Building with Water: Innovative Approaches for Sustainable Architecture

Abstract

Water is not only essential to life in every form, but throughout history it has been a fundamental means of production for populations, used for trade, defence, transportation, industry and recreation, hence determining the topographical character of urban areas. In the post-industrial society, though, the use of water for aesthetic pleasure in urban planning and architectural design has increasingly prevailed on other functions since the origin and development of the leisure and tourism industry and, finally, leading to the transformation of the meanwhile abandoned urban industrial waterfronts. However, many contemporary experimental urban and architectural projects are addressing water from different perspectives and introducing new modes of thinking and practices that will radically change our relationship with this natural resource. The aim of this work is to pinpoint and to analyse these developing approaches, which unveil possible paths of design innovation: using existing urban water as building ground to relieve space for a new density, in order to respond flexibly to the growing urbanization prospects and to the effects of the ongoing climate change; employing water as a material for passive sustainable design strategies and as a resource to preserve, conserve and reuse in integrated solutions for water sensitive urban design. Selected case studies are disclosed to present these new forms of building with water, at the different scales, showing how environmental concerns are combined with the perceptual, symbolic and metaphorical values of this elemental material.