As part of the Antropocene at Zodiak Warsaw Pavilion of Architecture exhibition, curated by Kacper Kępiński and Adrian Krężlik, we had the opportunity to collaborate on the project – installation the Water by Miastopracownia.
The project involves changing the geometry of the terrain of Krakowskie Błonia and the Rudawa River, in a way that allows the creation of a floodplain in order to restore the biodiversity of the area and return it to nature.
Our task was to prepare a digital model in a way that ensures the proper course of water during flooding and to perform a large-scale fluid simulation. The final simulation consisted of up to 210,000 particles, with calculations taking 16 hours.
Author’s project description, Miastopracownia:
Unsealing the embankments of the Rudawa river and releasing water from this tributary of Vistula towards Kraków’s Błonia meadow might deprive the human inhabitants of the city from the green common – but perhaps might also restore it: to wild geese, swans, weatherfish, moderlieschen, common bleak, and creek minnows.
Poland’s rivers that had been reduced to the role of sewage canals, regulated and deprived of life, cannot be patched up and healed pointwise. We need coordinated measures along the entire length of the watercourse, with deep restoration, removal of barrages, and crushing of concrete.
The section of the riverbed here presented is therefore only a small part of the proposed activities. The whole unfulfilled dream of inland navigation and the waterway of the upper Vistula should be done away with. And it should be replaced: with mallard ducks, gulls, black storks, and herons. And with the little freshwater jellyfish of Craspedacusta sowerbii species.
Water milfoil, pondweed, coontails, nuphars and water lilies form excellent breeding grounds for pike, bream, roach, and rudd. So let us give up the meadow and allow them to spawn!