Kevin Bone Presents at WATER+

POSTED ON: February 26, 2016

Image
Satelite image of Guadalupe Island, photo by NASA

Satelite image of Guadalupe Island, photo by NASA

Professor Kevin Bone, Institute for Sustainable Design director and Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture professor, presented at the University of Manitoba's WATER+ conference on February 26th. The intention of this symposium is to posit emerging relationships between human and natural systems with specific reference to water as an activating agent. This symposium addresses the idea of working with water instead of against it – by design. Our goal is to advance our understanding of water and spatial occupation through the intersecting themes of design, community, ecology and economy.

Water’s global disposition, physical properties and phenomenal characteristics determine or figure in all forms of spatial occupation of all living systems. Water occupies: our atmosphere; our earth’s surface in oceans, lakes and river systems and its core in aquifers and springs; and our bodies. However pervasive, water is finite. We understand water to be the harbinger of life while also recognizing its destructive potential. Water in its solid, liquid, and gaseous forms, occupies our sense of being and place in both real and imagined ways – it is vital and transformative. Water is also contested and is subject to depletion, access, and control. Water has its own way, evidenced in global flooding, droughts, and atmospheric disturbances.

Learn more here.

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.