from the city’s existing grid layout and by similarly aligning itself with the river. This grid is however re-interpreted and abstracted by its superposition with the primary geometry, the re-enforced natural meander of the Andalien. This superposition creates pockets of wetland, bordered by agricultural plots and sports fields which are floodable in severe conditions, in turn protecting the city. This threetier system allows the river a freedom to flood whilst also ensuring inhabitants a safe liveable environment, one which is in harmony with water.