+

IABR – DOWN TO EARTH: WATERSCHOOL M4H+, 2021-present

WATERSCHOOL’s goal is to raise awareness of our huge water footprint. Water use becomes a leverage point for collaborative exploration of learning - by - doing approach to the production landscape. Living and working blend, all while being designed around the prospective use of water and our resources. WATERSCHOOL operates as a test site and as an experimental catalyst for sustainable area (re)development, meanwhile gathering and distributing knowledge.

WATERSCHOOL: setting examples through design thinking

WATERSCHOOL investigates how a range of resources contributes to building a sustainable and circular learning environment, in order to meet the water challenge and also ensuring an optimised ecological footprint. WATERSCHOOL presents a scenario in which a city’s residents live and work around a sustainable use of raw materials and resources, allowing for the just interaction between all organisms, communities, and their environment.

Starting from the basic needs of a human body, such as nutrition and water, these sustainable resources contribute to a new diet by suggesting the use of alternative and less water - intensive protein sources, and thus a minimised water footprint. And when expanded to dwelling, living, and working, and to energy and water consumption, they also generate new sustainable building materials and energy supplies, while suggesting new types of architecture and cultures of living.

WATERSCHOOL promotes dialogue and proposes a different, post - fossil, bio - based future with water as a starting point. The Garden of Delight, digital library and outdoor plots shows alternative production landscapes and presents a cultural framework with the work of designers, architects and artists.

Showcasing a blossoming trend

The projects showcased at WATERSCHOOL have all been individually and independently developed by designers, architects and artists. They improve on a blossoming trend that already exists and influence our lives on a daily basis. By merely existing they prove that it ís possible to affect a transition and that one can actually develop a new culture of our daily life, even when started on a small scale. WATERSCHOOL wants to contextualise these projects within a larger scale in order to set an example for cities by giving the artists an important influential voice for our future developments

Why water?

In these times of climate crisis, cities must face acute challenges such as subsidence, water safety, extreme precipitation, heat, and drought. Water represents the most challenging and complex risk that mankind faces. Over 80% of all climate change emergencies and disasters are water related: floods and drought, pollution, water conflicts, rapid urbanisation, a growing demand for food and energy, migration and climate change. It is precisely the omnipresence of the water challenge that also gives us the opportunity to use water as a leverage point for truly comprehensive change, thus giving us the ability to actualise transformative projects

Projectdata

curatorial team, graphic and spatial design, art coordination and communication design, research and design production

photos by Aad Hoogendoorn, Michiel De Cleene, Nai-dan Chang and Timothy Liu

✹ Dutch Design Awards Design Research winner 2022 → #DDA22 link

✹ Learn more:

→WATERSCHOOL visual design link

→WATERSCHOOL library design link

→WATERSCHOOL official website link

→WATERSCHOOL IABR 2018

✹Exhibitions:

WATERSCHOOL IABR DOWN TO EARTH

WATERSCHOOL World Expo Dubai

WATERSCHOOL Design Museum Gent

WATERSCHOOL Dutch Design Week 2021

WATERSCHOOL Milan Alcova

WATERSCHOOL Taiwan Design Museum

more+