The importance of water as both scientific matter and symbolic element is the fundamental premise of this studio. Drawing too on architectural Metabolism, it asks how we might rethink water resources and processes – their elemental structure and systems – to evaluate the ecological imperative of water scarcity and global warming through architecturally imaginative propositions for the future. Applying wider research on Metabolism to the harbour waters around Cockatoo Island/Wareamah, students explore how material imagination can help us to dream of past, present and future through a new type of museum that uses water as a muse. The research then provides a case for the imaginative (trans)formation and rethinking of water, matter and Metabolism to guide design proposals for a Museum of Water.
For Indigenous Australia, water-related knowledge is passed on through Dreamtime stories and symbols in the landscape. Moreover, the significance of water as a primal element for activating the material imagination is highlighted by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, who stated that water was important not only for its sensory values but also its sensual aspects. Bringing together scientific, poetic and ecological understandings of water, the studio’s aim is to consider how architecture might create an ecological and nourishing environment for all species. This is pursued in the context of a Metabolist conception - of architecture as an organism that consumes natural resources and creates components as well as systems, with both visible and invisible matter.
