AR Reading List 051: water

As intangible as it is material, the presence or absence of water has eternally commanded and ordered people and places. Immovable bodies of water can contain us; not just a border drawn on a map, oceans beckon some to cross them, and others to stay at the shoreline as the waves come crashing in. The choppy waters are not limited to the seas, as empty reservoirs and dry rivers can leave our cities thirsty and our land arid. Drinking water is bottled and sold, but so too is the sea view, the waterfront property and the island getaway. This week’s Reading List dives into the deep well of meanings that water holds, with stories of abundance, boundaries and depletion.

Stepwells of Ahmedabad: water-harvesting in semi-arid India, AR April 2021, Tanvi Jain
‘As the water crisis sheds light on community-based harvesting efforts, women, affected disproportionately in rural and urban areas, are the first responders to droughts’

Liquid violence: investigations of boundaries at sea by Forensic Oceanography, AR April 2019, Lorenzo Pezzani
‘The vision of the sea as a laboratory of modern political spaces continues to have enduring relevance for understanding and assessing the production of political space in today’s world’

Pleasure island: a remote Gapado remodelled, AR May 2020, Colin Marshall
‘The Gapado project’s long-term goals include bringing back some of its population lost to the vortex of Seoul, after the decline of local agricultural and fishery industries’

The lighthouse, AR April 2019, Max L Zarzycki
‘Civilise this corner of the ocean. Burn a hundred candles at its eye, a winking face at the gate of the land. The light edges empire into sea’

Wet narratives: architecture must recognise that the future is fluid, AR June 2017, Kazi Khaleed Ashraf
‘We are made of water, we drink water, we wash with water, we purify water, we purify things with water. There is too much water, there is too little water’

Thermal baths in Vals, Switzerland by Peter Zumthor, AR August 1997, Raymond Ryan
‘Through the rigour of his craft, Peter Zumthor has realised an extraordinary building full of sensory richness. Zumthor has developed an architecture of complex spatial interpenetration’

Typology: swimming pools, AR August 2015, Tom Wilkinson
‘Hockney’s painting A Bigger Splash conveys it well: the transitory motion of water, trace of a vanished body, against the more permanent architecture, all reduced to flat bright planes by the Californian sun’