Ri

Tr
a
ns
na
tio
na
lC
om
WATER FROM MULTIPLE EXTRACTIONS
SPACES OF COMMODITY VS HUMAN
TERRITORY OF POLITICAL CONSTITUENCIES

LONDON UK

THE GEOPOLITICS OF WATER EXPORTING

 LIQUID
INFRASTRUCTURE
Ta n k er S

re
uctu
Po l i t

astr
Pip

ical

h ip

fr
elin

Igno

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ot

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teste
Con
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ity

CAPITAL CIT
WATER STOR

MARSEILLES FR - WATER IS EXTRACTED UNDER PRIVATE MANAGEMENT

WATER PIPED ACROSS LAND UNDER GOVERNMENTAL REGULATION AND

SHIPPED TO UK UNDER PRIVATE REGULATION

Transnational Spaces of Water

2
0
BOOK
1
ABSTRACT
2
FLOWS

Timothy Gale Fall 2010 Transnational Spaces of Water A Hydropolitical Morphology

Thesis Preparation
B Infrastructural Space of Water
liquidinfrastructure.info
C Water as Commodity
Advisors:
Brendan Moran D Territorialization
Julia Czerniak
E Methodology
 The physical infrastructures of the twentieth century - those of roads, rail, sewage, water,
air, data, amongst others - have tended to operate as singular and independent sys-
tems. The infrastructures of the twenty-first century must investigate relationships and
transparencies - to the pairing of infrastructure and landscape, infrastructure and public
amenities, infrastructure and architecture.

Liquid infrastructure utilizes water

to illustrate and examine the flows
that administer the this process:
flows of social power, labour, infor-
mation, capital, and resources that
produce the contemporary urban
landscape.

3
TERRITORY XXL
4
SPECULATIONS
5
NOTES
A Politics: Corporation + State + Citizenry A Urban Water Territories Glossary

B Infrastructure: Water Tower C Water Embassy Bibliography

C Space: Human + Water D Water Vault

D Site: EU + London

4
The ownership of water supply systems by transnational privatized consortia are radically
changing cities and the way we live. Therefore, contemporary urbanisms and the water
infrastructures which support them are becoming complex due to geopolitical power rela-
tionships. But the public is basically unaware. The political and physical realities of water
infrastructural management are creating conflict between governments, corporations and
urban citizenry. Urban water systems are becoming contested territories of public access/
ownership and city municipalities are becoming marginalized by private interest. By investi-
gating the dialectic between territories of water and urban need, one can study it effects at
a local and transnational condition, enabling geopolitical forces to manifest in a productive
rethinking of urban form and public infrastructural access.
The project produces an architecture that does not attempt to solve the conflicting con-
ditions that exist in London and the greater European Union. The project explores the
ramifications of a continuous infrastructural network linking the fragmented urban fabric
of private infrastructural enclaves within urban form. When it is possible to imagine what
is happening in the extended matrix of connectivity every time a tap is opened, it is pos-
sible to see the opportunity at each junction and to imagine private ritual and public life
enhanced through the process.

Thus the project proposes a new radical programmatic hybrid institution which redefines
the government as an institution no longer exclusively dedicated to the representation of
politics, but as an information store where all potent forms of flows are presented equally
and legibly. In an age where the territory of water resources are transnational, the cura-
tion government and corporation interaction and their content [infrastructure] is vital for
public awareness. This new coupling of architecture, infrastructure and politics is vital.
The form becomes the action.

6
?

HYDROSPATIAL
LANDSCAPES OF WATER
The 21st century will be defined by our collectively growing need for water. Paradoxically,
impending water shortages and crises are changing the rapid patterns of urbanization by
requiring urban form to simultaneously adapt to water need and water defense. Increasingly
required is elaborate infrastructures/systems to source, divert, collect and transport this liquid
substance to our urban centres. How can the infrastructural complex integrate in accordance
with the urban landscape to create a balance between infrastructure, social program, and
ecological existence to develop a new productive urban paradigm in an increasingly de-public
realm?

Cities relationship to water has existed since the urban form prevailed. Water is conceptual-
ized in the human experience in cultural, societal, ritualistic, and need basis. New forms of
water production are occurring due do increasing urban densities and geologically changing
environments. Globalization and urban need have created prolific political situations between
private corporations and pubic states which serve the urban citizenry. The combination of the
existing and new infrastructures is creating new territories of water control and in turn produc-
ing new spatial relationships between these emerging/existing spaces of water.

“Total Design has two meanings: first, what might be called the implosion of design,
the focusing of design inward on a single intense point; second, what might be called
the explosion of design, the expansion of design out to touch every possible point in the
world.” - Mark Wigley from “What Ever Happen to Total Design?”

Resources are complex in relationship to human beings. Water is said to be the next oil. Water
can not only be viewed as a resource and precious life force on our planet. It needs to be dis-
cussed in the context of a greater global complexity based on the political, social, economic,
and situations of crises are constantly the multiple contingencies that direct and control how
urban societies think and physically manifest their infrastructures. How, where, and why can
architecture intervene in this complex system? It is the assertion of this document - it is im-
perative that architecture and the role of the designer not only understand the forces shaping
this discourse, but to provide agency in highlighting issues. What design potentials exist, in
this expanding liquid landscape?

The European Union present a clear example of water infrastructural management and
ownership. The landscape of water that this project deals with is territorial - the XXL. Infra-
structural management of water across continent, country and city boundaries is complex and
not understood. The opportunity for design analysis, critique, connection and intervention to
highlight the absurd flows of water informed by virtual/physical containment of the infrastruc-
tural and geopolitical. This allows for new pairings of program, infrastructure and resource.
Redrawn Buckminster Fuller Map of Earth Land Network Connections

30% of the Earth is Land

70% of the Earth is Water 100% of the Cities Import Water

Redrawn Buckminster Fuller Map of Earth Water Network Connections. The ‘water map’ representation of the world demonstrates
the connectivity of water based transit - the movement of resources. It also is a different way of viewing the networks - water based
connectivity differs in spatial interpretation of flows. Vectors of connection demonstrate flows of proximity.
8
1

ABSTRACT
TRANSNATIONAL SPACES OF WATER
“If politics means making decisions that divide, then nothing divides quite like the kilo-
metres of concrete and steel that make up a freeway or rail line. By understanding infra-
structure as the ‘structuring of access’ we foreground the way it unevenly redistributes
opportunity (and cost) in accordance with power. As such it forms a crucible for political
activity.” - Kazys Varnelis from “The Infrastructure City: Network Ecologies”

The effects of transnational privatized consortia are radically changing water supply systems
in relation to cities and the way we live. Contemporary urbanisms and the water infrastruc-
tures which support them are becoming complex due to geopolitical power relationships.
The political and physical realities of water infrastructural management are creating conflict
between governments, corporations and urban citizenry. Urban water systems are becom-
ing contested and situations of public access/ownership and city municipalities are becom-
ing marginalized by private interest. Within the water supply system, storage of freshwater
become the most important moment of public intervention.

This project contends that water storage are places where solved conflict and political ambi-
guity can manifest to highlight the absurdity of this situation in the most cogent form. By in-
vestigating the dialectic between territories of water and urban need, one can study it effects
at a local and transnational condition, enabling geopolitical forces to manifest in a productive
rethinking of urban form and infrastructural access. Design and architecture need to position
the discourse in emergent opportunities.

This project contends that design and architecture can insert itself into the infrastructural
landscape and can take on new roles of influence. Territories of water importation and expor-
tation are absurd.

This project explores how new forms of water storage tower infrastructure might be extrapo-
lated from geopolitical contention – in this case, materializing architectural form from the
political interstices of the World Trade Organization General Agreements on Privatizing Urban
Services. The water tower is an access point to represent the greater territory. London, as
other countries situated in the European Union, locates resources needed for its urban inhab-
itants often within other countries.

The General London Council’s [GLC] termination in the 1980’s and the beginning of the
Greater London Administration [GLA] in the 2000’s provides a shift for how the city thought
about water storage for the urban environment. The function of storage was until 1990 solved
with the construction of water for other usages. From 1990 water structures have been exclu-
sively built for storage. The water tower as symbol and physical storage in the urban environ-
ment is traditionally historically - the new tower represents the territory of flows and operation.
 01*,2!
SOURCE

ZONE OF CONTENTION
STORAGE FOR TREATMENT
0/1,-3!):1,)/,!-/5!7/

ZONE OF JUXTAPOSITION
2;!-70673
CLEANSING =17!)1:)>*?/-4106/617

STORAGE FOR DISTRIBUTION

0/1,-3!):1,)*0!
ZONE OF CONTENTION

DISTRIBUTION
860/,69*/617
 IS R
PA
FRANCE

EXTRACTION
E
AC
SP
L
IA
TIT
RS
TE
N
DO
N IN
LO
STORAGE
ENGLAND

E
E AC
AC SP
SP G
AL IX
I N
TI
TI M E
RS AL AG
TE ION OR
IN AT ST
WALES
SN
AN ER
EXTRACTION
TR AT
W
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I TI
OL
OP
GE
The project produces an architecture that does not attempt to solve the conflicting con-
ditions that exist in London and the greater EU: water supply access riots, power control
marginalization, and infrastructural territory.

Rather, architecture will be a vehicle to spatialize these forces, bridging the gap between
what is a jarring reality, and an “architectural reality” that suspends judgement in order
to juxtapose and highlight absurd reality, producing a reconceptualization of the current
political, social and urban relationship to water storage as a space of productive infra-
structural influence in revealing and exposing.

The project highlights the absurd - making it the situation transparent. The project ex-
plores the ramifications of a continuous infrastructural network linking the fragmented
urban fabric of private infrastructural enclaves.

If architecture and urban design can be more closely integrated with complex natural and
anthropogenic processes of water extraction/movement/utility, then water in all its forms and
modes of operation can be valued in its many relationships to human existence.

Politics, privatization and institutionalization of natural resources infrastructure of water in

cities is hidden and inadequately understood by the citizenry. However, the buried or hidden
relationships are vital to the successful functioning of the contemporary city. Public rights of
ownership and access are misunderstood, pushed aside or ignored.

The realities of human existence have become increasingly abstracted, complex, and conflict-
ed by global systems, which blind us from their true nature and consequences. It firstly has to
be recognized that crisis occurs when existing models fail.

What is at stake for architecture in the geopolitical organization and management of water?
This project contends that architectural design can highlight the marginalization [invisibility]
of transnational private consortia through revealing and exposing place and agency in the
infrastructural landscape. The relationship between the political state and corporation further
mystifies the complexity of physical space. This dynamic can be termed hydrospatiality.

The European Union presents a clear illustration of current crippling and contentious effects
of water infrastructural privatization on various urban territories. Examples range from the
rapid deterioration of infrastructure and politics in Paris’s urban core in the last ten years; Bel-
gium’s public complete appropriation of water filtration facilities in order to eradicate private
ownerships of water supply; and the use of water pipelines in Germany and Spain to surrepti-
tiously divide urban communities.

Ultimately, this thesis questions the potential absurdity of symbol and hidden strategies
within London by attempting to realize them.

The project explores the ramifications of a continuous infrastructural network linking the
fragmented urban fabric of private infrastructural enclaves within urban form.

When it is possible to imagine what is happening in the extended matrix of connectivity

every time a tap is opened, it is possible to see the opportunity at each junction and to
imagine private ritual and public life enhanced through the process.
 ZONE OF CONTENTION
SOURCE / EXTRACTION

ZONE OF JUXTAPOSITION
INFRASTRUCTURAL TRANSIT
STORAGE FOR TREATMENT
FILTRATION
STORAGE FOR DISTRIBUTION
DISTRIBUTION

ZONE OF CONTENTION

14
CONTEXT
EU WATER+INFRASTRUCTURE
With water infrastructure privatization in the late 1980’s in the EU – new geopolitical
agreements between countries and corporations influenced the management of design
and urban services as well resource agreements. For example, the function of water stor-
age until 1990 was solved with the construction of water for other uses. With new com-
modification of infrastructure and the water within it, design of water structures exclu-
sively for storage began.

Through the re-appropriation of architecture in a metaphorical sense, a re-imagining of

the disciplinary and professional commitments of ‘capital A’ Architecture to include tradi-
tional externalities of political, social, environmental, and various other mediated con-
tents. In doing so, infrastructures becomes the site and subject. Seeking to re-animate
architectural discourse with urban relevance. The twentieth century was witness to both
an infrastructure boom and bust. It is the twenty-first century that will need to determine
not only how to address ineffective infrastructures, but also new geopolitical and trans-
national situations and how to position new infrastructures and program that confront
urgent issues of climate, sustenance, and politics. The opportunity for projecting a future
infrastructure lies in bundling multiple processes with spatial experiences. This project
aims to declare infrastructures as open systems, adaptive and responsive to environ-
ments and occupation of water territories. Operating at a territorial scale, the project
creates new moments of social production and speculation.

The design of infrastructure is therefore open and anticipatory. It has nothing to do with
a specific message; rather, it is the design of the system that makes it possible to send
any number of messages. It is for this reason that infrastructure is broadly democratic. It
represents the investment by the state into systems that allow the movement and ex-
change of information, without specifying the content of that information or the range of
movement. This is not to say that infrastructures are utopian; infrastructures are systems
of control as well. They can be easily regulated by switches and checkpoints, and shut
down when required. And the operation of infrastructural systems depends as much
on maintaining separation as it does in establishing connections. Yet we know there is
always something slightly out of control when infrastructures proliferate.

The physical infrastructures of the twentieth century - those of roads, rail, sewage, water,
air, data, amongst others - have tended to operate as singular and independent sys-
tems. The infrastructures of the twenty-first century must investigate relationships and
transparencies - to the pairing of infrastructure and landscape, infrastructure and public
amenities, infrastructure and architecture.
LONDON WATER SOURCE GEOGRAPHY

RWE

VEOLIA

SUEZ

EU COUNTRIES PRIVATE WATER

EU COUNTRIES PUBLIC WATER

EU COUNTRIES
16
2

FLOWS
Water is not just a resource.
It is also a force of
manipulation and control.

1
ABSTRACT
2
FLOWS
Transnational Spaces of Water A Hydropolitical Morphology

B Infrastructural Space of Water

B Water as Commodity

D Territorialization

E Methodology
3
TERRITORY XXL
4
SPECULATIONS
5
NOTES
A Politics: Corporation + State + Citizenry A Urban Water Territories Glossary

B Infrastructure: Water Tower C Water Embassy Bibliography

C Space: Human + Water D Water Vault

D Site: EU + London

18
2A

FLOWS
UNDERSTANDING HYDRO-
POLITICAL SPATIALIZATION
“If politics means making decisions that divide, then nothing divides quite like the kilo-
metres of concrete and steel that make up a freeway or rail line. By understanding infra-
structure as the ‘structuring of access’ we foreground the way it unevenly redistributes
opportunity (and cost) in accordance with power. As such it forms a crucible for political
activity.” - Kazys Varnelis from “The Infrastructure City: Network Ecologies”

Infrastructurally is inherently political. Water is political. Human beings love to be political.

Thus this project deals with the political. The extension of power dynamics of distribution
have been conflated with the rise of the private corporation. This began as with the state
power failing state administering separate councils to oversee urban services. With massive
economic restructuring in the 1980’s the cities began turning their urban service councils
into private companies. The European Union in the 1990’s gave birth to the first transnational
water corporations. This changed the political dynamics of water distribution at all scales.

But this transformation occurred under governmental valences unknown to the public. In the
early 2000’s the public citizens in European Union countries such as France and Switzerland
commenced a process of riots, protests, political engagement, and infrastructural appropria-
tion as a way to reclaim what is considered public domain.

A new theoretical framework for understanding how decision-makers arbitrate the distribution
of urban resources and in doing so become key agents in the governance and control of the
populations they serve.

The interaction of the state/citizen/corporation transformed through public services.

Politically, the project specifically examines nation states in relation to each other [London,
France and Wales], the World Trade Organization’s [WTO] services council, General Aggree-
ment on Trade Services [GATS] backing by private transnationals in marginalizing cities and
people’s access to water as an urban right. The General London Council’s [GLC] termination
in the 1980’s and the beginning of the Greater London Administration [GLA] in the 2000’s
provides a shift for how the city government of London view of water infrastructure services
predicated on the WTO mandate to privatize water infrastructures.

London is currently controlled, operated and owned by Thames Water, which is a subsidiary
of RWE [the largest water corporation in the world]. The current political landscape situates in
extracting water in France by private means and distributing it to London for public means.
 Citizenry

£ $ € ¥

The State

£ $ € ¥

Corporation

Nature

£ $ € ¥
re
Inf
ctu

ras
tru

tru
ras

ctu
Inf

re

Infrastructure

Water Infrastructure is the lens through which to understand the political, social and urban - the physical territories created by geopo-
litical powers between private and public constituencies. The territory of water infrastructure is a complex power play of the political.
Nature, The State, Corporation and The Citizen are four entities which influence transnational water flow.

These icon symbol representations follow the structure of the book as understanding which of these bodies is functioning in the crea-
tion of the image, diagram, concept and territory.

1 ‘Private Transnational Consortia’ refers to conglomeration of five main Private Water Corporations: Suez, RWE, Vivendi, Veolia,
and BiWater. These corporations are own all of the worlds private water supply through subsidary names. They act transnationally
independent of national government resource regulations.

2 Source: “The Services Council, its Committees and other subsidiary bodies”. World Trade Organization. 2010.
20
 CONTEXT
POLITICAL MORPHOLOGY
In 1850, the Great Stink occurred in London. A complete awareness that the infrastruc-
ture in the city was not working. With this came a new establishment of councils and
boards to oversee the development and large scale management of water systems in
London. Before this, it was done at a very local level not leaving large planning processes
to design the system.

1855 - 1890 Metropolitan Board of Works

1800

1810

1820

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1850

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1870

1880

1890

1900

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2010

2020
The Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) was the principal instrument of London-wide government from
1855 until the establishment of the London County Council in 1889. Its principal responsibility was to
provide infrastructure to cope with London’s rapid growth, which it successfully accomplished. The MBW
was an appointed rather than elected body.

1960 - 1990 Greater London Council

The Greater London Council [GLC] created new responsibility for public transport, road schemes, hous-
ing development and regeneration, as well as creating new systems of potable water to the now increased
London metropolitan area. It established new pumping stations and reservoirs to the west of London.

The Great Stink Privatize Water

1800

1810

1820

1830

1840

1850

1860

1870

1880

1890

1900

1910

1920

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2000

2010

2020

MBW LCC GLC GLA

1970
The Thames Water Authority was founded, under the terms of the Water Act 1973, and took
over the following water supply utilities and catchment area management bodies

1990
Thames Water was privatised as Thames Water Utilities Limited, with the transfer of its
regulatory, river management and navigation responsibilities to the National Rivers Author-
ity, which later became part of the Environment Agency.[6]. The company was listed on the
London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

2001
Thames Water was acquired by the German utility company RWE. Following several years
of criticism about failed leakage targets, RWE managed to buy the company for 8.0 billion
pounds and invest 1 billion in infrastructural development in the first year.

1890 - 1960 London County Council

The London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London, through-
out its 1889–1965 existence, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It
covered the area today known as Inner London and was replaced by the Greater London Council. The LCC was
the largest, most significant and ambitious municipal authority of its day.

1990 - 0000 Greater London Authority

The Greater London Authority [GLA] is a strategic regional authority, with powers over transport, policing, eco-
nomic development, fire and emergency planning. Four functional bodies— Transport for London, Metropoli-
tan Police Authority, London Development Agency and London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority —are
responsible for delivery of services in these areas. The planning policies of the Mayor of London are detailed in
a statutory London Plan that is regularly updated and published.
1800

1810

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1900

1910

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1990

2000

2010

2020

At each transition of the government, ‘Thames Water’ also change. Firstly it was a public council becoming
an agency with private interest and recently becoming a private company bought and traded transnation-
ally by RWE, a German water and utility corporation.

22
2B

FLOWS
INFRASTRUCTURAL SPACE OF
WATER
“If we term everything Infrastructure, then we have defined infrastructure as nothing ...
This raises the question as to what isn’t infrastructure. The answer to this would be to
say that the property of something being infrastructural or not, does not properly belong
to the object itself, it emerges through the relation said object has with other objects.
If this relationship is a dependent one, in which one object relies on the other for its
functioning, then we might say that the second object plays the role of infrastructure.
However if the relation between the objects is characterized by autonomy – that is to say
independence – then we could not say that the object operates infrastructurally.”
- Adrian Lahoud

The infrastructural space of water in this project situates itself in the context of extraction or
sourcing, the flow of transit [pipeline/tanker] and then the storage of water for distribution into
complex connective system of taps and faucets.

London grew tremendously in the hundred years between 1860 and 1960, and infrastruc-
ture was the foundation for that growth. Trains, streetcar lines, streets and highways allowed
inhabitants to rush around with relative ease. As infrastructure filled past capacity and
congestion became bad, the public had faith that the experts would solve the problems by
constructing new infrastructure - always more capacious and more technologically advanced.
But ofcourse, this is not true.

Water Infrastructure was idealized by modernist architects. Take Vers une Architecture, for
example, in which Corbusier extolled the societal transformations that would take place if
only the people were to listen to the architect and the engineer. It was, after all, a matter of
architecture or revolution. For modernists, a plan and the capacity of a clear idea would bring
order to the chaos of the metropolis. In implementing the plan, modern architecture relied on
infrastructure above all else.

A city’s modernity became nearly equivalent to its infrastructure, as evident in Haussmann’s

reconstruction of Paris, the ultra-real technological landscapes of Tony Garnier’s Cite Indus-
trielle, or the wild, electric fantasies of Antonio Sant’Elia’s Citta Nuova. Modern architecture
would be nothing but pastiche without engineering to support it - merely new clothes for an
old body. The engineer, Le Corbusier concluded, ‘puts us in accord with natural law.’ Only
after the engineer laid down a foundation could the architect start to create beauty through
form. The space of water is infrastructural. The infrastructural space of water vast - designed
as spaces for commodity - not spaces for the human.
 £ $ € ¥

London Beckton Water Filtration Treatment Plant. The largest facility in the EU. The security is as high as a maximum security prison.
Water is unloaded from France/Wales and England. This is a transnational space of water. A private infrastructural enclave mixing
water from multiple geographic locations

Urban
e

Inf
tur

ras
ruc

tru
t
ras

ctu
Inf

r
e

Infrastructure

Social Political

London Beckton Water Filtration Treatment Plant. The largest facility in the EU. The security is as high as a maximum security prison.
Water is unloaded from France/Wales and England. This is a transnational space of water. A private infrastructural enclave with
24
2C

FLOWS
WATER AS COMMODITY
“If politics means making decisions that divide, then nothing divides quite like the kilo-
metres of concrete and steel that make up a freeway or rail line. By understanding infra-
structure as the ‘structuring of access’ we foreground the way it unevenly redistributes
opportunity (and cost) in accordance with power. As such it forms a crucible for political
activity.” - Kazys Varnelis1

For historical reasons, three private companies grew up in France over the last century, oper-
ating water concessions for a number of local authorities. This happened nowhere else in the
world, and these three French companies – Suez- Lyonnaise, Vivendi, and SAUR – were the
only water companies in the world which were private, used to operating across a number of
different public authorities, and with the size and capital resources to take advantage of the
fashion for privatization which started in the 1990s. Today, about 5 percent of the world’s wa-
ter is in private hands. The water sector thus has enormous potential for the few multinational
corporations that dominate this market.

A report, Water Justice for All, released in March 2003 shows that water privatization has had
negative impacts on communities in many countries and threatens to affect an increasing
number of people. It reports global and local resistance to the control and commodification of
water.

Civil society demands that access to drinking water be recognized as a universal human right,
in order to ensure that everyone can benefit from water resources. At the same time, it raises
its voice against leaving water exploitation in the hands of private corporations whose only
concern is making a profit from such services. Signed in Lisbon, Valencia (Spain) in 1998,
the Water Manifesto is intended to demonstrate symbolically, politically and technically the
urgent need for a ‘water revolution’.

The globalizing effect and commodification of water is largely due to the spatial commodifica-
tion of property and infrastructure. The way in which people understand water is inherently a
commodification of substance and resource. Water is a human need and want. Thus eve-
ryone needs it, especially the difficulty of urban centres. With the commodification of water
infrastructure into private interest, water became an economic good, a commodity.

In the past, governments unanimously believed access to basic human services such as
water, healthcare and education should not be included in trade agreements because these
were essential components of citizenship. However, the World Trade Organization [WTO] and
the General Agreement on Urban Services [GAUS] erodes these basic human rights.
WALES FRANCE ENGLAND

SECTION TROUGH WATER TANKER

26
2D

FLOWS
TERRITORIALIZATION
In the context of the state public power, Foucault’s conception of governmentality in ana-
lysing the relational dynamics of power within a decentralized landscape of water gov-
ernance. Modes of governmentality refer to ‘forms of calculated practice [internally and
externally] in the government structure to direct categories of social agency.5 The prac-
tice of the everyday is normalized to conform to a particular political frameworks, both
public and private. Foucault refers to this diffusion of government control via a range
of practices as the ‘governmentalization of the state’. Political power in this instance is
located beyond the state as governmentality does not confine political activity to central
executive activities or formal law-making bodies.6 In the instance of PP’s, power assumes
some degree of reciprocity, sublimating opposition forces through ‘persuasion’, ‘incen-
tives’ with the aim of earning consent.
Globally, cities water supply systems operate in three systems of management. The first being
a completely public system operated by public government agencies. The second system be-
comes a step between completely public governance to completely private governance. With
the expansion of cities and industrial growth, cities sought to charter private government insti-
tutions to manage specific public functions of the urban water system. ‘Private partnerships‘
were established the growth of Public-Private Partnerships [PPP’s] in the delivery of essential
services to urban residents which has been articulated as a form of decentralized service
delivery that makes the water services more efficient and ultimately tries to bring governance
structures closer to the people.1 The third and more recent phenomena is the complete pri-
vatization of water supply infrastructure which renders the governance of the system separate
from the citizen and the urban municipality. These three systems of urban water governance
are linear in their respective developments.

Currently due to the multiple systems of management and the development of how we
consider water’s role in the urban environment, water is being revalued and re-presented as
a scarce economic good. With this shift, the triangular relationships between the external pro-
vider, the state and the citizen - the three critical agents in the delivery of water - spatially pro-
vide new forms of political action with the ascent of the neo-liberal paradigm. In this discus-
sion the external provider is the private transnational consortia operating out of self interest
and transcending governmental/political boundaries of resource extraction and distribution.

When the corporation is given the leading role in fostering connection between the citizen
instead of the government, to mode of interaction is one of ‘customer management’ in order
to alleviate and resolve the economic constraints facing the state as well as educating users
 Central London Storage Facility

Abbey Mills Water Processing Plant

Croyton Water Import/Filtration

Hyde Park London

Beckton Water Import/Filtration/Storage

Territories of water storage, filtration and import infrastructure.

28
2E

FLOWS
METHODOLOGY
“The object of art - like every other product - creates a public which is sensitive to art
and enjoys beauty. Production thus not only creates an object for the subject, but also a
subject for the object.” - Karl Marx

“I find it more interesting to understadn the city no longer as tissue, but more as mere
coexistence, a series of relationships between objects that are almost never articulated in
visual or formal ways, no longer ‘caught’ in architectural connections.” - Rem Koolhass

A part of my process as an architecture student, artist and designer I feel the need to briefly
explain the methodology I use and is being deployed in this thesis. I will be candid. I am inter-
ested in concept and the ability for representation to express concept.

Mapping and juxtaposing internal relationships to the thesis is pertinent in understanding terri-
tory. The rigor of working through concept and artistic vision allows for graphic interpretation of
place and site.
Overlay of water scaffolding.

30
3

TERRITORY
The global absurdity of our
cities and lifestyles depend
on absurd situations and
landscapes of infrastructure.

1
ABSTRACT
2
FLOWS
Transnational Spaces of Water A Hydropolitical Morphology

B Infrastructural Space of Water

B Water as Commodity

D Territorialization
3
TERRITORY XXL
4
SPECULATIONS
5
NOTES
A Politics: Corporation + State + Citizenry A Transnational Public Water Embassy Glossary

B Infrastructure: Water Tower B Reclaiming the Water Tower/Storage Bibliography

C Space: Human + Water C The Transnational Water Tower

D Site: EU + London D Re-Drawing Water Territories

32
3A

TERRITORY
POLITICS: CORPORATION +
STATE + CITIZENRY
“The object of art - like every other product - creates a public which is sensitive to art
and enjoys beauty. Production thus not only creates an object for the subject, but also a
subject for the object.” - Karl Marx

“I find it more interesting to understadn the city no longer as tissue, but more as mere
coexistence, a series of relationships between objects that are almost never articulated in
visual or formal ways, no longer ‘caught’ in architectural connections.” - Rem Koolhass

A part of my process as an architecture student, artist and designer I feel the need to briefly
explain the methodology I use and is being deployed in this thesis. I will be candid. I am inter-
ested in concept and the ability for representation to express concept.

The surveillance of public behaviour in readying for March against Private Services; London 2008.
MAPPING  GLOBAL  WATER  SUPPLY  CORPORATISATION
CITIES  SERVED  BY  TRANSNATIONAL  CORPORATIONS

MAPPING  GLOBAL  WATER  SUPPLY  CORPO

CITIES  SERVED  BY  TRANSNATIONAL  CORPORATIONS

151

106

151

106
32

32
countries  /  resisted  privately  owned  water  supply

countries  /  private  owned  water  supply  Suez/Veolia/RWE

countries  /  private  owned  water  supply  ENDED

countries  /  private  owned  water  supply  MAJOR  ISSUES countries  /  resisted  privately  owned  water  supply

cities  /  private  owned  water  supply  ENDED countries  /  private  owned  water  supply  Suez/Veolia/RWE

cities  /  private  owned  water  supply  MAJOR  ISSUES countries  /  private  owned  water  supply  ENDED

countries  /  private  owned  water  supply  MAJOR  ISSUES 34

cities  /  private  owned  water  supply  ENDED

CONTEXT
EU WATER+INFRASTRUCTURE
With water infrastructure privatization in the late 1980’s in the EU – new geopolitical
agreements between countries and corporations influenced the management of design
and urban services as well resource agreements. For example, the function of water stor-
age until 1990 was solved with the construction of water for other uses. With new com-
modification of infrastructure and the water within it, design of water structures exclu-
sively for storage began.

Through the re-appropriation of architecture in a metaphorical sense, a re-imagining of

the disciplinary and professional commitments of ‘capital A’ Architecture to include tradi-
tional externalities of political, social, environmental, and various other mediated con-
tents. In doing so, infrastructures becomes the site and subject. Seeking to re-animate
architectural discourse with urban relevance. The twentieth century was witness to both
an infrastructure boom and bust. It is the twenty-first century that will need to determine
not only how to address ineffective infrastructures, but also new geopolitical and trans-
national situations and how to position new infrastructures and program that confront
urgent issues of climate, sustenance, and politics. The opportunity for projecting a future
infrastructure lies in bundling multiple processes with spatial experiences. This project
aims to declare infrastructures as open systems, adaptive and responsive to environ-
ments and occupation of water territories. Operating at a territorial scale, the project
creates new moments of social production and speculation.

The design of infrastructure is therefore open and anticipatory. It has nothing to do with
a specific message; rather, it is the design of the system that makes it possible to send
any number of messages. It is for this reason that infrastructure is broadly democratic. It
represents the investment by the state into systems that allow the movement and ex-
change of information, without specifying the content of that information or the range of
movement. This is not to say that infrastructures are utopian; infrastructures are systems
of control as well. They can be easily regulated by switches and checkpoints, and shut
down when required. And the operation of infrastructural systems depends as much
on maintaining separation as it does in establishing connections. Yet we know there is
always something slightly out of control when infrastructures proliferate.

The physical infrastructures of the twentieth century - those of roads, rail, sewage, water,
air, data, amongst others - have tended to operate as singular and independent sys-
tems. The infrastructures of the twenty-first century must investigate relationships and
transparencies - to the pairing of infrastructure and landscape, infrastructure and public
amenities, infrastructure and architecture.
LONDON WATER SOURCE GEOGRAPHY

RWE

VEOLIA

SUEZ

EU COUNTRIES PRIVATE WATER

EU COUNTRIES PUBLIC WATER

EU COUNTRIES
36
CONTEXT
EUROPEAN UNION [EU]
The EU is a Nation State. The nation state is a state that self-identifies as deriving its
political legitimacy from serving as a sovereign entity for a country as a sovereign territo-
rial unit. The state is a geopolitical entity. The nation is a cultural entity. The EU operates
through a hybrid system of supranational independent institutions and intergovernmen-
tally made decisions negotiated by the member states. Because of this arrangement and
scale proximity of the countries politics, resources, infrastructure, economics directly
effect each regions based on other regions.

1
2

1 London [United Kingdom]

2 Copenhagen [Denmark]
3 Stockholm [Sweden]
4 Helsinki [Finland]
5 Tallinn [Estonia]
6 Riga [Latvia]
7 Vilnius [Lithuania]
8 Warsaw [Poland]
9 Prague [Czech Republic]
10 Vienna [Austria]
11 Ljubljana [Slovenia]
12 Bratislava [Slovakia]
13 Budapest [Hungary]
18
14 Bucharest [Romania]
15 Sofia [Bulgaria] 19
16 ATHENS [Greece]
17 Rome [Italy]
18 Madrid [Spain]
19 Lisbon [Portugal]
20 Paris [France]
21 Brussels [Belgium]
22 Amsterdam [Netherlands]
23 Berlin [Germany]

CAPITAL CITIES IN EU COUNTRIES

 4

3 5

2
Copenhagen 7

22
23
8
21

9
20
10 12

13

11
14

17 15

16

38
CONTEXT
WATER PRIVATIZATION
Over 75% of EU countries have privatized water infrastructure by transnational corpora-
tions. Under the World Trade Organization Agreement on Urban Services, cities with pri-
vatized urban services/infrastructure or water supply infrastructure control is dictated by
the owning corporation. Due to the privatization and the ability for trans-national consor-
tia to operate resources independent of government boundary. This is the new territory
of urban water. Water from France imported to London completely bypass’s the French
government. The corporations owns the spring, the corporation exports the water.

EU COUNTRIES PUBLIC WATER SUPPLY

EU COUNTRIES PRIVATE WATER SUPPLY

CAPITAL CITIES IN EU COUNTRIES

Copenhagen

40
CONTEXT
WATER PRIVATIZATION
The most contested cases of anti-water privatization have occurred in four countries;
Germany, France, Spain and England. Just a year ago Paris went through a long twenty-
year de privatization process. The public demanded to take back their urban infrastruc-
ture. Recently cities such as Madrid and Barcelona have experienced droughts and
needed to further privatize in order to provide adequate urban water infrastructures.

£ $ € ¥
re
Inf
ctu

ras
tru

tru
ras

ctu
Inf

re

Infrastructure

EU COUNTRIES PUBLIC WATER SUPPLY

EU COUNTRIES PRIVATE WATER SUPPLY

EU COUNTRIES PRIVATE WATER SUPPLY CONTESTED BY PUBLIC

CAPITAL CITIES IN EU COUNTRIES

Copenhagen

42
CONTEXT
WATER PRIVATIZATION
With failing economic states in the late 1980’s - urban water privatization provided a
sound opportunity fir cities to improve and provide better services. Certain corporations
have agreements and have drawn water boundaries between each.

£ $ € ¥
re
Inf
ctu

ras
tru

tru
ras

ctu
Inf

re

Infrastructure

RWE

VEOLIA

SUEZ

CAPITAL CITIES IN EU COUNTRIES

Copenhagen

44
CONTEXT
INFRASTRUCTURE FLOWS
The territory of water infrastructure also opens an expanded political repertoire. The
most powerful players [governments/corporations] have the capacity to make water infra-
structures, but equally important these infrastructures can escape nominative designa-
tions or documented events. As an action, it can remain undeclared and discrepant, and
as a medium, it can determine what survives. The indeterminate space of water infra-
structural flows can offer insight into understandings of how water, politics, and socialility
can reprogram workings of our current society.

MAJOR TRASNNATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE FLOWS

CAPITAL CITIES IN EU COUNTRIES

46
CONTEXT
SPHERES OF INFLUENCE
London has one of the largest spheres of water space of EU capital cities. The sphere of
water influence describes the geographic area of water need and thus invisible govern-
ance of water.

400 Miles

200 Miles

100 Miles

50 Miles

SPHERES OF PRIVATE WATER IMPACT

SPHERES OF PRIVATIZATION IMPACT

CAPITAL CITIES IN EU COUNTRIES

48
3B

TERRITORY
INFRASTRUCTURE: WATER
TOWER
Curiously, infrastructure is a new word. The Oxford English Dictionary identifies its first use in
1927. The word only achieves real currency in the 1980s after the publication of a scathing
public policy assessment entitled America in Ruins: The Decaying Infrastructure, which raised
many of the issues raised here. To understand the technical systems that support a society -
roads, bridges, water supply, wastewater, flood management, telecommunications, gas and
electric lines - as one category, it was first necessary to see it fail.is inherently architectural and
design based. These should be the new issues of the architect in the urban environment, as
these are the design questions that are emerging currently.

Control Point/Access Point

Infrastructure Border Condition

Although infrastructure has the inherent ability to understand itself as a continuous glob-
al complex and unchanging in physical disposition based on place, the typologies within
the system change varying on environmental, social, and political conditions. These con-
ditions stipulate how the water is transported, where the water and infrastructure need to
be spatially placed in relation to source and urban area, and the differing policies which
regulate the cleansing of water differently throughout the globe.
Water importation and filtration facility. Germany.

Thames Water Corporation main office. It also acts as a water tower.

50
3C

TERRITORY
SPACE: HUMAN AND WATER
Globally, cities water supply systems operate in three systems of management. The first
being a completely public system operated by public government agencies. The second
system becomes a step between completely public governance to completely private
governance. With the expansion of cities and industrial growth, cities sought to charter
private government institutions to manage specific public functions of the urban water
system. ‘Private partnerships‘ were established the growth of Public-Private Partnerships
[PPP’s] in the delivery of essential services to urban residents which has been articu-
lated as a form of decentralized service delivery that makes the water services more ef-
ficient and ultimately tries to bring governance structures closer to the people.1 The third
and more recent phenomena is the complete privatization of water supply infrastructure
which renders the governance of the system separate from the citizen and the urban
municipality. These three systems of urban water governance are linear in their respec-
tive developments.

Currently due to the multiple systems of management and the development of how we
consider water’s role in the urban environment, water is being revalued and re-presented
as a scarce economic good. With this shift, the triangular relationships between the external
provider, the state and the citizen - the three critical agents in the delivery of water - spa-
tially provide new forms of political action with the ascent of the neo-liberal paradigm. In
this discussion the external provider is the private transnational consortia operating out of
self interest and transcending governmental/political boundaries of resource extraction and
distribution.

When the corporation is given the leading role in fostering connection between the citizen
instead of the government, to mode of interaction is one of ‘customer management’ in order
to alleviate and resolve the economic constraints facing the state as well as educating users
to appreciate water as a ‘scarce ecological resource’. The relationship between town and na-
ture - a key focus of political ecology - is significantly recast with the naturalization of scarcity
and commodification of water.2 The outcome of this mode of governance when examined at a
urban level deepens the struggle for ‘access to water’.

Urban political ecology can provide useful critical tools for rethinking processes surrounding
the politics of distribution and production of water.3 In addition key questions about the socio-
physical production of water as socio-nature are often ignored in distributional debates but
become more evident in the critical political.4 The triangular relationship between the service
user, provider and state is mediated, strategized and routinized.
52
3D

TERRITORY
SITE: EU + LONDON
The city has traditionally been analyzed as a contiguous urban space undergoing its
own dynamics and problems. Since the mid-1980s, however, authors such as Harvey
[1989], Castells [1996], and Sassen [1994, 2001] have started to forcefully include the
dynamics of globalization in studying the city, claiming that it is now necessary to em-
brace a wider societal space to understand urban change. For these authors, globaliza-
tion can be deconstructed as a worldwide ‘space of flows’, emerging into a network so-
ciety and allowing a massive dispersal of flows of capital, information, and other physical
streams around the world. And cities, conversely, have become sites where these new
dynamics are re-centralized, serving as agglomeration centers where the space of flows
is coordinated and managed. Sociologists claim that with globalization, major cities such
as London, have become ‘nodes and hubs’ at the crossroads of global circuits of people,
information, capital, and the goods that traverse them.

The site of this thesis is simultaneously the transnational territory of water infrastructure in its
forms of extraction/movement/utility.

The site is also that of the water tower. The place of operation in the urban environment.

The site is the representation of a manifestation with a representation of the hydrological

territory.

Water Imporatation by Tanker

Water Imporatation by Pipeline

Wales

Coryton
London

Windsor

Paris

Arcachon

Marseilles

54
 London’s Water Supply piping system.

11,360 Miles of Pipe from the Reservoir to the Tap.

1600

1400

1200

1000
Length [miles]

800

600
2 Inch Pipe

400

200
600 Miles

000
1800

1860

1870

1880

1890

1900

1910

1920

1930

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

Decade Installed
 56
252 Inch Pipe 2950 Miles
72 Inch Pipe 165 Miles
60 Inch Pipe 140 Miles
54 Inch Pipe 110 Miles
48 Inch Pipe 260 Miles
36 Inch Pipe 175 Miles
[For Scale: Just so you know, this contin-
30 Inch Pipe 150 Miles
24 Inch Pipe 220 Miles

ues 1.5 In off the page]

20 Inch Pipe 550 Miles
16 Inch Pipe 220 Miles
12 Inch Pipe 1950 Miles
8 Inch Pipe 2600 Miles
6 Inch Pipe 600 Miles
 Helsinki

Stockholm
Tallinn

Riga

Vilnius
Copenhagen

London Berlin
Amsterdam
Warsaw

Brussels
Prague

EU Country with Public Water Supply Paris Bratislava

Vienna
EU Country with Private Water Supply
Countries Infrastructural Issues Due to Private Consortia Budapest
Ljubljana Bucharest

Rome Sofia

Madrid
Lisbon Athens

London is simultaneously a city facing crisis due to continual growth of urban existence
without recognition of the ecologically changing environment and contains strong politi-
cal denial towards the social infrastructure of the city at various scales. Using London
one can begin to understanding the conflicting impacts of human occupation and the
situations sought to be subverted. Intertwining social and infrastructural functions would
reveal invisible processes into the public realm and ability to humanize the lifeblood of
our urban existences.

The ironicism of London’s water supply is evident. Firstly, due to de-industrialization in

London the city has to pump out 60 million gallons of ‘grey water’ a day to keep the city
form flooding. Secondly due to the local geological composition, water does not filtrate far
into the ground, thus a high water table. Thirdly, imported water come from three loca-
tions geographically, Wales, France and the Thames Estuary. The fascinating juxtaposi-
tion in this situation is that water come from these places due to the private corporations
who own the aquifers subjected to transnational law, and upon arrival in London’s outer
filtration plants the water is subjected to local law.

,-.).-/!,) ,-.).-/!,) .-/!,

01*,2! 0/1,-3! 0/1,-3!

,-.).-/!, ,-.).-/!, .-/!, .-/!,

4*54673 4*54673 /,!-/5!7/ 860/,69*/617

:6;/!,!8)0/1,-3!

4*54673):-26;6/< /,!-/5!7/):-26;6/< *,9-7)4*54673):-26;6/<

!J3H+!LG HS+TU 9G40U3 V+G<EL<+WT V+T+9J30*
L0030 IL9+T 93<<G+TU 8L<3E*
IL9+T 9<WELU3

Importation happens by two means - taker ship and pipeline. The complexities of hydros-
patiality are exemplified in this situation of convergence.
58
 Managed by a Transnational Corporation

100%

Circular water retention fields in the desert. Egypt. NASA

 Water Import within England

Water Import from Wales

Water Import from France

32%

66.5% 12.5%

Source: The 2010 Envoronmental Agency London Water Report

60
Current Ring Lines around London and their location to water towers.
62
64
4

SPECULATIONS
The situations of urban water
are complex. Speculative
discourse for design is great.

1
ABSTRACT
2
FLOWS
Transnational Spaces of Water A Hydropolitical Morphology

B Infrastructural Space of Water

C Water as Commodity

D Territorialization

E Methodology
3
TERRITORY XXL
4
SPECULATIONS
5
NOTES
A Politics: Corporation + State + Citizenry A Urban Water Territories Glossary

B Infrastructure: Water Tower C Water Embassy Bibliography

C Space: Human + Water D Water Vault

D Site: EU + London

66
CONTEXT
CENTRE / PERIPHERY
68
 PROGRAM
CONCEPT 15%
COR
POR
ATE
P OWE
R
The concept of the project is to first break the 15%singularity and autonomous enclave of
100 G
water infrastructure
PRO
% importation at the LondonOVBeckton
ERN
MEN Water Filtration Plant. CSecondly
orpo
ratio
GRA T P n Ch
make a commentary M: W on the political dynamics between Othe
ater
WERcorporation, government
Tham
es W and ber
am
Emb 30% ater
public citizenry. This is done a ssyby mixing water importation, filtration, and storage infra- Offic
ECO Publ es
i
structure with public and political program. TheLOconcept GICA
L TE of a Water Embassy M bestc Mde- eetin
g Spac
RRA inist e
fines new political contexts the project seeks to give to the public constituency.
IN ry of
Wate
iving L r
Mus
Filtra eum
An Embassy us usually denoted as the office40of% a country’s diplomatic representatives
tion/
Flooin
d Su
INFR Ecol rface
the capital city. This embassy twists the programASto
TRUinclude the demanded transparency
o gcia
l Lan
CTU Publ dsca
and shift from governmental control to the actual situationRE - a control administeredic Wby
ater pe
Acce
the government but controlled by the corporation. Urba
n Wa
ss
ter M
eter
The form becomes the action. Wate
r Sto
rage

The public citizenry infiltrate.

Beckton Filtration / Storage Plant

Greater London Authority Offices Thames Water Corporation Offices

City of London

Greater London

Airport

BECKTON
LONDON UKWATER PLANT GREATER LONDON AUTHORITY / THAMES WATER
1 Existing 2 Existing

Blank City Canvas Add Programatic Elements to City

3 Existing 4 Existing

Elements become Secure / Private Functions Enclave Condition and Non-Transparent

5 New 6 New

Break Enclave + Programmatic Seperation Mix Program in Urban Centre + Create Public Awareness

GOVERNMENT COMPLEX

TRANS-NATIONAL CORPORATION COMPLEX

INFRASTRUCTURAL COMPLEX
70
OMA
CENTRALIZED WATER STATION AT BECKTON

THAMES BARRIER PARK

72
PROGRAM 15%
COR

15%
POR
ATE
POWE
R

HYBRID PROGRAM
100 GOV Corp
% ERN
PRO MEN orati
GRA T PO on C
M: W WER Tham ham
ater es W ber
Emb 3 0 a t e
assy % r Off
ECO Publ ices
L G ic M
The Water Embassy redefines the embassy as an Oinstitution ICAL
TER no longer exclusively
Mini dedi- eetin
g Sp
R stry ace
cated to the representation of politics, but as an informationAINstore where all potent Livin
forms
of W
a ter
g Mu
of flows—new and old—are presented equally and legibly. In an age where resources Filtra
seum
tion/
and larger territorialities of infrastructure are transnational,
4 0% it is the simultaneity of gov-Flood
I FR Ecol Surf
ernments and corporations, more importantly, Nthe AScuratorship
TRU of their content through
ogci
al La
ndsc
ace
CTU Publ ape
public means that make this new redefinition of embassyRvital E - a new coupling of iinfra-
c Wa
ter A
cces
structure and architecture. Urba
n Wa
s
ter M
eter
Wate
r Sto
rage

Beckton Filtration / Storage Plant

Greater London Authority Offices Thames Water Corporation Offices

City of London

Greater London

Airport

LONDON UK
Blank City Canvas Add Programatic Elements to City

3 Existing 4 Existing

Elements become Secure / Private Functions Enclave Condition and Non-Transparent 1

15%
COR
POR
ATE
P OWE
R
15%
5 New 100 GOV
6 New B
% ERN Corp
PRO MEN orati
GRA T PO on C
M: W WER Tham ham
ater es W ber
Emb 30% ater
assy Offic
ECO Publ es
LOG ic M
ICAL eetin
TER Mini g Sp
RAIN stry ace
of W
Livin a ter
g Mu
Filtra
seum 3
40% tion/
Floo
Break Enclave + Programmatic Seperation INFRMix Program in Urban Centre + Create EPublic
colo Awareness d Su
gcia rface
AST l Lan
RUC Publ dsca
TUR ic W pe
E ater
Acce
Urba s s
n Wa
ter M
eter
Wate
r Sto
rage
GOVERNMENT COMPLEX

TRANS-NATIONAL CORPORATION COMPLEX

INFRASTRUCTURAL COMPLEX
Beckton Filtration / Storage Plant

Greater London Authority Offices Thames Water Corporation Offices

74
PROGRAM
URBAN CONCEPT
NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY

VS

CORPORATE SOVEREIGNTY

76
SITE
CENTRAL LONDON

SITE + GLA

THAMES WATER
BECKTON FILTRATION PLANT

78
SITE TANKER CAPACITY IN THAMES

CENTRAL LONDON

CITY HALL
RAIL TO PARIS

S
S RIVER

MARKETS

SITE

80
SITE
LONDON

1 LONDON’S HYDROLOGY
50 Million Gallons a day are pumped out of London’s subterranean

2 LONDON’S WATER
London imports 3 Billion Gallons of water per day
 ENGLAND

FRANCE

WALES

82
84
4A

SPECULATIONS
URBAN WATER TERRITORIES
En lieu of the framework and parameters set up in previous sections, the first of three
speculative projects in the redefining of political and corporate boundary based off water
tower locations. The water tower not only represents a typology within the water infra-
structure system - it also acts in territorial fashion - an access node of the larger system
which represents a place within the territory of hydrospatiality.

What if architectural exploitation of the water tower typology could provide a framework
to rethink districting urban environment based off water locations and proximity thus
informing the citizens of greater knowledge about the infrastructural system and political
processes.
86
4B

SPECULATIONS
WATER EMBASSY
The water embassy is possibly the most cohesive speculation considering the complex
framework and parameters set up in this project. This speculation creates and architec-
ture which allows the public to undermine the corporate flows of control. Working with
the transnational spaces of London’s water sources this construct would appoint water
diplomats from all regions were water is extracted. These diplomats are public citizens.

The water tower becomes architectural precedent. The embassy would create a verticali-
ty of program commenting on power structures while simultaneously working horizontally
to represent the flow of liquid infrastructures.
88
4C

SPECULATIONS
WATER VAULT
The water vault is the essential absurdity of transnational private consortia’s interface
with public governance.

The speculation proposes an architecture which completely embraces the wall condition
- instead of in the ground or within city fabric - it hovers above the city for all to see. Im-
porting daily the freshest water, it is transparently imported into the architecture delving
in into an unclear ambiguous, but completely total control of the water system.

The vault becomes an airlifted enclave. It becomes absurd and rude - yet completely
beautiful in our current condition.
90
5

NOTES
Liquid flows are the modern
city. Design for the absurd.

1
ABSTRACT
2
FLOWS
Transnational Spaces of Water A Hydropolitical Morphology

B Infrastructural Space of Water

C Water as Commodity

D Territorialization

E Methodology
3
TERRITORY XXL
4
SPECULATIONS
5
NOTES
A Politics: Corporation + State + Citizenry A Urban Water Territories Glossary

B Infrastructure: Water Tower C Water Embassy Bibliography

C Space: Human + Water D Water Vault

D Site: EU + London

92
5

NOTES
GLOSSARY

Access
The ability to inhabit an area/space granted by an individual or group.

Activism
Action by groups, agencies or individuals using processes to influence change by dis-
rupting the status quo and revealing better visions for society.

City
The physical fabric of ‘urban’ processes embodying the geographic, political, cultural,
social and economic.

Community
The ability for a collection of individuals to form a cohesive grouping supported by other
systems, networks, infrastructures.

Control
The ability to manipulate access and direct movements/flows within every aspect of soci-
ety. When control fail, crisis takes over.

Corporatism
The aggregation of non-human systems of management into a collective body

Crisis
A decisive moment when tensions or instabilities peak and change becomes inescap-
able. Crisis demands adjustment in perception and in modes of action.

Dehumanization
The process of stripping away human qualities, such as denying others their individuality
and self-esteem.
Ecology
Relationships between living organisms and their non-living counterparts.

Emergent
In the process of coming into being. A pattern or condition of new significance.

Citzenry
The many people on our planet who exist in urban environments.

Event
A moment in time which defines place.

Globalization
The making possible of international influence.

Spatial
Relating to space or a network of spaces.

Network
A series of dependent systems of environmental, land-use, communication and service
directories. Networks consists of nodes [communities] and vectors {routes].

Nonhuman
Upon treating human characteristic as a product, the result is a reduction, thus non-
human.

Territory
An area of knowledge, activity or land which is governed by a jurisdictional entity or insti-
tution. A political situation which has physical manifestations.

Urban
The process which support, govern and run the ‘city’.

Water
A flowing substance consisting of two elements, hydrogen and oxygen. It is also a term
full of ambiguity and illustrates the complexity of modern day existence - both psycho-
logically and physically.
94
5

NOTES
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96
?

LIQUID
INFRASTRUCTURE
Liquid infrastructures aims to examine the emergence of the infrastructural - to articulate
it and bring it to bear effectively on the social role and agency within design. Designers are
increasingly being compelled to shape larger contexts and scales, to address questions
related to infrastructure, urban and ecological systems, cultural and regional issues. These
questions which have been associated to the confines of other domains require design
engagement and articulation. Analysis in architecture, landscape, urbanism and planning
of emergent urban morphologies and global changes on the spatial dimension - comes by
way of social anthropology, human geography, economics and political networks. Liquid
infrastructures is interested in extending these arguments by asking how design can have a
more active role and transformative impact on the forces shaping contemporary urban reali-
ties. The delicate relationship between the physical and social, form and context, the very
large and very small - it is important to explore the formal repertoire of the architecture and
the agency of the designer within the wider contexts which produce the built environment
and subsequently shape society.
The physical infrastructures of the twentieth century such as roads, rail, sewage, water,
air, data, amongst others - have tended to operate as singular and independent systems.
The infrastructures of the twenty-first century, if they are to respond to impending urgen-
cies with respect to resources and global densification of the urban environment, must
investigate relationships and transparencies - to the pairing of infrastructure and land-
scape, infrastructure and public amenities, infrastructure and architecture.

Liquid infrastructure utilizes water

to illustrate and examine the flows
that administer the this process:
flows of social power, labor, infor-
mation, capital, and resources that
produce the contemporary urban
landscape.

98