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.

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