TIDES IN THE BODY

fresh water: design research for inland territories, ar+D (2019)

Water is bound up in the myriad ways that we imaginatively construct it: profoundly and inherently entangled within social relations, political agendas, and environmental matters. Across scales, water is saturated with constructed meaning, from the properties of a water droplet to the politics of water landscapes. The term “water,” and what it constitutes, is neither universal nor predetermined but is formed through and reflected in the values, attitudes, and behaviors of societies and cultures over time. The way that water moves across a landscape—whether freely, through an engineered channel, or held rigidly in place—tells us about a society’s value toward it in a particular moment of time, within a specific geographic context, and as a conceptual idea.