2010_2011 Lecture Series: Excavating Innovation: The History and Future of Drylands Design

The human need for water has ordered landscapes, given rise to culture, and shaped architecture + urban form throughout history. Excavating Innovation: The History and Future of Drylands Design examines the role of water engineering in shaping public space and city form, by using arid and semi-arid sites in India, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and the New World to explore how dryland water systems throughout history have formed and been formed by ritual, hygiene, gender, technology, governance, markets, and, perhaps above all, power. Excavating Innovation: The History and Future of Drylands Design brings together historians, urbanists, and contemporary designers to selectively excavate global historical case studies and reveal relevance to contemporary design practice. The series asks, in all cases: - How are ancient environments still contemporary? - How have systems been designed to adapt, or fail, in the face of change? - In a period of hydrologic uncertainty brought on by climate change, what strategies does the archeological record offer contemporary drylands design? Participants include: Katherine Rinne: The Waters of Rome: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Birth of the Baroque City Thursday, October 7th, 2010 Fletcher Jones Auditorium 7:00 pm Aziza Chaouni + Liat Margolis: Out of Water:  Innovative Technologies in Arid Climates Thursday, November 11th, 2010 7:00 pm Morna Livingston: Steps to Water: The Ancient Stepwells of India Thursday, November 18th, 2010 7:00 pm Nan Ellin, PhD: Canalscape: Ancient and Contemporary Infrastructures of Phoenix Thursday, January 27th, 2011 7:00 pm Vinayak Bharne: Indigenous Infrastructure and the Urban Water Crisis: Perspectives from Asia Thursday, February 10th, 2011 7:00 pm Other participants pending. Find out more at: http://aridlands.woodbury.edu/public_programs/lectures.html