FEDERICA ZAMBELETTI / KOOZWhat inspired your respective explorations of water ecologies, from resource to ecosocial tool—especially in the distinct settings of a Catalan exhibition in Venice and another at the MAK in Austria?

EVA FRANCH In the case of Water Parliaments, the ultimate motivation was the growing urgency to rethink our relationship with water — not as a resource to be managed, but as a living political and ecological agent. While conversations around water's agency exist in architecture, art, biology, and ecology, they haven't yet permeated the broader collective imaginary. We wanted to challenge dominant narratives embedded in social constructs and shift away from treating water as a commodity.

Instead, our aim was to uncover the entanglements between climate justice, territorial governance, and collective memory. That meant grounding our approach in vernacular and historical practices, while also engaging with contemporary activism and visions of the future. The exhibition became a way to reflect on architecture's role in addressing these urgent questions and to embrace speculative practices that mediate new relationships between humans, non-humans, and aquatic systems.

For us, the urgency lay in how architects — particularly from spaces of creation and speculative design — can contribute meaningfully to pressing challenges. Through the creation of Parliaments of Water, a new vocabulary, and speculative architectures, we hoped to open up horizons not yet present in architectural or cultural discourse.

We realized that water is shaped by architecture, and in Western culture it’s largely approached through resource extraction. But shaping water isn't limited to architects — artists, activists, scientists, engineers, and those who work the land are all part of the conversation. We wanted to gather these voices to rethink our relationship with water both regionally and on a global scale.

That’s why we established what we call the Laboratories of Futures — an interdisciplinary space where, from within our field, we could propose new ways of engaging with water.

JANE WITHERSThere are a lot of synergies between the way we’ve been thinking about water at Water Pressure and what Eva and Mireia have just described. My own research goes back quite some time — I did the first exhibition, 1% Water and Our Future, in 2008 and it's fascinating to look back. It had a similar structure but was much smaller, and at the time, although water was already considered in crisis — it had not yet registered in public discourse. It tended to be thought of as something happening elsewhere, not in Europe or the global north.

So much has changed. Today, the crisis is clearly catastrophic and urgent. We now understand that much of it is manmade — caused by overconsumption and mismanagement. So many of the ways we use and abuse water just no longer make sense. Why let rainwater run off? Why flush drinking water down the toilet? As Eva said, we need an imaginary shift — from the dominant technological and economic lens to a more holistic understanding of water. That includes its place in nature and how it connects humans, non-humans, and the planet. We need a more equitable and just view of how water is distributed and used.

What I find hopeful is that there’s still space for change. Demand for freshwater is projected to outstrip supply by 40% by the end of this decade, so we need radical transformation. But there’s a growing wave of alternative thinking — reconnecting with vernacular, traditional ecological knowledge, local practices, and environmental understanding. Many of the projects in the exhibition stem from this kind of thinking, offering different approaches to managing water.

It’s a timely moment. The Water Pressure exhibition serves as a platform to spotlight these efforts and explore how to scale or replicate them. How can we engage with what’s happening and bring more attention to it? That’s really what drives the project and the collaboration with MAK as well as MK&G Hamburg and Museum fur Gestaltung Zurich has been a fantastic opportunity to foreground it.

MARLIES WIRTHWhat prompted the exploration of the topic of water? — Jane Withers did! We've long been fans and followers of her practice. MAK general director, Lilli Hollein, and I were both excited to bring the core of Jane’s exhibition to the museum, where we explore ecological, technological, and societal issues, especially through design. The subtitle of the exhibition, Designing for the Future, and therefore designing alternatives to current solutions, is exactly the kind of approach I’m interested in as Head of the Design Collection and Curator for Digital Culture.

At the MAK, and in collaboration with other institutions, we’ve been looking at how to shift perspectives and how to create emotional traction for current topics with our visitors. It’s not just about showing a crisis, or saying “look, everything’s bad.” It’s also about showing what can be done through design, raising awareness, and generating interdisciplinary conversations.

KOOZWhat’s particularly interesting is thinking about the sites where these exhibitions are hosted — not only in terms of the pavilion concept but also the museum as a space for design. Then there’s the urban context: Venice, with its unique relationship to water, and Vienna, which may seem less immediately connected but faces growing challenges like over-cementification and flooding. I’d like to ask about the relationship between curatorial concept and research in respect to these sites, and also about the audiences you aim to engage. When we talk about building collective imaginaries, how far beyond the architecture and design fields must we reach? And how do the exhibitions succeed in bridging that divide, connecting with the broader public?

EF I was genuinely happy to see people outside of architecture at our Pavilion’s opening in Venice — biologists, scientists, individuals who had collaborated with us and brought their own networks from the Venice lagoons and conflict zones. While the project fits into a larger global cultural framework, it was important to anchor these conversations around hydropolitics and ecological justice in Venice — a city that embodies both the vulnerabilities and possibilities of water-based living.

From the outset, we had proposed various locations outside Catalonia, with Venice as one of them, and this fall we’ll hold another Laboratory of Futures there with local communities. We consistently bring together people across four sectors: those connected to the land — fishermen, fisherwomen, farmers — those with scientific knowledge, from public and private sectors; voices from politics and activism; and of course artists, architects, and designers. The lessons from the Catalan, Valencian, and Balearic territories are meant to resonate beyond their borders, shared with Venice and the wider world.

Venice, for us, was a stepping stone — not just a stage, but a rich site of knowledge in architecture and water. Our project has always worked from local understandings toward global aspirations. Take the Atlas, our online repository — it's an evolving archive of historical, present, and future water architectures. I wonder how many works from your exhibition at MAK could be included in it, or if the exhibition itself belongs there. Venice isn’t just a host — it’s part of the ongoing production of knowledge. The Biennale was the beginning, not the conclusion.

ML From the very beginning, Venice was central. It’s the aquatic city par excellence, and climate change is very present there — not just in its physical condition, but in the debates surrounding how we should intervene. Should we trust engineering approaches, or adopt more climate-conscious frameworks? There’s a text in our book, edited as part of the exhibition, by Nerea Calvillo that reflects beautifully on Venice, particularly around the notion of leakage, capturing the city’s fragile, embodied condition.

As I mentioned earlier, our work involved the Catalan territory — very specific regions — and their own Laboratories of Futures. In Venice, we’ll continue that with workshops planned this November, inviting participants from various public sectors. And of course, being in Venice, there are ongoing conversations around water. While we were there, we were invited to a discussion about recognizing the lagoon as a political figure — a political person — which directly speaks to our project.

By addressing specific and local controversies, we’re able to touch on planetary concerns. Venice isn’t just important to our exhibition — it’s a catalyst for broader reflection.

JW Our aim is to explore both local and global dimensions of water — and the interconnectedness between them. Water issues can’t be viewed in isolation anymore. Take food, for instance: many European countries import 40–50% of their supply, so global water scarcity directly affects food supply chains. Similarly, weather patterns are not just local; they carry broader implications with global impact and regional resonance.

In terms of sites, we need the flexibility to work across scales — to zoom into local specifics while maintaining a wide lens on planetary dynamics. That’s part of what makes working on Water Pressure so compelling. The exhibition started in Hamburg about 18 months ago, then traveled to MK&G, to the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich, and now to Vienna. At each stage, we’ve collaborated closely with local curators, institutions, and academics, adapting the narrative to reflect each city’s unique context and challenges and that’s been a really rewarding process..

For example, in Hamburg we worked with the museum facing distinct water issues as an aging institution surrounded by impermeable concrete. It doesn’t capture rainwater, which raises questions about water usage and resilience. So we commissioned Ooze architects from Rotterdam to reimagine its water systems — exploring how rainwater could be harvested and used for cooling, flushing, the garden and other purposes. These interventions also tied into broader urban water issues in Hamburg and beyond, including the Elbe River which has suffered severe drought in recent years and the larger watershed systems. It’s a reminder that water follows ecological boundaries — not political ones. Watersheds cross borders, so we must rethink geography through the lens of water.

In Vienna, Marlies and the team took a thoughtful approach — considering both the cultural context of the city and how to engage the museum’s audiences, which are quite mixed. While the subjects might be rooted in art, architecture, and design, the audience is much broader and more diverse. That’s something I’d love for Marlies to expand on.

MW You briefly touched on the local dimension, and it’s worth emphasizing: Vienna is a water-rich city. Alpine spring water has arrived at our taps for more than 150 years. The drinking water is high-quality, always available. There’s no shortage — yet.

But this abundance doesn’t make us immune. Water issues are complex and interconnected. Rising sea levels, for example, affect countries not even near the coast. We try to reflect this global reality in our guided tours and workshops. Our education department works hard to create experiences that help audiences of all ages relate personally to these challenges. We strive to make the message immediate and tangible.

I also want to mention the 2021 exhibition Climate Care: Reimagining Shared Planetary Futures, which I co-curated with Anab Jain, co-founder of Superflux in London and professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. We’ve worked together on the “more than human” aspect of the exhibition and on a special commission titled “Invocation for Hope”, and I was thrilled to see Superflux's projects included in Jane’s original core for the exhibition. Their work often leans into the speculative or dystopian — but ultimately it's about regeneration and reimagining the future. That spirit runs through our museum’s approach too — especially in the Design Lab, where Jane’s project “How much Water do we eat?” has been a fixture since 2019.

We also wanted to highlight local innovators who think globally. For example, the Vienna-based design team EOOS recently published their first book with Lars Müller Publishers. They've researched sanitation with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and contributed to the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge for over 10 years. One of their new key developments is the Safe Tap — a small, 3D-printed spout that releases just 18 cubic centimeters of water, which is enough to wash your hands safely even without soap. This is critical for schools without immediate access to running water..

We installed the Safe Tap at the entrance to Water Pressure — not just as a symbolic gesture, but as a practical reminder. It invites visitors to reflect on their own water use, highlighting that moderation and sensitivity to water aren't just relevant in the Global South, but everywhere. School groups, especially, are struck by the video footage of field tests in the Global South — it helps them connect their own habits to very different realities.

Another core project is the Second Sea Calculator. It’s been part of the exhibition from the start, but we expanded it in Vienna to make its impact more immediate — showing how carbon emissions directly relate to rising sea levels. It’s especially powerful for those who still view climate issues as disconnected from daily life.

As Jane mentioned, one of the exhibition’s strengths is its adaptability. Each city adds something distinct, shaped by its own curators and context. Our team contributed to the “Chronology of Water” timeline, originally designed by Jane and Anita, by inserting local Austrian references and stories.

Just to mention two of these: first, Lake Neusiedl — locally known as the Neusiedler See — has been at risk of drying up for years. There’s even a fictional documentary imagining what life would be like if that already happened. Second, right next to our museum is the Wien River, or Wienfluss. Most of the time, it’s a barely trickling stream channeled through concrete, not unlike the LA River. But during last year’s floods — which also struck parts of Spain and Austria — it surged to a "millennium high," levels not seen for a thousand years. That was terrifying, especially given our museum depot is underground. Water literally came closer than we ever intended, all while we were preparing this exhibition.

EFThere’s something I’ve been thinking about — I was just jotting down ideas around the chronology of water and all the exhibitions and projects you've mentioned. Some of them I wasn’t even aware of, which really speaks to the times we’re living in. We once believed the internet would connect us all, make knowledge universally accessible. But the reality is, we’re far from that. So how do we ensure that the knowledge produced every single day within cultural institutions, biennials, and platforms like this doesn’t disappear over time?

What struck me most in your remarks was the comparison between LA and Vienna — and how some issues are so systemic, so global. Over the last century, we’ve reshaped the planet in ways that transcend territorial differences. The effects of this violence widely shared. When you look at coral reefs or water dams, it’s the same story.

I’m originally from the Ebro Delta, a region that’s battled water extraction politics for generations. At 20, I was protesting in Brussels against Spain’s hydrological plan. Now, 25 years later, I’m at the Venice Biennale defending the same delta — trying to release the sediment that sustains its ecosystems. During the opening week in Venice, I remember thinking, “Just three days ago, they opened the gates.” I had no idea why it happened or what triggered it. But the news had been circulating, and the issue had been raised publicly.

You start with the naive hope that maybe you’ve made a tiny shift in the local context. But this fight extends to everyone living in deltas around the world — from sturgeons to eels — ensuring the waterways remain connected and alive. And so I wonder: we have ecological institutions working at a planetary scale, but we lack cultural institutions or activist frameworks that can unite and push back collectively. The systems we face are deeply entrenched, often viewing cultural work as merely symbolic. Yes, they may gesture toward it — but they always count on their power to ultimately override it.

So I keep asking myself: can we exist dangerously through our work? Can we disrupt the status quo in ways that truly affect change?

And then there’s the question of audiences — who comes, who engages. This year, the Biennale has drawn more visitors than in any of the past five years — excluding the pandemic. Of course, Venice has its own challenges with tourism. But I don’t believe all those visitors were architects. I think many were simply citizens genuinely curious about water.

That’s what I’ve loved about Water Pressure over these two years: it’s a process that keeps evolving, growing with each iteration. The real value isn’t just in the static displays — it’s in the dynamic relationships, in the people whose work you include, and how they interconnect with audiences and each other, and how far-reaching that engagement becomes. It’s about involving as many sectors and as many regions of the world as possible.

KOOZWhen designing an exhibition, the aim isn’t to create a showcase, but rather to build an infrastructure of solidarity, an infrastructure of change. Both your projects have done that in distinct ways.

Eva and Mireia, you’ve spent six months not just preparing an exhibition, but creating an entire framework — one that’s manifested physically in Venice, but also digitally through the Atlas you mentioned. And then there’s the book platform, too. So we’re looking at three layers: digital, physical, and printed. What’s fascinating is thinking about how these infrastructures travel, how they're communicated across formats — and how they invite exchange.

What’s the value in working across these mediums? It’s not just logistical — it’s about navigating tensions. It’s about designing spaces that feel dangerous, in the best sense — spaces that challenge, provoke, and stir difference, rather than smoothing things out.

That’s what I find most compelling: understanding how your curatorial approach shaped not just the content, but the very mediums through which the project exists.

EFAbsolutely. And let me also mention the third key figure in this project — Alex Muñoz — whose role was essential alongside Mireia and me. From the outset, we knew a publication had to be part of this, but we also knew we didn’t want a simple documentation of the project, the research, or the processes. Each of those deserved its own distinct vehicle.

So we approached it moment by moment, asking: what’s the best way to record this process? We were experimenting with a new method, and for us, these six months of research were a privilege. In our past work, we hadn’t had the capacity to engage with communities of knowledge in such a transversal, deep way. We didn’t know how this would ultimately be presented at the Venice Biennale — but we started filming from day one.

We worked with a cinematographer to develop a specific aesthetic. We gave him a treatment guide outlining how we wanted each lab to be filmed — so the documentation itself carried intention. Each “Laboratory of Futures” was already this rich, cross-disciplinary space, and after each one, the three of us would sit down — as curators, architects, designers — and try to identify themes and propose speculative responses. These answers helped us reframe the issue each lab was exploring.

We understood this was part of the installations, but for us, the documentation and open access were just as crucial. And yes, we had moments of crisis -I was about to give birth when we won the competition to represent Catalonia in Venice, and my son was 9 months when we opened, Mireia was most of the time in a different time zone teaching in New York or working in Hong Kong and across the planet— sometimes we felt we didn’t have the time, the resources, the capacity to do everything. But there was this constant insistence: “Yes, we can.” So we kept pushing.

The Atlas and the open call became essential — they ensured that the project wasn’t confined to immediate communities but started branching out, connecting different forms of knowledge. Venice, as a platform, has this magnetism. Everyone wants to be part of it in some way. Launching the open call before Venice opened was our way of making the project accessible and porous.

The publication itself evolved. It was originally meant to be part of a series within Quadrents, the magazine of the College of Architects in Catalonia. But we later developed a collaboration with Lars Müller, and — together with Alejandro — we came up with the idea of a lexicon. A glossary that could help shape a new vocabulary around water.

So across new methodologies, new vocabularies, new architectures, new platforms — we were trying to identify, very surgically, where and how to contribute so the project could actually spark something. Each of the four projects we activated are not necessarily interconnected, which is interesting. In fact, just now while we’ve been talking, I messaged partners from the Natural Park in the Ebro Delta asking them to submit to the Atlas — they’re not yet represented. Likewise, we have participants who contributed to the book but not the Atlas.

What we’re doing now, throughout the Biennale, is threading it all together — weaving those relationships, linking those voices. And we hope that continues, especially as the project takes on a new shape next year at the 2026 UIA World Congress in Barcelona. The theme is “Becomings: Architecture in Transition” — which resonates deeply with everything we’ve been building here.

JWThat’s a familiar approach for us — we have a consistent thread running through our research around water, but it manifests in different ways depending on context. Part of that is about choosing the right vehicles, and part of it is remaining open to opportunities: asking where the conversations are heading and following that momentum.

One important dimension I’d add is the role of the academic advisory boards we work with. For Water Pressure, we’ve collaborated with King’s College London, TU Delft, Hamburg’s Hafen City University and key figures like Henk Ovink, Executive Director of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water. These advisors have been instrumental not just in shaping our approach to the challenges, but also in offering feedback to architects and designers from scientific perspectives — grounding ideas in real-world data and practice.

Equally important, though, is exposing these advisors to artistic, architectural, and design-based ways of thinking about the water crisis. It creates a meaningful dialogue between disciplines that often operate in silos. And that’s where I think the most exciting work begins — where mutual perspectives evolve.

The debates with our advisory board have been consistently engaging. It’s powerful to watch their shift in perspective once they see the projects we’re working on and how these ideas circulate. It also helps to reframe the conversation — not as one about an “industry,” but rather about a culture. A water culture that grows and evolves.

The way we currently talk about water is so impoverished — so narrow. So technocratic. We urgently need to expand this conversation into the cultural mainstream.

Given how expansive this topic is, it was crucial to anchor the exhibition in deep research. Jane’s personal practice and the advisory board’s contributions made this possible.At the MAK, we did not want to be “just another venue”, so we included specific works — videos and installations — that add an emotional layer to the exhibition topics or explore the narrative through an artistic lens.

What resonated earlier — and thank you to April and others for voicing this — is the shift from viewing water as a resource to seeing it as an organism, a kin, a non-human being we’re in relationship with. This dimension runs parallel to the scientific work: integrating low-tech, ecological, and traditional knowledge systems. Not just indigenous perspectives from the Amazon, for example, but ancestral and local wisdom from here — ways of engaging with water that are more mindful, more embedded in culture. I would often remind visitors in our curator tours: we don’t always need to look far to find profound knowledge. Our own ancestors knew how to use water moderately, and how to embrace a water culture.

And that term — “water culture” — which Jane introduced, has become pivotal. “What is water culture?” It's intuitive, the concept is clear, and it touches on something deep. It’s currently neglected, mostly because it’s been rendered invisible.

That idea of invisibility shaped a core part of our exhibition design at the MAK. The museum hall has no interior walls — just windows — so we used the terracotta-colored drainage pipes from an Austrian manufacturer to structure the space. These pipes are providing orientation within the exhibition while also visualizing something we don’t usually see: the invisible flow of water through infrastructure, through sanitation systems.

Invisible and virtual water — water embedded in daily processes we rarely acknowledge — is a massive theme. Water culture has everything to do with visibility. If you meet at a fountain, it’s about more than a gathering spot — it’s about symbolic connection. I’m thinking here of our intro-piece at the MAK exhibition, Julian Charrière’s “burning fountain”, the video “And Beneath it all Flows Liquid Fire”, where water is replaced by fire, invoking the origin of the water cycle itself: magma from the Earth’s core, vapor rising, life beginning.

EFA data fountain is part of this trilogy we've built. The data fountain reimagines the space where we receive water — turning it into a site where we contribute to a water project. It’s not just a physical object but a symbolic transformation. It’s about shifting the function and meaning of infrastructure, making it active, generative — a node of exchange and knowledge.

I think there could be an entire exhibition dedicated solely to fountains. They’re such potent, symbolic objects — provocative in how they shape the urban imagination.

In Barcelona, which has nearly 3,000 fountains, we proposed using them to spark public conversation and generate a new typology. As speculative as the idea might sound, what if fountains were spaces where you bring your water to be analyzed? You’d learn its composition, its origins — and maybe that knowledge would drive change in your building’s infrastructure, or shift how you understand your political relationship to water systems.

JWMaking water tangible again is so important. We’ve grown abstracted from it — we take this clean, clear, colorless liquid for granted, simply because it flows from the tap. But we’ve stopped appreciating not just water but also the differences between waters, the subtle variations in their content. That’s part of our reductive relationship with it. We’ve lost a rich, nuanced understanding.

We need to reconnect not only with how to use water sustainably, but also with the joy and pleasure it brings — the closeness we once had. That’s one reason we collect water stories for the exhibition: to show this tangible, living relationship. Because if you don’t care about something — if you don’t feel for it — you’re unlikely to treat it respectfully and responsibly. Connection leads to responsible stewardship.

So yes, it’s about rekindling a love for water. And we’ve had a fantastic time working with objects from the MAK collection that illustrate these connections. For instance, we’ve included striking Chinese dragon figures — long regarded as guardians of water.

MWWe also included water samples as part of the traveling show, each one unique to its host city. And along with those, we introduced a sonic layer: audio recordings of rainfall, the sea, a creek, even the draining of a bathtub. These additions were meant to deepen the audience’s awareness of water as something far beyond just a usable resource.

JWFor many reasons, museums tend to be afraid of including water in exhibitions. But at MAK we’ve been able to find a way around this by exploring it in a micro format. For example: Flow Fountain by Dutch Invertuals where you can follow a single drop released from a dripper as it journeys down a long, snaking path lined with hydrophobic felt. It becomes a shape-shifting , mesmerizing droplet — its movement delicate and slow. And then, at the end, something quite tragic happens : the drop falls onto a hot plate and sizzles.

What’s remarkable is people’s fascination with this minute amount of water. It holds as much wonder and drama as a grand, generous fountain. So maybe these kinds of gestures are our “fountains for an age of scarcity”.

MLOne of the most powerful aspects of both exhibitions has been our commitment to working across such diverse forms of representation — from the video to the book, from the data visualisation to the manifesto, from the architectural structures that contain water to the localized knowledge developed in our Laboratory of Futures. We’ve moved fluidly between transdisciplinary and global modes, developing a lexicon shaped by voices from around the world and exploring water through audio, video, and spatial installation.

This approach reflects a fundamental shift — not just in exhibiting architectural forms, but in what we call projective architectures. Some are speculative, others literal or conceptual, but all are outward-looking. They’re not self-referential; they’re designed to foster social transformation. Because the current crisis is also a crisis of representation.

That’s why we were so thrilled when they opened the sediment gates — it felt like a symbolic echo of what this work aims to do. And after the Laboratories of Futures, collaborators from other disciplines asked us, "When are we doing this again?" These conversations need to keep happening. Climate change demands that we rethink our relationship with water — and we still have time to do it.

To reach broader audiences and create meaningful impact, we must also rethink what an exhibition is.

KOOZAs a final question — since we've explored where the exhibitions have been and where they’re heading — it’s wonderful to see how, Jane, your project has traveled extensively and is now landing at the MAK. And Mireia and Eva, it’s exciting that your initiative will be presented within the framework of the UIA.

Beyond these formats and locations, I’m curious how you envision continuing the conversation around water ecologies within your practices. Are there plans for workshops, academic collaborations, new platforms?

Where do these discussions go from here — how do we keep them alive in the months to come?

Jane, it's also amazing to think that you've been engaging with this topic since 2008. I can only imagine what your work will look like 15 years from now. So just to close, I’d love to hear how each of you imagine nurturing these exchanges and networks you’ve so carefully built.

JWI see this as part of an ongoing, long-term dialogue — a stream of thought that branches into many tributaries through different projects. The next phase for Water Pressure is to develop a book, one that draws not only from the physical exhibition but also from its digital dimension.

Right now, there's an offshoot project called the Wonderwater Café, part of the exhibition Thirst at the Wellcome Collection in London. It's a collaboration with Professor Naho Mirumachi at King’s College London, exploring virtual water and the relationship between water and food — an increasingly crucial area as we see from the food shortages in the wake of drought in Europe. The project is staged live in the Wellcome Cafe so visitors can see the water footprint of the food they choose.I’ll be speaking at the Cervantino Festival in Mexico in October on exhibition making around water and we will be planning future iterations of Water Pressure that address different contexts. What I also find important is another dimension that often gets overlooked — the pleasure of water, especially through bathing. We've co-founded a platform called The Culture of Bathing on Substack, which explores bathing traditions, the social renaissance around it, and its deeper cultural significance. These tangible water rituals are something we've lost and urgently need to reclaim and reshape.

MWWe just held a wonderful event last week in the MAK garden as part of Water Pressure — we called it “The Pool Party Without a Pool.” It was co-hosted with Schwimmverein Donaukanal, a collective of people who swim in the Danube Canal, which is often considered dirty or unsuitable for recreation. But that’s not really the case — it’s a natural body of water, and people have been swimming there for ages.

As a public museum, we hosted the event in the museum garden as a sort of invitation — those who felt inspired could follow the swimmers to this bigger, natural pool and then return to the museum. The gathering sparked a great conversation around water quality and how we relate to water physically — beyond the typical chlorinated pools and controlled environments. Even though the Danube Canal is a manmade flood-control structure, it still offers a kind of raw, direct connection to water.

On another note, there is the “MAKplus” series — a program designed by our education department in collaboration with artist Regina Hügli, who I’m sure Jane knows. Regina is the founder of the One Body of Water / Equator Aquatic / Equator Collective platform, and she’s created a game-like structure to engage school groups around the topic of water. It’s tailored to younger audiences in a way that’s playful yet thought-provoking.

EFWhat this project has generated is a series of tools — not just for design, but for negotiation, storytelling, collective imagining. These tools now exist both out in the world and within us, ready to support institutions, organizations, and frameworks that often extend far beyond architectural discourse or design practice. That’s where I find the most potential: helping those entities rethink themselves through eco-social frameworks and more-than-human perspectives.

In the past month, I’ve been invited into conversations with individuals and collectives who have absolutely no connection to architecture or design. Yet they’re eager to explore these frameworks — to rethink their positions through the lens of ecology, social transformation, and interconnection. That’s something the project has allowed us to do: to practice from a more entangled and relational perspective.

I also love how the project is generating unexpected experiments — legal provocations, technological rituals, new forms of knowledge production. We’re seeing an effort to reintroduce voice to bodies of water, from rivers to aquifers, and to unpack both their symbolic and political dimensions, alongside legal and practical implications.

Sound is one part of that. Two entries in the book address hydroacoustics — sound pollution, and how it becomes a site for action and intervention. Honestly, we could spend the next 100 years trying to unfold the architectures of water in all their complexity. But perhaps the most impactful thing we can do is connect people — especially those with divergent or overlapping forms of expertise. That’s the real power.

We’re currently in conversation with TBA21 in Venice and hope to confirm an event before the Biennale closes — so we can offer a concrete point of reference. With any luck, we’ll host another Laboratory of Futures, allowing the project to continue in its original form. But I have no doubt it will evolve in surprising and necessary directions.

That’s what excites me most: realizing that as architects, we can be truly useful contributors to these complex societal conversations. Not as specialists in space alone — but as facilitators of layered, interdisciplinary dialogue.

About

Water Parliaments: Projective Ecosocial Architectures studies the codependent relationships between humans and non-humans, and the water systems on which they are based, in order to propose hopeful future scenarios. Droughts and other periods of water stress urge us to rework the frameworks of political, economic, and spatial agendas. In this sense, far from considering water as a mere object of exploitation, the project highlights how different bodies of water connect humans, animals, plants, minerals, architectures, stories, legends, languages, and traditions, building a cultural landscape. https://waterparliaments.org/

WATER PRESSURE: Designing for the Future focuses on water as a resource between scarcity and excess; it combines the creative power of design, art, and architecture with visionary concepts from science to address the global challenge of not only preserving the unique and vital substance of water but also using it more sustainably and equitably in the long term. Across five chapters, WATER PRESSURE presents scenarios that look into the future, raising awareness about the vital resource of water and aiming to improve water justice.

Bios

Eva Franch i Gilabert (Delta de l’Ebre, 1978) is an architect, curator, educator and researcher based in Barcelona, Prague, and New York. With a focus on curatorial activism and planetary pedagogies and practices, her work articulates global aspirations from local perspectives through the creation of new narratives and potential futures. Franch is co-founder of FAST, a research and curatorial platform working across architecture, environmental imaginaries, and civic technology. Franch is a professor at UMPRUM, the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague, Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University GSAPP and a Distinguished Professor at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Art. She has directed institutions such as the AA Architectural Association in London and Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, and has taught at Cooper Union, Princeton SoA, Rice University and Columbia University GSAPP, among others. A leading voice in international architecture, she has curated over 30 exhibitions worldwide, from Taipei to Buenos Aires and Berlin, exploring the future through art, design, and architecture.

Mireia Luzárraga (Madrid, 1981) and Alejandro Muiño (Barcelona, 1982) lead the architecture and research studioTAKK, based in Barcelona and New York. Their work integrates feminism and ecology to promote fairer living environments. Luzárraga is Assistant Professor at Columbia University GSAPP in New York, and both are visiting professors at the University of Tokyo. They have received awards such as "Design Vanguard 2024" and "FAD 2023" and their work is featured in collections including the FRAC Centre, Vitra Design Museum, and DHub Barcelona.

Jane Withers is a leading curator, writer and design consultant based in London. Employing innovative design thinking to address cultural, commercial and societal challenges, the studio offers a considered approach and multi-disciplinary services including strategic thinking, publishing, programme development and curation. Jane Withers has a particular interest in raising awareness of environmental issues and inspiring change through design. The studio draws on an extensive network of architects, designers and professional and academic experts from different fields as collaborators on each project. Jane has created critically acclaimed exhibitions and programmes s at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Royal Academy of Arts among many others and teaches, writes and talks internationally.

Marlies Wirth is a curator and art historian based in Vienna, specializing in contemporary cross-media practices. As Curator for Digital Culture and Head of the Design Collection at the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, her curatorial work critically engages with the transformations of the Anthropocene through the lens of art, design and architecture. Recent exhibitions include Troika.Terminal Beach, /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual and Invocation for Hope by Superflux. She is currently representing Austria at the Triennale Milano International Exhibition with Soft Image, Brittle Grounds by Felix Lenz while working on the first institutional exhibition on Helmut Lang. Through lectures, publications, and juries, she contributes to the international discourse on the cultural dimensions of technology and ecology.