Sponge Community

Estimated read time: 15 mins
Dec. 2021–Mar. 2022 Group Project

Project Overview

Sponge Community is a smart water community system that combines sustainable architecture and an online platform to optimize residents’ green lifestyle, sustainable Semantics, and a large language ocean.

My Contributions

User research, User Journey map, Wireframe, Prototype

Keywords

Service Design, Smart City, Design Innovation

Background

The scarcity of freshwater resources has become the bottleneck of urbanization in China. The total freshwater resources in China account for 6% of the global water resources, but its per capita water resources are only 1/4 of the world average. Ranking 110th globally, it is one of the world’s poorest countries in terms of per capita water resources.

The songe city concept has been proposed as to how to use rainwater scientifically.

In response to water resources shortage, currently all countries in the world take rainwater harvesting and utilization as one of the main starting points.

What

Flexible and adapting to environmental changes like a sponge, it can effectively drain water and provide purified water sources when needed.

How

Water from rivers, lakes, ponds, greenspaces, gardens, and permeable roads will infiltrate, be retented and purified.
Excess part of the recycle discharged through the pipe network and pumping station.

Why

Flexible and adapting to environmental changes like a sponge, Water-absorbing materials that adapt to environmental changes and respond to natural disasters of precipitation effectively reduce the urban heat island effect and keep urban roads cool.

How to reduce the waste of water resources ?
How to encourage individuals to participate more actively ?
How to combine policy push with individual actions ?

Research

Based on these questions, follow-up research and design are carried out.

Nanshan district, Shenzhen, China is selected in view of its natural resources, population and cultural policy environments.

Interview

In response to water resources shortage, currently all countries in the world take rainwater harvesting and utilization as one of the main starting points.

Sumamry

Water from rivers, lakes, ponds, greenspaces, gardens, and permeable roads will infiltrate, be retented and purified.
Excess part of the recycle discharged through the pipe network and pumping station.

Ideation

Community analysis

Analyze the relationship between the council and residents to find out the design opportunity that can combine water saving behavior and residents’s live.

Brainstorming

In the new community, the use of rain water and running water is redistributed to make the use of both water more reasonable.

Design Value

In our design,the existing rainwater harvesting technology, like green roof, can be integrated with the community environment to form apleasing landscape and provide residents with a comfortable living environment.
The vast majority of house holds in Nanshan District are migrant workers and Shenzhen’s local culture has not yet been formed. It is difficult for them to cultivate a sense of belonging. Community culture should be in cooperated in the design to enhance their participation sense of inclusion.
Majority of Shenzhen residents have limited knowledge about water. Through our design, relevant information will be timely published so that residents can understand the situation of water resources utilization.
The water resources shortage prompts us to cultivate good conservation awareness. In our design, corresponding programs can link multiple parties together to jointly promote residents' conservation efforts.

System map