Hydro-Logical Architecture

This paper offers the beginnings of a hydro-logical design approach – a systems-oriented, water-centric manner of conceptualizing architecture:

• tracing the journey of water through a site as a way to begin to internalize impacts that have historically been external to architectural design
• identifying synergies amongst water system elements
• (re)defining the system as a coupling of architecture and environment
• narrating the steps in the architecture-environment system

Two interrelated motivations guide this undertaking: (1) a growing realization of the exciting and important design implications that follow from foregrounding water concerns in architecture, and (2) an interest in the ways such a focus allows for the identification of interconnections, including the many functional synergies to be derived between sustainable architecture and ecologically functional urban landscapes.

keywords: Water, architecture, hydro-logical, decentralized, passive