Design In The Terrain Of Water

Design in the Terrain of Water makes room for water as a ground in design: water that is everywhere before it is somewhere; water that is in rain before it is in rivers, soaks before it flows, spreads before it gathers, blurs before it clarifies; water that is ephemeral, transient, uncertain, interstitial, chaotic, omnipresent. This is water to which people are increasingly turning to find innovative solutions to water scarcity, pollution, aquifer depletion and other problems that are assuming center stage in local and global politics, dynamics, and fears. It is also water that is celebrated and ritualized in ordinary and everyday practices across many cultures. The book brings together the work of eminent professionals, designers, artists, scientists and theorists, who respond to the challenges that this water poses, its visualization, its infrastructure, its politics and its science. At a moment when design disciplines are beginning to embrace measures such as flexibility, agility and resilience, this book makes an important and timely contribution. These are measures that we associate more closely with water and watery imagination than the terra firma that grounds aspirations of prediction and control that have proved elusive, perhaps even detrimental. The book asks if in this time of uncertainty and ambiguity brought on by increasing openness of economies, cultures, and ecologies, we need to re-invent our relationship with water. Should we look to the past, present and future and ask if in seeing water somewhere rather than everywhere we miss opportunities, practices and lessons that could inform and transform the design project? What role has representation and visualization played in confining water to a place on land? Can we look at projects in history and projects emerging today - cities, infrastructures, buildings, landscapes, artworks - with a cultivated eye for waters everywhere? What is it to see water as not within, adjoining, serving or threatening settlement, but the ground of settlement? Design in the Terrain of Water is a collection of visual and textual essays that present a way, a direction, and perhaps even a paradigm shift in how professionals imagine, build, and advocate in a terrain of water.

Design options and planning procedures must be critically examined to ensure that landscapes are created with sensitivity to water quality and management issues as well as overall ecological integrity. Handbook of Water Sensitive Planning and Design presents the history of water as a design and planning element in landscape architecture and describes new interpretations of water management. This text pushes the frontiers of standard water management in new directions, challenging readers into abandoning the comfortable safety of conducting business-as-usual within narrow disciplinary confines, and instead directing views outward to the exciting and incompletely mapped regions of true interdisciplinary water sensitive planning and design. With contributions from renowned practitioners, Part I provides seventeen chapters addressing the subject of site-specific water sensitive design and Part II presents another seventeen chapters focusing on issues relating to the water sensitive planning of riparian buffers and watersheds. In addition, Professor France has provided a "Response" to accompany each chapter, which succinctly underscores the salient features in more detail and emphasizes cross-linking to other chapters in the book. The "Overview" provides a brief road-map to navigate through the section. Finally, the discussion summaries at the end of each section elaborate on past problems, current challenges, and future directions. Handbook of Water Sensitive Planning and Design puts forward the very best of modern water sensitive planning and design and should be required reading for everyone involved in this dynamic and crucial field.

Soak: Mumbai in an Estuary is a unique way of looking at Mumbai's terrain and the history of its making. It presents an alternative visualisation of MumbaI's landscape with extraordinary' artistic and design expertise. Innovative technique in architectural drawing, rare photo-works, maps and models add to the thought-provoking and exciting insights. Proposes twelve design initiations that work to resolve the problem of flood. Uses approximately 72 historical maps and illustrations and 90 new drawings and photographic works done by the authors themselves. Comes across as a major initiative that will bring awareness of contemporary concerns of cities, using design to create public awareness and involvement. Holds global relevance in the context of sea level rise and climate change. This is a distinctive book in response to the Mumbai flood of 2005. It aspires to address and transform the increasingly shrill language of fear, anxiety and dread that marks our reception of the rains in Mumbai today. The book imagines the sea and the monsoon not as enemies and agents of flood, but as inevitable partners in the shaping of the land and thereby offers a new vocabulary for living with the monsoon and the sea.

The book begins with a 'Foundations' section, which sets out the basis of the approach.

Which approaches can landscape, urban and architectural designers take to contribute their specific professional skills and means to solve the problem of water scarcity? What potential do available technologies and materials offer, what methods and tools can be derived from social engagement? Based on five years of research, the results of the Out of Water project are laid out here in a series of case studies and essays by international experts.

"Each time the waters of the mighty Mississippi River overflow their banks, questions arise anew about the battle between "man" and "river". How can we prevent floods and the damage they inflict while maintaining navigational potential and protecting the river's ecology?" "The design of the Mississippi and how it should proceed has long been a subject of controversy. What is missing from the discussion, say the authors of this book, is an understanding of the representations of the Mississippi River. Landscape architect Anuradha Mathur and architect/planner Dilip da Cunha draw together an array of perspectives on the river and show how these different images have played a role in the process of designing and containing the river landscape. Analyzing maps, hydrographs, working models, drawings, photographs, government and media reports, painting, and even folklore, Mathur and da Cunha consider what these representations of the river portray, what they leave out, and why that might be. With original silk screen prints and a selection of maps, the book joins historic, scientific, engineering, and natural views of the river to create an entirely new portrait of the great Mississippi."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Featuring more than 150 illustrations, many in color, The Invention of Rivers integrates history, art, cultural studies, hydrology, and geography to tell the story of how rivers have been culturally constructed as lines granted special roles in defining human habitation and everyday practice.

Water has been an important topic in architecture and urban planning for years. The revitalization of the waterfront has been a prevalent trend in cities around the world. On the other hand, architecture also had to respond to the threat of floods. The theme of Building with Water is the use of water in architecture. It presents buildings that explicitly refer to water in their design and form. It establishes a typology of building by the water: residential structures, recreation facilities, industry and infrastructure, buildings for culture and art. The various design parameters are explored in four essays. Subsequently, twenty-two international projects are presented, organized according to their locations by a river, a lake or the sea. The authors’ concern is not to show luxurious buildings in privileged locations but rather presenting projects that seriously grapple with the main criterion of the location—namely, water—in an ecologically sustainable way and respond to it with their design. Wasser ist seit Jahren ein wichtiges Thema in Architektur und Städtebau. «Building with Water» thematisiert die Verarbeitung von Wasser im architektonischen Entwurf; es werden Bauten vorgestellt, die sich in ihrer Gestaltung und Form ausdrücklich auf Wasser beziehen. Eine Typologie des Bauens am Wasser wird erstellt: Wohnbauten, Verkehrs- und Industriebauten, Bauten für Kultur und Freizeit. Ebenso werden einleitend klassische Beispiele des Bauens am/im/auf dem Wasser gezeigt, wie etwa Château de Chenonceaux an der Loire, Falling Water in Pennsylvania von Frank Lloyd Wright oder das Salk Institute in La Jolla,Kalifornien, von Louis I. Kahn. Geordnet nach ihren Standorten am Fluss, See oder Meer, werden dann etwa 20 internationale Projekte vorgestellt. Es geht den Autoren nicht darum, luxuriöse Bauten an privilegierten Plätzen zu zeigen, sondern Projekte darzustellen, deren Entwurf sich ernsthaft und ökologisch verträglich mit dem Hauptkriterium des Standortes – nämlich Wasser – auseinandersetzt und sich gestalterisch darauf bezieht