Out of Water | innovative technologies in arid climates

Aziza Chaouni and Liat Margolis

While water scarcity is a problem of global proportions, it is particularly significant and potentially irreversible in arid zones. Today, 14% of the world’s biomes are Arid, another 14% are Semi-Arid, and 2% are Mediterranean. Given global warming, today’s arid zones are bound to change and expand. According to the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), one quarter of the earth’s land mass is already threatened by desertification. The United Nations projects that in the next 10 years, 50 million people will be living in desert contexts, potentially causing major migration fluxes, political tensions, and instabilities. Climactic pressure is exacerbated by a series of other factors such as population growth and increases in industrial and agricultural consumption.

Finding solutions to inhabit the desert sustainably will not only mitigate the effects of water scarcity but may also slow down desertification. Faced with the shortage of water, how will existing and future cities and landscapes adjust to the drastic environmental shift?

Out of Water is a response to this looming challenge. The goal of the exhibition is to constructively re-imagine urban futures through the use of water technologies and to delineate an expanded vocabulary of water resources, quality, and infrastructural / architectonic relations to our urban environments. The first part documents a set of contemporary case studies and technologies and tools for collection, conversion, and decentralization of water sources in arid climates. The second part showcases the speculative scenarios for a new water culture in arid climates by a select group of young architects, landscape architects, material technologists, and urban planners.

claire agre • reem alissa • faris alsalem • behrang behin • aziza chaouni • mark collins • david fletcher • toru hasegawa • theodore hoerr • thomas kasbau • andrew kudless • jimenez lai • liat margolis • christos marcopoulos • carol moukheiber • lara zureikat

lead researchers: you-been kim • danny tseng | researchers: shannon wiley • fadi masoud