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 ten 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. Faced with the shortage of water, how will existing and future cities and landscapes adjust to the drastic environmental shift?

The goal of the Out of Water 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 distribution 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.

Research Principals: Aziza Chaouni + Liat Margolis

Research Team ’08-’09: You-Been Kim, Danny Tseng, Shannon Wiley, Fadi Massoud, Bridget Kane, Amanda Chong, Utako Tanabe and Martha Sparrow

Research Team ’09-’10: Amanda Chong, Utako Tanebe, Martha Sparrow, Vjosana Shkurti, Melissa Cao, Nicole Napoleone, Scott Rosin, Stefan Marc Kuuskne, Caitlin Blundell

Exhibition Design: Takako Tajima + Aziza Chaouni + Liat Margolis

Exhibition Fabrication: Scott Powers

Aziza Chaouni is Assistant Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design and a co-organizer of the Out of Water Conference. She is co-principal of Bureau E.A.S.T, which has been recognized with top awards for both the Global and Regional Africa and the Middle East competition from the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction; the Architectural League of New York Young Architects Award; Environmental Design Research Association Great Places Award; the American Society of Landscape Architects Design Awards; among others. Bureau E.A.S.T.’s work has been published and exhibited internationally, including the International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam; INDEX: Design to Improve Life in Copenhagen; and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN HABITAT) World Urban Forum. Chaouni is also the Director of the Research Board of DO.CO.MO.MO Morocco, a chapter of an international organization that seeks the preservation of the modern heritage. She is the co-author with Virginie Lefebvre of Visiter le desert: architecture durable et architecture (2009). She holds a B.Sc in Civil Engineering from Columbia University and a Master of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Liat Margolis is Assistant Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design and a co-organizer of the Out of Water Conference. She is principal investigator of GRIT LAB (Green Roof Innovations Testing Laboratory) at the University of Toronto, where she examines the environmental performance of Green Roofs, Green Facades and Solar Technologies in the context of the City of Toronto’s Green Roof Bylaw and Energy Incentive Program. Margolis is the co-founder and former director of Harvard Graduate School of Design’s (GSD) Materials Collection, and former director of research at Material ConneXion, Inc. New York. She is the co-author of the book Living Systems: Innovative Materials and Technologies for Landscape Architecture (2007). Margolis received a Bachelor degree in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and a Master in Landscape Architecture from Harvard GSD.