WATER AS A SUBJECT
Monday 28 October 2024 6.30 p.m.
Lecture by Paola Viganò
The architecture of water is of crucial importance at present. The risks associated with water and climate change are a concern for the entire planet; the number of projects addressing water-related issues seems limitless. The project of water is one that shapes our territories and living spaces over time. Water is one of the many vulnerable subjects of modernity. Violated, attacked, altered, concealed, water is a ‘weak structure’ in the sense that it has the capacity to shape contemporary cities and territories, despite its heterogeneity, fragmentation, and the separation between spaces and functions.
Water is both the object and the subject that we merely reveal, rediscover, support, and follow through projects that listen to its voice and intentions. Cities and territories are the ‘laboratory of water,’ where the socio-ecological transition is being shaped. To think about water is to think about life, space, and power relations.
BIOGRAPHY
Paola Viganò, architect and urbanist with an extended experience in landscape design, is Full Professor of Urban Design and Urban Theory at EPFL. She founded Studio (1990-2014, with Bernardo Secchi) and Studio Paola Viganò (2015), working on the ecological and social transition of cities, landscapes, and territories designing urban and territorial projects. For many years, she has been reflecting on the forms and potential of water territories in contemporary space, to which he has dedicated extensive research and project activities, published for instance in The Landscapes of Water (2009) and Water & Asphalt: The Project of Isotropy (2016, with Bernardo Secchi and Lorenzo Fabian). In 2022-2023, she coordinated the Strategic Scheme for the recovery of the Vesdre Valley (Belgium) after the flooding catastrophe of 2021 summer. She received the Grand Prix de l’Urbanisme in 2013, the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by the UCLouvain in 2016 in the frame of “Utopia for our Time”, the Flemish Culture Award for Architecture in 2017, and the Golden Medal for the Career of Milano Triennale in 2018. In 2022, she received the Schelling Prize for Architectural Theory.