Studio Critic: Derek Hoeferlin
Site: Mekong River Basin
Spring 2016
Dams don’t have to be merely the dams through which water passes to generate electricity, or the reservoirs in which water gets held for months at a time. They can become symbiotic mixed-use projects that provides economic, social, and environmental benefits for the local and global community.
The Mekong Turntable presents an alternative future where infrastructure and territorial resources are shared equitably and harmoniously amongst the community, the economy, and the ecology. It’s a destination and passage where all stakeholders of the process (including fishes, dolphins, and sediment) should enjoy and thrive.
As one of the largest and most biodiverse river basins in the world, the Mekong River is currently experiencing unprecedented economic and population growth. With economic growth comes the need of energy, and a few dozens of major dams (include a few that are twice the capacity of Hoover Dam, as comparison) are bound to be built in the next 10-20 years across the river basin. Consequently, these impermeable walls will effectively slice the running river into segments – changing the Mekong from a running river to a series of stationary lakes, blocking the flow sediments while altering conditions of oxygen and temperature. More importantly, these dams will completely block the very riverway in which billions of fishes rely on to migrate upstream and downstream annually.
With the major economic incentive of generating and trading energy, the case is often that more developing economies – such as Laos and Cambodia – tend to be more drawn to building dams, while the energy generated is being sold upstream and downstream to more developed economies such as China, Vietnam, and Thailand. Countries such as Cambodia – home the Tonle Sap Lake, where most of the Mekong fishes hatch during the monsoon season – will suffer from dam construction as fishing is a vital part of the nation’s economy and a main source of income for many living in the region.
Following a speculative research process through the social, economical, and ecological conditions of the river basin – assuming that dam construction will unfold within the next decade – the Mekong Turntable network responds to the situation through a series of operable gates and nodes that allow economic, ecological, and social prosperity to co-exist, letting the river to be shared between the needs of the people, the economy, and the environment.
Inspired by precedents such as the railway turntable and revolving doors, these “turntable dams” will serve as grafted additions and exchange points to the existing dam typology, mediating and allowing passage for elements including temperature, oxygen, fishes, and sediment, in addition to a set of social programs that siphon off of these ecological elements – such as a sauna spa that takes the excess heat through the power generators. The vision is to establish a network of these grafted attachments along the river with a focus on the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB), where it is most biologically and socially diverse and dense, with an abundance of fish communities as well as river-based settlements.
The prototypical site for intervention will be at the currently proposed 18km (approx. 11 mi, 60,000 ft)-long Sambor Dam – a run-of-the-river dam that has caused much controversy since its debut. It is the last and largest of the series of proposed dams in the lower basin before reaching the delta. The prototype consists of a combination of turning gate mechanisms that each operate according to its own needs’ frequency, working synergistically to address the consequences of dam constructions.
Conceptually, the sharing operates on three fronts. First is the sharing of the entire river as a territorial resource – including both its benefits and consequences. This is followed by the sharing of the dam as an infrastructure, both its physical presence and ecological implications. Eventually, the third layer comes down to the sharing of the infrastructure’s byproducts – whether its blockage of fish migration or dislocation of communities – which leads to the programmatic hybridity of each aspect of the program. By coupling the functional operation with the social and ecological programs, the infrastructure becomes a spectacle that is celebrated by the community with a multitude of possibilities and scenarios:
FISH ZONE
– an underwater river aquarium that observes fish migrations
– a floating fish market that acknowledges fishing as a central element to local economy
TEMPERATURE ZONE
– a sauna and hot tub that takes advantage of the excess heat from dam turbines
OXYGEN ZONE
– an oxygen and detox therapy that operates along the oxygen pump and oxygenating plants
SEDIMENT ZONE
– a sandscape that takes advantage of the dredge blocked by dams
CEREMONIAL ZONE
– a celestial plaza that celebrates cultural traditions such as monsoon festivals
With the introduction of these hybridity and programmatic overlap, the turntable mechanism introduces a “third type” of territory that operates between the built and the natural. It’s a dialogue created between the river and the infrastructure, along with the people and the ecology, near and far. A river – as it always has been – should be shared amongst each and every entity it nourishes.
George H. Zhang 