Water camouflages itself with its container. It is transparent and anomalous, finding its own balance. Water escapes us; it is ethereal, and yet an elixir for life. Water insulates; it is versatile. With depleting water resources, to hold water has become imperative. Holding water; in ways that it is natural and integral to our being; unresisting and innate. How does architecture, the built form, integrate water in design?
The first settlement was made around water. For years communities have settled around water bodies, growing organically, relying on water as their primary resource. With this resource dying at an unfathomable pace, a designed system could allow for communities to collect and hold water within, in various forms of storage - as tanks, reservoirs, ponds, lakes; celebrating its flow as it trickles, springs, pours and inundates.
The architectural experiment looks at water and its attributes as a building material, building houses and communities, bringing water from the past into the future.
Water being immortal.
The installation is designed to ignite the senses and is a pause; to think of, “being water”- transparent and pure, when we are, as they say, made of water. -samira rathod
The physical manifestation of this idea was implemented in the House of Concrete Experiments.
As the name suggests, the predominant material of construction for the project was concrete, which was used to build the outhouse walls as a water tank whose storage capacity would suffice an entire year, rather than building an additional underground or overhead water tank structure.
This also helps cool the entire property, while the terrace collects all the rainwater directly into the water house, which is developed in two parts - once each for hard water and soft water, further connected with a water purifier converting the hard water into usable water, which is then pumped into the house for regular use.
Team:
Architect: Samira Rathod Design Atelier
Project Architect: Jay Shah
Civil Construction: Jog Infrastructure
Structural Design: Studio Struct
Installation Photographs: Niveditaa Gupta
Drawing Credits: Samira Rathod Design Atelier
