Sans façon

Introduction to the Watershed+ Manual.


"Speaking of snow, of course we were all talking about snow, I just emptied the ice-cube tray in the freezer into an ice-holding container and refilled the tray with water, which happens to come from the creek. That's where I get my water, so the snow just recently up in the mountains is now in my freezer to be refrozen into different-shape flakes, nice in a glass of whiskey." 1


Water plays a major part in our appreciation of the environment, whether we are boating on it or simply gazing at its surface. Rivers, lakes, waterfalls form focal points for trips into the wilderness, and these same features carry their pleasures into the hearts of our cities and neighbourhoods. Calgary is blessed with the Bow River running right through it, bringing the natural environment in a ribbon through the built one. The city's inhabitants meander, jog and dawdle beside the Bow. They fish in it, they float down it and they follow its fortunes.

Where the Bow's "wild" water is visible and beautiful, by contrast the anonymous, sometimes numbered, "utile" water is culverted and hidden. There are, we might want to say, two watersheds - one lived with and loved and the other subterranean and subtracted - unconnected to one another. When we begin the day by summoning the useful water with the power shower we expect it to flow clean, fast and reliably. For most of us, the soothing volleys clearing the soap from our back are not connected with the coursing of the river or the ice on the glacier. In other words, utility-water is a different thing altogether, a functional fluid, lacking the connotations of pristine lakes visited during the week-end. We might have an abstract understanding that this water comes from somewhere and ends up somewhere else, but we do not consider this facility any more than we do electricity primed in the plug sockets.

A growing gulf between 'nature' and the way we live in cities is a familiar idea. As we focus on function, efficiency and economy, the capacity of science and engineering to engage the public, or to contribute to our enjoyment of a place, becomes ever more obscure. We could continue on in this direction, holding the two watersheds further and further apart. Using the hidden one to maintain the appearances of the visible one. However, the unloved, un-imagined and unknown water infrastructures could, and should, have a role in encouraging a sustainable and creative relationship between people and place. Infrastructures and systems, when built and invested with imagination, can do more than generate physical changes in water quality, they can create new associations and meanings, changing and defining the character of a place and how we relate to it.


How then do we reconnect the understanding and awareness of the watershed in the wilderness with the watershed in the city? How can we add imagination and intrigue to the systems and infrastructures that form this undoubtedly urban, historically created and planned watershed?

Answers will not come from any one speciality nor field of expertise, quite the opposite. There is a need for an expanded dialogue between disciplines in the way we build and understand all manner of waterways, from river channels to main drains. WATERSHED+ is about involving creative practitioners and developing creative practice right from the conception stage. Its focus is not the creative object or the aesthetic but developing the creative thinking in the conception of structures, systems and their understanding.
WATERSHED+ is a way of working that aims to develop awareness and pleasure in the environment, not by changing water management practice, nor developing a uniform visual language, but rather by creating a climate of opportunity for water initiatives to build an emotional connection between people and the watershed.

When the impact of water management is explored at every level - not just physical, but social and historical - systems and structures can add a new level of richness to people's experience of their function and their relationship to a place.
The results of incorporating creative practices into the management of the watershed may sometimes generate highly visible and spectacular outcomes, and at other times discreet. They will be nonetheless significant for the public coming in contact with these systems and structures, stimulating their curiosity, offering enjoyment and, in all manner of ways, adding an emotional connection to their watershed. The possibility for intrigue is already at the heart of water management. The myriad of structures and systems are, in themselves, often fascinating in their processes and mechanisms. They do not necessarily need to be altered, making them or their process visible can sometimes be enough to begin creating awareness of this other aspect of the watershed.

WATERSHED+ is not just about collaboration with a creative practitioner, it is an ambition to facilitate the broader creative thinking that exists often unrecognised at the heart of the design process, from the engineer, the economist, the strategist or the artist, that can generate a profound impact even as it builds new forms of integration.



"[Water] engineers are concerned with the land, and the forces that shape it over time; the patterns of rivers, the behaviour of the sea and its influence on the coast; the way that weather shapes the places we move through; the effect of water management on the development of communities. This is the stuff of art. The water engineer deals with truly poetic material, though they are often required to reduce it, through instrumental analysis, to hydraulic profiles, flood levels, flow rates, pollution levels..." 2



1. An Unfortunate Woman, Richard Brautigan, 1982
2. Art, engineering and the environment - A better solution? Mark Fletcher, Paul Simkins, for Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management Rivers and Coastal Group, May 2008


This text was developed in collaboration with Matt Baker, Emlyn Firth, Eric Laurier, Yan Olivares and Bert van Duin.