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Water which nourishes, water which endangers - two characteristic aspects of Man’s relationship with water. Water has, to a large extent, determined man’s lifestyle, habitat, and activities. Many towns, villages, and other forms of human habitat throughout the world owe their existence to water, as well as their expansion and prosperity. Those which, for various reasons, were unable to guarantee their water supply simply disappeared, slowly or suddenly. Impressive vestiges of some of them can still be seen today.
The struggle for, but also against water shaped man and very largely influenced his development. The availability of clean and healthy water, in sufficient quantity, was just as important as the struggle against its overabundance, flooding, and other forms of non-manageable quantities of water. The genius of water engineers, engineers and architects, designers of vast constructions to supply towns with water and protect them against all danger, greatly contributed to the development of our human settlements across the centuries.
That is why the competition launched by the International Union of Architects, with the patronage of UNESCO, merits our close attention in many respects. Open to both students and professionals, this competition made a remarkable impact. Over 850 participants from 63 countries, sent projects that were examined by the international jury. Of course, some countries are more widely represented than others, some regions less well represented than others, but as a whole the jury was unanimous in its appreciation of the diversity of the designs and the depth of the reflection on water in all its aspects.
The jury was hosted by the Order of Architects of Tunisia, and homage must be paid to the tireless work of the Tunisian colleagues who very competently prepared the work of the jury and associated activities, and thanks to whom a vast amount of work was accomplished in a very short time.
The competitions launched on a regular basis by the UIA, initially only the triennial Confrontation, but now also the topic competitions such as Architecture and Poverty and Architecture and Water, show better than any survey the level of architectural education and the capacity to reflect demonstrated by the students and young architects - the majority of participants in these competitions. It is obvious that competitions of this type, where there is no question of realising a building on a given site, open the field to a vastly different reflection than the more "classical" competitions.
The opportunity given to participants to freely choose the site and environment of their project offers great freedom and results in a great diversity of interdisciplinary approaches and architectural expression. It is amazing to note the competence with which students and professionals studied the subject of water and its relationship with the life of Man, his habitat, and environment in general - something that surpasses the range of their usual concerns. Whether reflecting on water as a source of life or a system of desalination, a floating town or a way of supplying water to shanty towns, a street floating on water or under-water architecture, the extent and the seriousness of the debate remains impressive. Granted, there are false dreamers, pseudo-philosophers, writers of obscure texts. There are those who are naive, those who are pretentious. It is normal, perhaps even necessary, but above all there are those who are conscious of the fact that "water narrates history" and of water’s symbolic and purifying role.
Once again we remark here - confirming the Confrontation experiences - that the industrialised countries do not predominate with regard to the quality of the projects presented - on the contrary. Certain schools, located notably in Asia but also in Latin America, strike us by the freshness of their reflection, by the quality of the projects submitted and by their presentation. On the other hand, the African continent, with the exception of the northern part, is still insufficiently present in this reflection and in the design of projects directly linked to African culture and environment. An insufficient number of schools to train architects, and consequently too few students truly concerned by the typically African built environment or conscious of a past rich in traditional values and know-how, explain a situation that can only be regretted.
It should also be noted that in certain cases the authors successfully opted for sites and "problems" that do not necessarily have any bearing on their own social and cultural environment and presented convincing solutions in regions a priori foreign to their own way of life. What better proof that in the profession there exists the faculty to assimilate and understand, to which it can and must lay claim and be proud.
In short, the competition which has just been adjudicated is rich in lessons and the International Union of Architects can be proud of this initiative, of the results obtained, and congratulates all participants in this project which it alone can launch on the international level.
Wolf Tochtermann