Sicily
Water management landscape design
In 2024/2025, i completed a 9-month internship as a landscape architect in Sicily. My main job was to suggest improvements and visualise the landscaping plan of an abandoned farm turned into a sustainable agriculture tourist villa. As Sicily will be facing major water shortage problems in the coming years, one of my main contributions to the existing plan was a local water management system including water catchment, filtration, storage and solid waste management on site and entirely off-grid.
Mission
Before I could even start with the landscaping plan, I spent 3 months learning how to do Aerial surveying using Mavic 3 drone and RTK and PPK technology to create a 3D map of the terrain.
Then I processed the data using Pix4D Matic, which gave me a point cloud I imported into Revit to create a 3D terrain model of the area.
Vision
With the help of Muhammad Ameen Keryo, a pioneer within wastewater treatment in Pakistan, I suggested the implementation of a constructed wetland. A constructed wetland is a nature-based solution to wastewater filtration inspired by the way natural wetlands work.
This specific design consists of a Baffle reactor as primary treatment and a vertical flow and a horizontal flow constructed wetland as secondary treatments.
Integrate rather than segregate
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Mission
An issue we were facing was that the roofs did not have enough surface area to catch as much water as needed. Hence, I proposed the idea of using the whole patio as a water catchment surface in addition to the roofs. Conveniently, the pool is perfectly placed for temporary storage of the caught rainwater.
Obtain a yeald
Mission
When the water has been cleaned, it is pumped to the top of the field to be stored for irrigation when needed. The roof above serves a dual function of wind protection to limit evaporation and a surface for solar panels for off-grid energy production to run the water system, and other functions on the farm.
Catch and store energy
Vision
Solid waste (poop) from the primary treatment is difficlut to hande resposibly due to pacteria and viruses being able to survive up to two years. A handy solution I found in the UN-Habitat constructed wetland manual was a Sludge drying bed. Simply explained, it dries up the solid waste, making it easier to handle. It can stay in this bed for up to one year. By placing this bed next to a hot composting station, it can easily be transferred to the compost pile in the next step. Here it will over a period of 1-2 years go through three different composts, ensuring that after 2-3 years, the poop is fully composted and free of any potential diseases carried by the guests, which makes it perfect as a fertelizer for the crops on the land..
The problem is the solution
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