Building with Water

Water has been an important topic in architecture and urban planning for years. The theme of Building with Water is the use of water in architecture. It presents buildings that explicitly refer to water in their design and form. It establishes a typology of building by the water: residential buildings, transportation and industrial buildings, buildings for culture and leisure. Classic examples of building by, in, or on the water serve as introductions: for example, the Château de Chenonceaux on the Loire, Falling Water in Pennsylvania by Frank Lloyd Wright and the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, by Louis I. Kahn. Organized according to their locations by a river, lake, or the sea, some twenty international projects are presented. The authors’ concern is not showing luxurious buildings in privileged locations but rather presenting projects that seriously grapple with the main criterion of the location – namely, water – in an ecologically sustainable way and respond to it with their design.