Habitable Water Infrastructures

Overview

This research project explores the public realm and buildings as water infrastructures.

Water is integral to human survival and has a long-standing relationship with human habitation. Despite this intertwined relationship, water and habitation are still treated as two separate aspects, with one attached to the other. In many current practices, water-related infrastructures are still perceived as simple systems attached to spaces in the form of pipes, water tanks and biofiltration systems, all aimed at conveyance, retention, percolation, filtration, infiltration, and discharging. This is critical because water should not be imagined, designed, or planned as a contained system; instead, it is in its fluidity that one can explore a myriad of possibilities that present water as both a sculptor of habitats and a social engineering infrastructure.

In the face of climate emergency, evidenced by increasing temperatures and rainfall intensities, regular deluge and rising sea levels, habitable spaces and water infrastructure can no longer be treated as separate entities. This is significantly more critical in low-lying cities experiencing significant population growth and rising water levels.

This design-led research explores the understanding of the public realm and buildings as inhabited water infrastructure and the potential of this understanding in mitigation and adaptation to the effects of climate crisis and navigating intense and extreme floods and draught scenarios while offering different modes of occupation for humans and more than human systems. We will investigate notions of infrastructure, specifically water infrastructure, relative to habitable spaces and systems and use these notions to analyse, extract and develop ways to design spaces in low-lying cities from the perspective of water infrastructure. In turn, we will explore how this approach can influence cities more broadly and at site scale: site selection, programming, spatial form, materiality, spatial layout, modes of occupation, construction techniques, materiality, technology, water use, etc.

Research engagement

Review literature and relevant local and international precedent projects. Focus on the relationship between water infrastructure, water systems and habitation – humans and more-than-humans.

Research activities

The student will work closely with the supervisor to identify relevant literature and precedent projects to review. The learning will be translated into writing, mapping, and diagrams as guided by the supervisor.

Skills and experience

An ideal candidate for the project would be a student from architecture or landscape architecture disciplines with the following skills.

- Mapping skills

- Diagramming

- Literature review

Start date

19 November, 2024

End date

21 February, 2025

Location

QUT Gardens Point

Additional information

Resources will be available from the QUT library and a computer made available for the research at QUT gardens point

Keywords

• water infrastructure
• floods
• buildings
• public realm
• water scarcity

Contact

Dan Nyandega, Email: daniel.nyandega@qut.edu.au