Public Spaces for Water: A Design Notebook

This illustrated notebook highlights the need for a change of paradigm in current flood management practices, one that acknowledges the wide-ranging and interdisciplinary benefits brought by public space design. Reassessing and improving established flood management methods, public spaces are faced with a new and enhanced role as mediators of flood adaptation able to integrate infrastructure and communities together in the management of flood water as an ultimate resource for urban resilience.

The book specifically introduces a path towards a new perspective on flood adaptation through public space design, stressing the importance of local, bottom up, approaches. Deriving from a solution-directed investigation, which is particularly attentive to design, the book offers a wide range of systematized conceptual solutions of flood adaptation measures applicable in the design of public spaces.

Through a commonly used vocabulary and simple technical notions, the book facilitates and accelerates the initial brainstorm phases of a public space project with flood adaptation capacities, enabling a direct application in contemporary practice. Furthermore, it offers a significant sample of real-case examples that may further assist the decision-making throughout design processes.

Overall, the book envisions to challenge established professionals, such as engineers, architects or urban planners, to work and design with uncertainty in an era of an unprecedented climate.

Maria Matos Silva is Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA), University of Lisbon since September of 2018. She is a Research Associate of the Centro de Investigação em Arquitectura, Urbanismo e Design (CIAUD) at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Lisbon and of Centro de Ecologia Aplicada (CEABN) at ISA.
She graduated in Landscape Architecture from ISA in in 2007, being recognized as the best graduated student in the final year. In 2010 she completed a master’s degree on Urban Design at Universitat de Barcelona, and in 2011 a PGDip in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Lisbon. In 2016, Maria finalized a doctoral degree at Universitat de Barcelona with a full doctoral scholarship attributed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), having obtained the Excellent "Cum Laude" classification. In 2019, Maria received the recognition of "Finalist" in the European Prize Manuel de Solà-Morales for her Doctoral dissertation.
She has been involved in several R&D projects and has thus far published in various international journals and conferences. Her current academic interests focus on Landscape Architecture Design, specifically upon the subjects of urban floods and public space design.