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My final project for the Rome term was the re- development of a piazza, aiming to show wa- ter once again for what it is: our most valuable resource. Every morning, water arrives through a myriad of channels, flooding the piazza; and every evening it is drained away, returning the piazza to the city. It is through this water cycle that a now-dormant site is awakened. In our globalised world no project is only local, and I thought of Alfredo Payá Benedito’s Alicante University Museum, constructed in Spain in 1998. Built on what was once the outer edge of the Roman Empire, this museum uses wa- ter to transform an orange, fiery building into a cool element seemingly natural to its site. Many Roman emperors, born at the edge of the Empire, brought the energy of the periph- ery back to its centre – much as I believe we now must do, bringing the energy of the past to the forefront.
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I have returned to Canada, but not without absorbing my own lesson of Rome: when one uses water in design, it speaks to both the loft- iest of aspirations and to the most fundamen- tal of requirements. If we are to adjust to a world with little water, we will, as was done in the past, have to think of water as more than something that comes effortlessly out of a tap. Once again we will need to render it precious, symbolising the role and power water has in our lives. D
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