Architecture for Water
Architectural approaches to water management, treatment, and integration within built environments.
Rain
We live under towering skyscrapers, often feeling overwhelmed. To reduce this pressure, we propose a climate-responsive tower. Instead of rigid structures, the design embraces organic curves, creating a softer urban experience. With Singapore’s water agreement ending in 2061, the building integrates a rainwater system for self-sufficiency and security.
Water Slum: Beyond Normalized Cities
Slums are said to be among the least understood places on the planet, largely because they are also among the most complex. Beyond Normalized Cities proposes a project of projects; a hybrid between the existing and the possible.
WREATHE: A Spiraling Earth-Block Residence That Turns Its Arms Toward Accra's Divided Neighborhoods
Rotating residential arms, a sunken public field and earth-block walls frame housing in Accra as shared ground between separated communities.
Thermal Blue: A Hot Springs Complex Where Five Buildings Turn Inward Toward the Steam
Timber boardwalks, glazed treatment rooms and green roofs organize a terraced bathing landscape in which every building looks back at the water.
Atelier Guo Bends One Long Roof Along a Flood-Control Canal for a Restaurant Beneath a Guilin Cliff
In Yangshuo, Guilin, a 380 m² restaurant follows a flood-control canal beneath a cliff, its tapered piers imprinted with the bamboo grove beside it.
Circle of Nature: A Concrete Ring Lifted Over Hveragerði's Steaming Water
A closed circular plan on slender piers turns a hot spring into a shared centre for bathing, film, performance and quiet reflection.
H150: A Thermal Bath in Iceland Built Around a Floating Ring of Water
A half-round bathhouse and a circular water route cross a hot river and a hiking trail, turning the act of bathing into a way of crossing the land.
MMBB, JPG.ARQ and Ben-Avid Flood Brazil's Expo 2020 Dubai Pavilion with a Walkable Sheet of Water
In Dubai, Brazil's Expo pavilion stretches a tensile fabric box over a shallow flooded square, inviting visitors to wade through projected rivers.
Mono in Mist: A Castle Wall Rebuilt in Water Hides Three Sunken Meditation Gardens in Fukuoka
Below a public park of pools and mist, a waterfall-ringed basin turns meditation, hotel rooms and a castle-wall metaphor into one descending journey.
The Waves: An Opera House Born from Collision of Water and Air on Tallinn's Peninsula
Alina Fedoseeva's waterfront opera house translates the behavior of Baltic waves into vertical metal streams, sweeping base curves, and illuminated public
BIO-HOMe, In Praise of Shadows
It has probably happened to all of us that when we were children, we used to lift rocks near the riverbed to surprise the strange insects that were hiding under them in the dark. We, humans, are no different from those insects in terms of preferring the safe space of shadows. That's why we chose shadows to design our house.
Opera by the Sea: A Rotating Auditorium on Tallinn's Baltic Waterfront
Emiliya Marinova's flowing opera house dissolves the boundary between city and coastline with continuous public landscape and adaptable performance spaces.
Valge Laev: An Opera House That Docks on Tallinn's Baltic Waterfront
Alief Riyadi's shortlisted proposal reads the port, Linnahall, and the Baltic Sea as generators for a transparent civic vessel.
PATH: A Speculative Underwater Trading Hub Off the Coast of Penang
Modular pods and copper infrastructure form an expandable aquatic settlement 125 meters below the Strait of Malacca.
Aquatic Beacon: A Modular Underwater Research Community on the Great Barrier Reef
Speculative underwater architecture positions scientific research and habitation directly within a threatened marine ecosystem off Australia's Pacific coas
Sound Waves: An Opera House That Opens Its Stage to the Baltic Sea
A shortlisted proposal for Tallinn's waterfront dissolves the boundary between auditorium, public hill, and Baltic horizon.
Aquatic Alveolus: Underwater Architecture Modeled on the Human Body
A shortlisted entry for EHC Pacific reimagines subsea living as an interconnected organism of pods, tunnels, and energy systems.
Gateway to the Deep: A Vertical Architecture for Ocean Floor Access
A pressurized descent system reimagines how architecture might bridge the ocean surface and the sea floor through modular, deployable units.
Floating Urban Village: Modular Platforms for a Climate-Resilient Community on Water
A shortlisted entry for Afloat reimagines Indonesian coastal settlement as an expandable network of floating residential and agricultural modules.
Cylinder Park: Turning Surplus Buckets into a Modular Play System for Refugee Camps
A shortlisted entry in Re-imagining Play 2020, Cylinder Park extracts architectural potential from discarded plastic buckets to build adaptable playgrounds
