Designed by Matsys Designs, Sietch Nevada is a response to the idea of a water-poor world becoming a reality, especially in the American Southwest. With so much of the press focused on wars over oil, the world is often unaware of the slowly depleting water sources, which are indeed exponentially more valuable than oil. This futuristic urban prototype addresses the water situation as a complex underground network of tunnels and canals offers protection and the “storage, use, and collection of water essential to the form and performance of urban life.”
The scheme makes the existing underground water banks in the area become more than just back up tanks for droughts. In fact, the Sietch Nevada turns these water banks into the building blocks of their new city idea. A dense underground community forms around canals which connect the city with vast aquifers, provide transportation, and agricultural irrigation. The cellular form of these caverns “constitute a new neighborhood typology that mediates between the subterranean urban network and the surface level activities of water harvesting, energy generation, and urban agriculture and aquaculture.”
Some may quickly dismiss the current water situation, yet water will inevitably be the next thing countries will wage wars over. And, as water is necessary for us to survive as a species, we must address the issue and find potential solutions before the problem becomes a major crisis.
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