in the terrain of water

Water is everywhere before it is somewhere. It is rain before it is rivers, it soaks before it flows, it spreads before it gathers, it blurs before it clarifies. Water at these moments in the hydrological cycle is not easy to picture in maps or contain within lines. It is, however, to these waters that people are increasingly turning to find innovative solutions to the myriad water-related crises that catalyze politics, dynamics, and fears. Is it not time to re-invent our relationship with water see water as not within, adjoining, serving or threatening settlement, but the ground of settlement? Could this be the basis of a new vocabulary of place, history, and ecology? And can the field of design, by virtue of its ability to articulate and re-visualize, lead in constructing this new vocabulary? University Pennsylvania School of Design will be hosting "In the Terrain of Water" at Meyerson Hall on April 1-2, 2011. This two-day symposium will feature a series of dialogues, exhibits, workshops, and talks, enlisting contemporary thinkers who are willing to go beyond addressing water simply as a design opportunity or an environmental challenge. Participants are coming from across disciplines and the globe. A gallery exhibit coordinated with the symposium will feature archived drawings and other works by Narendra Juneja, Ian McHarg, Louis Kahn, Lawrence Halprin, as well as works by current faculty, including James Corner, Dilip da Cunha, and Jenny Sabin. Symposium participants include: Teng Chye Khoo, executive director of the Centre for Liveable Cities; Mihir Shah, co-founder of Samaj Pragati Sahayog, one of India's largest grass-roots initiatives for water and livelihood security; film-maker Peter Hutton; UNESCO consultant Pietro Laureano; Diebedo Francis Kere, winner of the 2009 Global Award for Sustainable Architecture; Ila Berman, architect and founding director of New Orleans URBANBuild; biologist and applied ecologist John Todd; as well as architects, landscape architects, and planners including Kongjian Yu, Anne Spirn, Hans Venhuizen, Elizabeth Mossop, and Tilman Latz. (CEU credit will be available for registered landscape architects) MORE INFO: http://www.tinyurl.com/terrainofwater REGISTER: http://penndesign.ticketleap.com/in-the-terrain-of-water/