2015
When the Greek philosopher Thales talked about “water” as the origin of all life, he didn’t just refer to water as the material-origin of life, but for him it was also about its mystical powers and higher ontological nature. For San Antonio water is fundamental to the understanding of the cultural history of the city; from the colonial acequías or the modern-day Riverwalk, water nourishes our imagination of San Antonio’s urban geography. The research study had the goal to expand our understanding of water as an urban (World Heritage) landscape in San Antonio. The idea was not only to look at water as commodity or catalyst for new urban development, but to cast wider nets and establish a more nuanced perspective to redefine water as an ecologically, economically and culturally sensitive geography for San Antonio. The question is not how the historic relationships between water irrigation and urban settlements have informed urbanization, but how the fluidity and its underlying frameworks (historic, economic, cultural) are potentials for contested and opportunistic sites for future urbanization in San Antonio. At stake is the improvement of the quality of human life in urban agglomerations in close relationship to fostering the services provided by natural systems. But there is also a need to (re)-conceptualize infrastructures, networks and systems that challenge the current limits of landscape urbanism, preservation and the architectural domain. Within this context we aim to enlarge the discourse of landscape urbanism, preservation and architecture by promoting a better understanding of cities as landscape systems. We hope to fuel a debate on how to treat our land and infrastructure, and create an awareness of the interconnectedness of an emergent urban landscape and its cultural history.
Team members: Antonio Petrov, Fernando Morales, Aaron Welch, Pablo Chavez
