Bartlett Environmental Design Prize 2019: 'Lost Landscapes' by Andrew Chard

The winner of Bartlett Environmental Design Prize 2019 is 'Lost Landscapes': Andrew Chard. 

In his 5th-year design project, AndrewChard demonstrates how a series of passive dams can save the endangered hydrological systems throughout the Alps.

By the end of the century the majority of Switzerland's glaciers are expected to melt, with their disappearance causing lasting damage to hydrological systems throughout the Alps. Switzerland’s glacial melt water sustains many of Europe's largest rivers during the drier summer months, without them future artificial systems will be needed to maintain this delayed release of water when the glaciers have melted. Lost Landscapes creates a potential framework for glaciated regions throughout Switzerland by designing a new hydrological system for the Rhône valley. With the Rhône glacier being the true source of the Rhône river connecting Switzerland and France, its retreat will have a particularly large impact on the future summer shortfall of water, affecting transport and farming industries.

By intermittently constructing a series of passive dams, the project aims to maintain the existing ecology as the glacier retreats up the valley over the next 100 years, providing a delayed release of water. The implementation of these dams will be sustained alongside the steady growth of Alpine farming communities, expanding into new areas of pasture that will become available due to global warming. These new communities will help to seasonally construct the dams within their alpine transhumance cycles, creating a symbiotic relationship between the dams and the communities that surround them.

The pastures and housing deployed throughout the valley with be supported by a new network of irrigation channels, creating a water resilient farming community, immune to the increasing regular droughts affecting much of Europe. These elements will be quarried into the granite landscapes themselves, once carved by the now retreating glacier, allowing the valley to be reconfigured not only to maintain the hydrological systems of the valley but also to allow people to explore, understand and live within it.