An Anthology of Water

Water Sluggers

Handheld fabric cups from which water skips into the mouth - part of a pre-meal ritual, to acknowledge its aliveness and agency? 

Instructions for Subhadassi, Magnus and Clare

Warm up, (aprox 20 mins)

1) Get some water and have a play with the materials sent to you in the post.

• The fabric is a pure organic cotton, made to high ecological spec, natural dyes etc. It is waterproof because of the nature of its weave, which is extremely tight. There is no other waterproofing substances used.

• The charcoal is made form bamboo, it is a water purifier. If you leave it in a jug of tap water over night and then compare it to water straight from the tap you will experience its effect. It also serves to regulate humidity and absorb odour. 

2) Take a look at the pics on your page of the blog.

• The images show a simple drawing of a space made from the materials sent to you, also using bamboo for legs, and formed around an old tent structure. Crudely speaking the charcoal exists in the fabric as in the picture above. The idea is that water will bounce around on the roof, form 'mercurial' droplets and become purified through its contact with the charcoal. 

• There are lots of pics of experiments with the material if you look back over the blog

Your tasks, (approx 40 mins)  

1) Please write a couple of sentences in the 'comment' box in your section of the blog, saying what you think the space could be used for in the context of each image 1), 2), 3),4).

This could be a ceremony, event, experiment, for resting in -  anything at all. But try and be specific - ie, for a ceremony - what type of ceremony?  Please write anything else that comes to mind that the image evokes to you. Bear in mind the materials and how they work with water all the time. Keep it tweet - ish.

2) Choose one image and elaborate on your idea, think about  what, where, why, how the space would be used, and particularly who would use it . It could be for instance 1000's of people walking through or carrying it along, or one lone person digging a hole underneath it? Are children using it ? animals? Is it housing some equipment? Does it stay there all the time, or just for a few minutes ? Why is it being used this way, is it some personal endeavour or part of a wider cultural habit? 

3) If you are able to, print off the image and draw on it - email or post back to me .

Give me a call any questions! 07984 626 380, please respond by Tues 14th!! 

Magnus Larson, Architect.

We architects call this exercise "programming" the space, and to me this is one of the most interesting – and sadly occasionally neglected – parts of architecture. Formal experimentation can be interesting and fruitful, but I'm more concerned with what goes on inside of the space and how it functions (or, again in architecture speak, how it "performs") than what it looks like.

This is in a way where architects can have a real impact over and above the relatively simple act of giving form to our built environment. This is where we can promote new ways of living and thinking and acting together as a species. To me it seems clear that the closer people live to each other, the more positive synergies are created. The city is thus the starting point for most of my thinking on architecture and how architecture can be made a better and more efficient support structure for moving us forward, and it's interesting to note that three of the four images above seem to present a non-urban (anti-urban?) proposition. 

1) British countryside in the rain

So. Being me I have to challenge this. The first image shows a space that looks like a sole pavilion, without walls and open to the environment, placed next to a road in what is defined as the British countryside. That's a fairly general site: are we talking about the low, rolling landscape of the east and south, or the hills and mountains to the west and north? Judging from the image, I'm going to go with the former. The pavilion seems to be roughly two to three meters square, and three to four meters tall. It's raining. People are travelling down the road, on their way from A to B and back again. They stop. They park their car and walk over to the pavilion. And then... what?

You're already sheltered in the car, so a simple shelter wouldn't really cut it. Is it a water station that allows you to fill your bottles if you've run out of water? Possibly, but that seems a little simple. If you're going from London to Devon, say, there will be plenty of opportunities to do that along the way, and the distances are quite short as well.

No, I think it's about something else. Something stranger, something less obvious, something more beautiful. It's a celebration of something. A celebration of water. A built celebration of the water cycle, the continuous movement of water on, above, and below the surface of the Earth. An architectural celebration of the state change – from liquid to vapour to ice, and back – that makes up the hydrological cycle. It's "in the rain," but clearly, it can't be perpetually in the rain. Or can it? Maybe it's a weather station of sorts, a nodal point inside a network that have been devised to create its own weather. In this case, its own rain. Maybe it's a rain pavilion, a scientific echo of the rain dances of previous times and tribes? And if it's part of a network, it's part of something bigger, the same way buildings are often part of a city. Maybe there is more to this image than what we see, maybe this is just a corner of a gigantic city of similar structures, the corner of the skyline of a weather-making city, distributed across the landscape, slowly turning it into something more interesting for the promotion of human values and interactions?

How can this little tent create its own weather? Or at least its own rain? The traditional way would be through some kind of cloud seeding, maybe with silver iodide and solid carbon dioxide. Or maybe liquid propane. Or salt. Either way, if we're on the ground, we need some kind of ground generator.

But that generator could perhaps be quite cutting edge. In 2010, researchers from the University of Geneva tested an electronic mechanism for seeding clouds by directing infrared laser pulses to the air over Berlin. The idea was that the pulses would encourage atmospheric sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioide to form particles that would become and act as seeds that make it rain. New Scientist magazine reported that the laser did generate small clouds on demand.

The efficiency is "controversial" said Jerome Kasparian at the University of Geneva, but I say that's good enough for us in the speculative realm that we're now entering. So rather than sprinkling loads of chemicals into the atmosphere and hope for the best, we're using this tent as an on-demand shelter for firing laser beams at clouds and produce rain. Once it starts raining, the tent doubles as a collection and purification device for the water produced.

The tent structure holds a laser that's free to operate for motorists driving by. The laser fires extremely short pulses of infrared laser light into a chamber of water-saturated air at -24°C. Linear clouds are formed, like miniature airplane contrails. 

The laser pulses strip electrons from atoms in the air, which forms hydroxyl radicals that convert sulphur and nitrogen dioxides in the air into paritcles tha act as seeds. Each laser pulse "packs a 220-millijoule punch into just 60 femtoseconds," says Kasparian, an intensity "equivalent to the power of 1,000 power plants". Who would have thought when first looking at that tent, and who would have thought the government would put that kind of power in the hands of you and me?

The only thing that is clear is that it works. You can see that in the picture. There we have the tent. It's raining. And someone clearly just stepped out of the picture, away from the laser gun, to fetch a bottle into which (s)he will pour lovely, bamboo-purified water that has been caught in the pure organic cotton roof.

2) Sheffield Botanical Gardens 

The second image shows a similar (the same?) pavilion placed outside the Sheffield Botanical Gardens. I've only visited those once, and only for a very brief stroll on my way to giving a lecture. What I do know about the gardens is that they hold something like 5,000 species of plants, and that they're free to enter. So what does this piece of architecture do, standing about outside it? 

Maybe it's a testing station for the plants. Maybe it's a scientific instrument, with which we can test the water-generating and -purifying credentials of the technology you're proposing. Maybe some of those 5,000 plant species are brought out from the gardens and into this canopy-like space, to see how they interact with the bamboo and the cotton? Maybe there are highly specialised scientists working 24/7 to try and figure out how some of these plants might combine with the architecture itself to create a mobile building that can help people sustain life in difficult environments? Maybe it's a research site for the creation of greenhouse tents, which can be pitched as the starting point for an entire permacultural society in remote regions of the planet? Maybe, despite looking quite rural, it is actually the starting point for the building of future cities, based on the purification of water, one of our (if not the) most important commodities?

3) North Down Campsite Devon

The third image shows another tent – and this time I think it actually is a tent – on a campsite in Devon. This seems like a highly fitting site, seeing that you're proposing a building made from fabric over a frame of poles, which is what a tent is. Another thing a tent might be is the home of a nomadic person, a temporary shelter, and what it might at first sight look to be here: a structure for recreational camping.

But hang on. Something is wrong with the scale here. The tent looks bigger than the other tents in the background. It's hardly a bivouac structure for a single person. It's not a backpacking device for a water lover. Is it a circus tent? No, it doesn't quite have the stripy, colourful cheerfulness of that. It's more serious. Like a... like a... military tent. The water-catching devices also makes it look a little like it's camouflaged. So we have a military tent that collects water. Who put it there? Maybe no one lives in it? (Side note: would that turn it into something that isn't architecture or not?) Maybe it was placed there in secret, to collect water, test the purification powers of the bamboo technology, and eventually report back on the findings so as to facilitate a future invasion? Maybe it's the starting point of a planned capital, the infant city in its field condition, before the decision has even been made that this is where the city will rise?

4) London City Centre in the Rain

The fourth image shows the structure against an inner-city London backdrop. It looks to be the size of about four London phone boxes. It's prominent position suggests it's been put there with some kind of admission. It was probably paid for by someone. It has a sponsor. Who would sponsor it? Maybe a... water company? Maybe it's the latest marketing ploy, a strategy dreamt up by some advertising agency: DRINK LONDON WATER! No more Evian, no more thousand-year springs, just properly filtered water from the Big Smoke. Someone probably operates the structure for bypassers, fills bottle after bottle with filtered London water, opens and closes the little "mouths" on the interior and exterior of the fabric, checks that the water flows the way it should across the surface.

How many of these are there out there? One? A hundred? Thousands? I think the latter. I think they are a worldwide phenomenon. I think they exist not only in London, but in other cities as well. DRINK TOKYO WATER! DRINK VENICE WATER! DRINK CHERNOBYL WATER! On each corner in every city, these strange little tents pop up, allowing people to get purified city water straight from the skies. Bamboo is cheap and renewable, we get rid of a massive mountain of plastic bottles, and we put to use water that would otherwise just be lost or simply returned as ground water. We slow down the hydrological cycle a little, allow for a little human intervention, just as is always the case when we turn natural resources into commodities. The water tent becomes a more obvious and direct alternative to some thousand-year-old spring in rural France, from which water is shipped by truck or lorry in highly unsustainable ways. It's architecture as a celebration of local water production, architecture at the very intersection of the sky and the street – a new definition of "horizon," perhaps.

Clare Nasir, Meterologist.

First of all, I think this structure should have a name, It reminds a little bit of some ancient amphibian with its own exoskeleton, or perhaps, a visiting creature from another world (wise, slow moving and gentle).

1) London City Centre in the rain

 This for me is very obvious... The aquapod (as I shall refer to it from on), serves an essential purpose to purify rainwater that travels through the lower atmosphere above a polluted city. 

 Rain is an efficient way of cleaning the air of impurities, but acidic rain falling on the aquapod goes through a further process of cleaning, via the bamboo charcoal. The cleansed water would then fall to Earth or be collected in drinking pools.

London recieves on average 2 inches of rain a month, using these aquapods say as, bus shelters - positioned close to busy roads, seems the most logical dual purpose use for them; cleaning dirty rainwater in situ and providing shelter for commuters. 

2) Sheffield Botanical Gardens

Aquapod fits in very nicely to the Sheffield Botanical Gardens, as some sort of art installation/water feature - that also doubles as source for an outdoor water cooler for thirsty visitors (there would need to be an extention to this structure to capture rain water, store and pour).

 

3) Suburban Garden in the Rain
This says to me Gazebo, however again, our friend the aquapod serves a dual purpose. I think it should be much bigger so it can shelter the household and guests from the rain during a garden party. The rainwater again could be channelled to provide water for garden plants during dry spells (like a water butt). I would like to see the aqupod more decorated with perhaps crystal mobiles dangling down from the edges, that would refract sunlight (during sunnier times)... this would allow the aqupod to respond to another weather environment. 

4) Shores of the Thames
The aquapod would provide an essential service of shelter for budding ornothologists. The Thames tidal flats are home to a diverse array of birds. The aquapod would also be seen by people sailing on boats and river taxi's and would be interesting addition to the London shoreline, providing a talking point about the purpose as a water purifier.

                                      

Subhadassi, Poet, Buddist.

1) Sheffield Botanical Gardens

I am imagining the drinking of tea beneath this; solitary tea pods; tea served from bamboo handled teapots; the water harvested from the structure; a place of reflection, suitable in sunshine for shade and rain for shelter...maybe a bamboo charcoal brazier on hand for the nippy days. For viewing the trees and flowers.

It is a permeable frame through which to see nature; it provides a 'way in' to a more contemplative and mutual engagement with nature - the permeability of charcoal and cloth, the permeable nature of the structure - not alienating the participant like sitting behind glass might be - a direct engagement with the elements but also providing a structure, a place, a space, and orientation.

Could be for the most casual contemplation - whilst drinking tea - or the most forms - eyes closed meditation.

There would be 20 of them arranged throughout the park - enough that you could always see another one in the park but for solitary use.

They could be rented by the hour, half day or day. Part of the job of a rentee would be to harvest water if it was there. A cup of tea would be provided every hour with harvested rain water.

Drawing/writing materials would also be made available if the renter were so moved.

We're used to park benches - this is a park (e)co-creating shelter (TM).

2) North Down Campsite, near the compost loo

Child friendly play space; clamberable bamboo; place for role play; harvested water for messy play. The contrast of its lack of immediate usefulness in this context with the toilet which is immediately useful - going beyond utility.

3) Mudflats Sussex
Fisherman shelter; windbreak; nature-mediator; bird hide (to watch birds from; for birds to sit/shit on/in. Roof water supply for birds.

4) Rainy Day in British Countryside

Snogging. Lying down. A beautiful bivouac. Getting close to nature and staying dryish. Meditating. So solo or duo.

Charcoal Canopy

A canopy made from etaproof fabric and charcoal, water can bounce and jump on it due to the way the fabric is arranged. The charcoal purifies the water - not necessarily for humanity, but for the whole water cycle - a hydrosocial purifier? 

I could to use it as a provocation - ask others to say what it is used for...

The Rain Door - a meterological toy

                                                                        

The Rain door is an alternative tent door, it works as part of a landscape and an atmosphere. One sits inside and tweeks the rain funnels in order to try a capture the rain. They can be turned 'off' by a 180 degree twist. One can move the tent also- to get a good direction.

 The rain comes through from outside in globules. It can be harvested directly this way. The rain door intends to make you hope for rain, and respond to rain. As part of this one begins to understand rain, and water in terms of direction, landscape, volume, character, illusivenes....

    Here it is installed as a prototype as part of our family summer camping holiday in Weymouth, it is made out of Etaproof waterproof organic cotton - which is waterproof entirely due to the nature of it weave :www.stotzfabrics.ch, and reacts with the surface tension of water to form it into 'mercurial' droplets

Pins (for now)

Recycleable eyelets from www.dtpsupplies.com

                                      

Ready for Rain

                                      

   Moving the rain funnels - trying to find the right angle for the conditions

                                      

                                      

                                                          No rain - so cheating instead

The 'rain' comes through

       
                                        Torrential rain at night - we missed it, we were asleep. 

A pattern will emerge on the rain door depending on the type of rain and ones interaction with it

Conclusions

A posthuman relationship with water needs to be performed - not explained. It is also a practice too removed from our habits to transfer quickly. It is complex, and perhaps demands multiple partial performances. If the performance begins by a relationship between humans, there is a danger that we will remain on the centre stage. I am going to try and perform it architecturally - I need to know if this can be done. 

Day 2

Inspired by Heather and Ivan Morrisons book ‘Falling into Place' I told Tom story of a watery posthuman future, in a watery place. We tried to make a structure together, as if this was a reality. The story worked, in a way it was the best bit, but how to translate this to materials and structure was not easy to grasp.It all felt a bit contrived. I think that first an object must exist to communicate and inspire a material manifestation of posthumanism. The look and feel of the charcoal was compelling though.

Day 1

I made some full scale experiments of spaces, trying to work with materials and water towards some post -human expression. The frilly hydrophillic was a bit too hydrophillic. The cotton was compelling, fascinating, the water looked mercurial , and jumped and leapt and coagulated in ways that were best when I was not trying to control it.

July

July has been a month of full scale discoveries.

Here we are, Tom (my beautiful assistant) and I ,  arriving at Nethergong Campsite - Canterbury, a watery and wooded  place with very hospitable proprietors who were happy for us to experiment on their land. www.nethergongnurseries.co.uk

Fortunately it was quiet as it hasn't stopped raining for weeks. 

I have come here to try out some full scale making, and to explore a question that is troubling me, Which is around whether this work should manifest as some sort of 'social architectural practise' that explores water with other humans, or whether the creation of watery spaces them selves will do this more effectively.