DC(DBA)
Projects
Intermediary SoftnessUnder The Table
Drawdown: Play to Enter
Hybridizing Drawdown
Recommissioning Danskammer
Municipal C.H.U.W.
Research
Geothermal CulturePublications
Volume 47Pidgin 23
Info / CV
A Water Infrastructure
RISD Design Research Seed Fund
Providence, RI
September 2024
Intermediary Softness is an on-going project that considers infrastructural systems as critical cultural technologies in addressing climate change. The design argues for an alternative type of infrastructural apparatus that relies on social engagement, mutual dependencies, and a deeper kinship with natural resources. The project is interested in pivoting away from understanding infrastructure as bureaucratic, hard, and fixed towards a framework that appreciates these systems as interdependent, flexible and in need of care. To be intermediary is to serve as a link, a mediator, a reconciliatory agent. To become intermediary is to acknowledge that there are conditions to reconcile, especially when imagining alterative infrastructural regimes. In response, Intermediary Softness offers an infrastructure of resistance and relief, of happy limits and voluntary discomforts.
Intermediary Softness encourages us to get intimate and playful with water. Designed as a mobile soft-shingle pavilion, the structure serves as a water harvester and oasis that embraces the seasonal, situational, and shared qualities of resource collection. A site of harvest and celebration, the pavilion centers infrastructure as a mediator between cultural rituals and water protection in a time of increasing resource instability.
The design of the water collection system encourages us to practice water harvesting like a cultural ritual. Akin to fruit-picking, the water pouches are “harvested” by opening up a side snap and partially unfolding the pouch. The water can drain into a more mobile water container of your choice. The roof pouches are intentionally left open-air so that harvesting must happen regularly and attentively. These conditions enforce a ritual of water harvesting that underscores our reliance on water, its precarity and its power.
The pavilion was erected for its first collection season in Fall 2024 on the coast of Rhode Island.