Kyong Park, Nicola Cavalieri De Pace, Alexander Valentino, Sunhyun Kim, Yeonghwan Lim, Martin Devrient, Giacomo Faiella, Pietro Nunziante, Jin-Hyoung Kim, Hyunhee Lee, Jihyeon Han
REDISCOVERING ANCIENT, SUBTERRANEAN WATER RESOURCES
Cool City is an interdisciplinary research project and workshop in Naples, Italy, and Seoul, Republic of Korea. Its ambition is to develop and disseminate sustainable design by using perennial resources of underground water—currently unused, abandoned, or mismanaged— to mitigate the impact of the heat-island effect found in the densest urban communities where temperatures can be up to seven degrees higher than in the surrounding areas.
Cool City investigates the potential of reclaiming and capitalizing on existing (ancient) water systems and resources. It explores perspectives on the social, cultural, and economic layout of the proposed sites for intervention in Naples and Seoul, creates healthy public and private spaces in socioeconomic context, and challenges inherent in climate justice. Cool City also examines innovations in water use, incorporating hydraulic systems, air-conditioning systems, environmental engineering, biology, urban sociology, archaeology, and geology in urban environments.
Within Future School, the Cool City Lab will facilitate debate and designs on the above issues and potentials, analyzing the multiple nuances of climate care and new urban interventions. The program will also promote a reconsideration of ancient systems, technologies, and designs that use water for cooling purposes, such as qanats, underground aqueducts and cisterns, wind catching towers, yakhchal, salsabil, and other traditional passive methods, combining them with new technologies and devices that might further the evolution of green and blue systems.