Axolotl: A new Water Responsive Design Tool

Mexico City Master Planning Case Study

Axolotl is an open source and user-friendly Rhino – Grasshopper tool for water responsive design that allows architects and urban designers to include rain, green infrastructure and low impact development strategies in projects master planning. Based on daily precipitation data recorded from trustworthy meteorological stations, Axolotl uses this historical information and calculates surface runoff rates and volumes applying the Rational Method. Axolotl components are developed in Python, which is a high-level programming language that enables the user to follow-up and test the tools for any possible improvement and/or any change required to facilitate their calculations. These components are used to calculate different soil infiltration ratios, rain runoffs depending on project surface types, buildings water demand, rainwater tanks sizing for water reuse and since it could be linked to TRNLizard components it’s useful also for outdoor comfort UTCI calculations depending on the availability of rainwater storage in exterior areas. A Mexico City master planning design is shown as case study to demonstrate different rain management strategies application. The location has been selected due to the current challenges of Mexico City, which started in 2016 the program “Towards a Water Sensitive Mexico City, public space as a rain management strategy”, as an initiative to improve water resiliency urban design. Designed for, but not limited to, Mexican cities, Axolotl is able to access information of more than 600 meteorological stations distributed in Mexico City, Nuevo León, Jalisco and Baja California.

Mentor: Christian Frenzel

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José Santiago Martínez Torres – Mexico

José Santiago Martínez Torres – Mexico

Graduated as a Physics Engineer from ITESM Monterrey, Mexico in 2012. Santiago has worked since 2013 in the design and analysis of energy systems for high performance buildings, in public and private projects in Mexico working as energy modeler, commissioning agent and environmental consultant.