PERMANENT

Per­ma­nent gives a dig­ni­fied, restrained but play­ful form to one of soci­ety’s most impor­tant infra­struc­ture projects: to give all cit­i­zens the con­di­tions for a decent life through access to clean water. A sim­ple ges­ture, a sculp­tur­al, undu­lat­ing white enve­lope forms the core of the project. The façade has a clear and eas­i­ly leg­i­ble abstract design while open­ing up for cit­i­zens’ own interpretations.

The archa­ic form is an expres­sion of per­ma­nence and reli­a­bil­i­ty, while the play of light and shad­ows over the peaks and val­leys of the sur­face set it in a state of con­stant change. In this way, the build­ing becomes like a sun­di­al that reflects the course of the day and the year.

The reser­voir is locat­ed on a ter­raced land­scape that is held togeth­er by wind­ing retain­ing walls. The ter­races that are formed between the walls recre­ate a styl­ized form of the bar­ren land­scape on the site con­sist­ing of pines, blue­ber­ry rice and large boul­ders. The new reser­voir has a large scale and the pro­pos­al has been giv­en a design that cre­ates a vis­i­ble and clear land­mark at a dis­tance while also meet­ing up with sur­round­ing land­scapes and build­ings through a refined but sim­ple design lan­guage both in the facade detail­ing and in the landscaping.

Per­ma­nent is a con­crete build­ing with a refined indus­tri­al char­ac­ter. The cli­mate shell is inscribed in a cir­cle with a diam­e­ter of 47.6 meters and is divid­ed into 62 2.4 meters wide and about 20 meters high pre­fab­ri­cat­ed con­crete ele­ments. The height of the ele­ments is suf­fi­cient to cov­er the under­ly­ing struc­ture and to be vis­i­ble from a dis­tance above the trees and gives the build­ing a bal­anced pro­por­tion between height and width. The cir­cu­lar shape cre­ates a space between the cis­tern and the cli­mate shell that is gen­er­ous at the entrances and nar­rows to 1.2 meters at the nar­row­est passage.