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we are right in the middle of downtown
Seattle just a few blocks away from the
start of the Puget Sound and the streets
are super steep
there's tall buildings and there's
almost nowhere to harvest and infiltrate
rainwater yet here we are just up from a
huge water body that connects at the
ocean so in this hyper dense and very
developed and kind of schmancy place
here we can see this artistic and
interesting example of water harvesting
we have the beckoning cistern the
cistern which is off-kilter beckoning in
the rainwater through the downspout
entering into the fingers so the water
is coming into the cistern which is not
a storage cistern for irrigation it's
basically a surge tank slowing the water
so in a big downpour instead of the
water just racing down these streets
directly in the Puget Sound it's coming
into the cistern and then as you can see
soaking into this area and then
overflowing through these small ponds
this nice little forested area each one
collecting and infiltrating the water
down now from here the water then comes
down and flows onto this very steep
street and we'll see what's down below
in this system we also have this dynamic
sculptural downspout that has these
multi prongs and these plants so the
water is actually being slowed during
its Traverse down the side of the
building before it even hits the
drainage into the street here so this is
just a really cool and I would call it
whims
actually it's a very whimsical example
of how a hyper dense urban area can
infiltrate and slow the flow of water to
clean it and soak it into the ground and
support vegetation support a
microclimate on its way into the Puget
Sound below so this is sculptural this
is fun this is whimsy however imagine
that systems like this in very highly
developed urban areas like this were
replicated throughout the city I mean
take this small patch and take the small
footprint of this building here and the
amount of area that's being harvested to
the system and multiply that on every
street and every building and suddenly
we have widespread impacts both on the
natural environment of the vegetation
that can benefit from this and also the
hydrology the subsurface water table
that can be built up by water that is
soaked into the ground instead of
quickly shunted downhill as fast as
possible so here we are at the second
stage of the system we're just a block
down from the beckoning cistern up on
the other side of the street there and
you can see here they've created this
little artificial creek bed running down
between the road and this building here
each little Terrace has a baffle where
the water will overflow once the next
with these large river rocks you can see
how the water comes off the roof through
this artistic downspout and then is
channeled into this artificial stepped
terraced creek bed so stage 2 let's take
a look now at stage 3 and here we are at
the bottom of the third block of this
water harvesting system here we have
these wide terraces filled with wild
rose here in the series of steps
stepping the water cascading down
soaking one Terrace to the next
pouring down when it's raining through
these artistic downspouts and making
somewhat of a show and a display of the
water and then just one more block down
we've got the Puget Sound so for three
blocks we're taking the water from the
roadways or taking the water from the
adjacent buildings and we're soaking it
in to these planted areas slowing it
down and these vegetated water
harvesting structures and actually
benefiting the ecology benefiting the
hydrology and ultimately benefiting the
water quality in the Puget Sound a
really great example of how you
integrate water harvesting in the hyper
dense urban area high-traffic pedestrian
flows and use a lot of artfulness
creativity whimsy and functionality and
process
you
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