Waterless World: Meet the Winners and Honourable Mentions!

WINNER: The Evapo-sweaty Building

by Félix Roudier

Architect for 5 years, I love architecture thought in connection with his environment, rural or urban. For me, architectural design works like Russian Dolls: a game of interweaving of scales where the territory, the city, the neighborhood, the building, the furniture… must match to create a perfect synergy.

Illustrator for 2 years, I founded « felix-illustra »: a studio where creations question illustration and fiction as tools of representation of the architectural and urban project or which are simply the feature of a transformed reality.

The 72h Axo-Battle of Non-Architecture was for me the perfect exercise to experiment with the technique of hand drawing with axonometry. The competition theme made it possible to stage a utopian or dystopian project inspired by fiction while providing a reflection on current problems. This is the kind of subject that fascinates me!

 

HONOURABLE MENTION: City Quarry: Climate Control Solutions for the Water-Scarce City

by Hillary DeWildt and Ambika Pharma

Hillary DeWildt is a Canadian designer, researcher, and urbanist working with SvN Architects + Planners in Toronto.

In addition to previous work at SWA Group in California and North Design Office in Toronto, Hillary has held research and teaching assistant positions in landscape architecture, urban design, and representation at the University of Toronto. Her research and design projects have been exhibited and published internationally.

A graduate of the University of Toronto, Hillary received her Master of Landscape Architecture from the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design, where she awarded the American Society of Landscape Architects Award of Honour upon graduation. Hillary previously completed a degree in Urban Design and Environmental studies at Dalhousie University, earning the distinction as a Frederick H. Sexton Scholar.

In her current role, Hillary seeks to enhance connections between ecological systems and public infrastructures to create strategies that increase the resiliency of the built environment.

Ambika Pharma is a Landscape Designer at Reed Hilderbrand in Cambridge.

She was previously a Research Associate at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Landscape Research, working for the Platform for Resilient Urbanism. She has contributed towards design and research for climate adaption in urban landscapes, coastal resilience, and land reclamation. Her current interests explore the role of big infrastructure projects and logistical landscapes in efforts towards climate resiliency.

Ambika holds a degree in Environmental Design from OCAD University and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Toronto, receiving the Heather M. Reisman Gold Medal for excellence in design upon graduation.

“Our team very much enjoyed participating in the Waterless World competition. The competition was extremely well organized, and the competition brief was thorough.

We enjoyed that the nature of the submission was open-ended, which allowed us to be more creative in our proposed design solution. We also appreciated that the submission was limited to two drawings with a fixed template.”

 

HONOURABLE MENTION: FLUID STRATA

by Dafni Filippa

Born in Athens, Greece, I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the Technical University of Munich. My Bachelor Thesis in the Chair of Architectural Participation of Francis Kéré, together with my teammate M.Sehimi received the first prize in the “Architecture Thesis of the Year 2020” dealing with sustainable housing in Accra, Ghana. Currently, I am completing the first year of my Master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture (MLA) at the Bartlett School of Architecture.

I am fascinated to design non-static environments that perform under the dynamic tension of the human and natural domain, which was one of the main reasons I chose to specialize in Landscape for my master’s degree. Within my current design studio (Bartlett MLA Studio 01, led by A.Abram & M.Plemenitas), I experiment with the “Deep Ground” as a multi-scale territory operating under the constant influence of ever-changing ecosystem dynamics. Focused on dense urban habitats and responding to future sea-level rise, my project proposes the deployment of London’s Hidden Rivers as a responsive flood defense agent to absorb tidal water accumulations which endanger the city.

The theme of the competition “Waterless World” raises a great opportunity and critical responsibility to reimagine our designing methods and engage deeper with the already existing natural processes of our planet.

 

HONOURABLE MENTION: Hydrocommunes – A spatial response to water crisis

by Ananya Nevatia

Ananya Nevatia is an architect from India. She completed her M.Arch from the Architectural Association in London. Apart from design, she finds home in the natural world outside the built environment. Being a nature lover some of her many passions include gardening and hiking. Ananya satisfies her curiosity about different cultures through travel, food, and art. She enjoys quenching her thirst with wine or cocktails.

 

HONOURABLE MENTION: Quarteto de agua – The impermeable island

by Gaëlle Mottais and Jessica Gonçalves Marques

Gaëlle Mottais and Jessica Gonçalves Marques are two young Parisian architects. They met on their first year of college at the National School of Architecture of Versailles and have just graduated in February 2021.

During their university course, they had the opportunity to study for a year in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro for their master’s degree. Particularly interested and motivated by the perspective of discovering, studying, and analyzing the notion of living in foreign metropolises, they went the following year to Bogotá in Colombia for a project in collaboration with the students of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
It is during these trips that their reflection on water networks and the impacts on the cities and people appeared. They are particularly interested in the paradox between hydraulic overabundance and hydraulic insufficiency.

These different experiences deeply marked and influenced the approach of their final project. This enabled them to understand the singularities and paradoxes of cities facing problems of management and governance of hydraulic resources. Cape Verde appeared as the embodiment of this paradox. They decided to make it the subject of their final project. The work presented for the Waterless World competition is the summary of their final project, which they obtained with distinction.

They consider that a change is taking place, human activities have an impact on the terrestrial ecosystem which affects the hydraulic safety of populations. With global warming and the resulting disturbances, cities have to deal with the challenges of this resource, whether it is overabundance or scarcity. Through the problematic prism of water, their project “Quarteto de agua – The impermeable island” was born. Water, an unstable element, becomes a source of inspiration for rethinking the security of the cities of tomorrow. Now, young architects, seek to continue working on engaging thematics for their future careers.

 

HONOURABLE MENTION: Infrastructures of Dust: Dust to Water Through Cloud Seeding

by Alexander Urasaki

Alexander Urasaki is a fourth-year Architecture student at California Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo. Alexander has a passion for architecture and design, with a focus on rigorous design and research, that yields a commitment to activism and humanism in the architecture and urban environments that he produces. His work often questions our evolving and shifting social, political, cultural landscapes and their implications in the theoretical, spatial, organizational, and material.

Non-Architecture Competitions provide the opportunities to question the role of architecture in addressing the pressing issues of today. It simultaneously engages relevant topics while also telling stories of fiction as a way of speculating or criticizing our reality. In allowing for only two images to convey your ideas also raises interesting questions about the nature of representation in contemporary architecture and focus on expressing a larger narrative through a single image.

 

HONOURABLE MENTION: SLOW,STORE+RE-USE

by Ryan Shaaban

 

I have always been drawn to the impact public projects have on communities through environmental access. I often find that through this practice, projects develop valuable user ownership as a result of the integration of the community’s tangible knowledge of their natural context.
After graduating in May 2020 with a Masters in Architecture and a Minor in Environmental Science from Tulane, University in New Orleans, Louisiana, I began working as a Landscape Designer in Chicago, Illinois, participating in large-scale residential and commercial projects. These experiences have given me a foundation in both architecture and landscape architecture and have highlighted the opportunities for both professions to merge through design.

Participating in the Waterless World competition was a rigorous experience in testing my skills in design and production while working on a conceptual proposal applied to a critical issue our world is facing. As I balanced my time between work and the competition, I critically analyzed how Chicago perceives water and identified a targeted solution that would create resilience and access while aligning with the development goals of the city.
I enjoyed being able to engage in this practice over the past couple of weeks, and I look forward to learning about urban contexts and climate resilience through more competitions in the future.

 

HONOURABLE MENTION: Water miner-Johannesburg 2050

by Fangyuan Sheng and Mingyang Sun

Fangyuan Sheng is a second-year student of Landscape Architecture at Weitzman School of Design, UPenn. She is also pursuing the Urban Design Certificate and focuses on shaping cities and strengthening communities.

“It felt good to participate in the Non Architecture Competition, and the theme made me think more about the role of designers in a water crisis.”

Mingyang Sun is a Master of Landscape Architecture candidate 2021 at Penn Design. With an architectural background, she is interested in multi-scale design solutions of public realms, urban forms, urban ecology in the context of climate change. She expects to be an urban designer who values people, places, and nature.

“The theme of waterless world is a great and exciting challenge for designers to think and react. It is refreshing for me to imagine how a city’s systems may work under extreme water scarcity with just two drawings of this competition. I think it is a fantastic opportunity provided by the Non Architecture Competition.”