Research Project SPREE2011 at EXPO Shanghai 2010
Project SPREE2011, as a contribution of the Berlin Senate and as one of six German urban projects, is an exhibition partner in the German pavilion at EXPO 2010. The goal of the SPREE2011 initiators is the cleaning of the capital city’s river – and the development of a new, globally applicable technology for the prevention of waste water discharges into rivers and lakes. For the EXPO contribution, the project managers have teamed up with the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI).
The exhibition features an interactive game with contact-free controls developed by the HHI. The player goes through all the steps to clean a river from the perspective of the projects’s developers—from the idea, over the solving of intermediate problems, to the implementation. SPREE2011 is concerned with an international problem: not only in Berlin but in many cities around the world, discharges of waste water from combined sewer systems contribute significantly to pollution. If it rains heavily, the sewers overflow. Conventional methods to avoid this pollution, such as the construction of underground tanks made of concrete, are hardly feasible due to the high costs for municipalities. Therefore, the initiators of SPREE2011 have designed a unique, new technology to prevent such discharges: a module of interconnected tanks – called LURITEC – is installed directly in the water in front of the drainage opening point. If it overflows, the system stores the waste water. If the drains are free again after a few hours, the water is pumped back. Through the removal of the water and the application of new materials, this method is significantly faster and cheaper to install than the conventional concrete basins.
The surface of the system also offers space for multiple uses, which in some cases can even help to co-finance the entire system: reed islands, gardens, platforms, or cultivations with open-air cinemas and cafes. While life in the water recovers, a new urban life is developing – on the river. Later this year, a pilot plant will emerge in Berlin’s East Harbour. The construction and associated research – involving four departments of the Technical University of Berlin and six engineering firms – is supported with two million Euros from the Federal Ministry for Education and Research; the development and operation is supported by Berlin Water Works.
Even before the construction of the pilot plant in Berlin, there is considerable interest from other German cities, and even from other municipalities worldwide. The guiding principle of the EXPO 2010 »Balancity – Better City. Better Life« is maintained in the game SPREE2011, whose theme is the balance between resource protection, quality of life, and democratic, forward-looking urban development.
http://www.spree2011.de/
www.hhi.fraunhofer.de/expo
