2022 Mention Infrastructure

LILA 2022 Special Mention in Infrastructure Projects
Flood control project, Arava valley, Eilat

YBM Yael Bar-Maor landscape architecture studio

The trail through the Flood Control Project in Arava valley is about curation and framing the intense power of flash flood events. A footpath guides visitors among strange features that arose from mitigating the force of seasonal waters, namely to protect a local road from being washed away. This surreal »beach« is surrounded by the eye-watering beauty of the Eilat and Edom Mountains. The main infrastructural element is water retention in an otherwise harsh desert with an extraordinary colour palette. The oddity of scale, shape and purpose of landscape structures, such as the tank-shaped soil landforms that were preserved during the excavations in order to sustain the acacia trees, appear inscrutable or at least utterly peculiar. Here the medium determines form, with varying scales of gravel, riprap and sediment shaping the landscape. This landscape infrastructure matches the sublime forces it is meant to contain. The team embraced all the curious spatial phenomena of retaining stormwater in a desert and collected them into a unique experience for the visitors.