O

ver the course of this year, federal priorities in the United States have shaken up both new sustainability-focused initiatives launched under the last administration as well as longer-term cornerstones established under administrations before that. Meanwhile, most state-level policies have stayed in place or moved forward. The result is a mixed bag for building industry professionals when it comes to driving efficiency, minimizing risk, and advancing sustainability and well-being in their projects. Here are a few examples that show the current state of flux in this country:

PV Sunset

Homeowners who install solar energy have been able to claim tax credits since 2005, when President George W. Bush revived an older program that had been allowed to lapse. But that 20-year subsidy ends at the end of this year. Meanwhile, the EPA has canceled its $7 billion Solar for All program, pulling back $156 million from low-income communities in Michigan and $130 million from Indiana, among other states. Solar power is a cornerstone of the Net Zero movement, which will now have to rely on local incentives or other means to finance our energy transition.

New York Concrete 

Under the state’s Buy Clean Concrete Guidelines, New York’s Low Embodied Carbon Concrete program went live early this year. The codes now mandate a maximum global warming potential (GWP), i.e. a maximum amount of embodied carbon emissions for concrete used in building and transportation projects in New York. With some exceptions for high-strength or quick-curing concrete, concrete mixes used in state projects must have an EPD that shows compliance with the GWP limits.

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• News

• Advocacy
• Construction Materials
• Policy
• Renewable energy

From fractal-inspired surfaces to adaptive seating and sensory sanctuaries, these commercial products integrate neuroscience and biophilic design principles to support brain health. Designed with visuals, materials, and features that are proven to reduce stress, enhance focus, and promote cognitive function, they help create environments where people can work, learn, or rest with greater clarity and ease. 

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• Healthcare
• Hospitality
• Workplace

• Biophilia
• Healthy Materials
• Inclusive Design
• Lauren Volker
• Neurodiversity

As housing needs grow more urgent, a new generation of design-led responses is emerging—rooted in care, community, and climate consciousness. These three projects, from Barcelona to Austin to Palm Springs, challenge conventional models by putting people first and embracing flexibility, visibility, and dignity. Designed for public housing residents, individuals living with HIV/AIDS, and unhoused populations, they ask not what’s standard but what’s needed.

Illa Glòries by Cierto Estudio

Amid Barcelona’s deepening housing crisis, Illa Glòries illustrates how publicly funded development—focused more on people’s needs than on profit margins—can drive socially driven urbanism. The 51-unit public housing block, commissioned by the Institut Municipal de l’Habitatge i Rehabilitació de Barcelona, was designed by the women-led firm Cierto Estudio as the anchor of a four-building development near the city’s Plaça de les Glòries public square. 

At the heart of the firm’s competition-winning concept is a flexible, nonhierarchical apartment layout that breaks from traditional domestic models. Instead of prioritizing a central living room or a primary bedroom, the units feature equal-sized rooms that allow residents—whether nuclear families, roommates, or otherwise—to reconfigure space according to their evolving needs. Kitchens are treated not as secluded corners but as connective social nodes, turning childcare, cooking, and conversation into the core of the home. “We wanted to make caregiving visible and shared, not isolated behind a closed door,” says Marta Benedicto Izquierdo, a principal at Cierto Estudio. Diagonally aligned joints, windows, and room openings encourage cross breezes and shape long sight lines through the apartment and beyond, creating a sense of openness and expansion. 

Outside each apartment, Illa Glòries emphasizes community. Generous communal balconies, green sculpted courtyards, and a rooftop garden encourage interaction and create passive safety through visibility. The balconies, which bump out in front of the units themselves, are especially wide thanks to a design decision to slightly reduce interior square footage in favor of outdoor space. “You can leave your door open and have a conversation with your neighbor,” notes Izquierdo. “This sense of threshold was key.”

The project meets the EU’s NZEB (European Union Nearly Zero Energy Building) standards and features a cross-laminated timber structure, passive cooling strategies, and over 60 percent green space, with green roofs helping to combat the urban heat island effect. A pedestrian passageway runs through the block, ensuring permeability and activating street life with commercial spaces at ground level.

The development creates a sense of dynamic, communal urbanity that nods to the past while still fitting into the city’s newer conditions. “This project isn’t just about living spaces,” says Izquierdo. “It’s about how we take care of each other.”

Burnet Place by Michael Hsu Office of Architecture

Just north of downtown Austin, tucked along Burnet Road and not far from the University of Texas at Austin, an affordable housing development is transforming what it means to live—and heal—in community. Burnet Place, a 61-unit residence designed by Michael Hsu Office of Architecture for the local nonprofit Project Transitions, serves residents living with HIV or AIDS. The project is conceived as a protective, nurturing environment that’s also imbued with a sense of vibrancy. 

Inspired by the armadillo, the building’s form wraps a tough shell around a soft core. The exterior—composed of home-scaled siding, sun-shading porches, colorful tiles, and an abstract mural derived from the nonprofit’s logo—presents an artful face to the city. The interiors, in contrast, are intentionally warm and intimate, with natural wood finishes, daylight-filled rooms, and shared spaces designed to feel like residential living rooms. “We always talked about the building as having a central womb,” says Maija Kreishman, principal at Michael Hsu. “It wraps you in a very caring hug.”

Rather than reading as a single mass, the project is composed of a series of smaller, interlocking volumes that echo the scale and cadence of traditional town houses. Arranged around a central courtyard, these forms give each segment its own identity. “When you’re walking through the courtyard, it’s as if you’re moving through a small neighborhood,” says Kreishman. Ground-floor communal rooms support case management, medical consultations, and dining, while maintaining the feel of a domestic space. 

The courtyard, designed by longtime collaborators Nudge Design, includes community gardens, angled walking paths, and outdoor benches. An elevated porch bisects the complex in the spirit of a Texas dogtrot house, allowing breezes to pass through while offering shaded space for residents to sit and observe daily life in the garden below. “It’s really about creating moments of pass-through activity where you meet your neighbors and come together,” says Kreishman. 

With a one-star rating from Austin Energy Green Building, the project incorporates on-site rain gardens for stormwater management, native and adaptive plants, and alternating hard and porous materials to provide both sun shading and cooling breezes. 

Its design—rooted in regional tradition yet decidedly contemporary—offers a nuanced alternative to the standardized models of midscale urbanism in the area. “I’ve always wished cities had more of these,” Kreishman adds. “It’s meaningful to support a mission like this. The building doesn’t just provide shelter—it provides dignity.”

Palm Springs Homeless Navigation Center by JFAK

The Palm Springs Homeless Navigation Center, a product of John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects (JFAK), opened at the end of last year and is one of a new generation of nurturing, multifunctional facilities transforming the way we think about housing the unhoused. Consisting of 80 modular housing units, varied outdoor spaces, and two repurposed warehouses offering support services, communal activities, and emergency beds, the $40 million center is a place, not a shelter—an extroverted sanctuary of hope, not a hastily assembled facility tucked away from public view. 

“It’s a city for people to get help, whether they need it for eight hours or six months,” noted JFAK cofounder John Friedman, adding that the project combines “a kind of density with a sense of community.”

JFAK, selected via RFP, collaborated with contractors Tilden-Coil Constructors, fabricators California Modulars, landscape architect Esther Margulies, and the center’s operator, Martha’s Village and Kitchen. Designed and built in just a year and a half, the cent

er inspires movement, interaction, and community. It’s a local centerpiece, not a liability. 

The one- and two-story, factory-built modular residences are set perpendicular to the spine in a layered, slightly angled configuration that provides ample natural light and air but still protects from what can be harsh amounts of both. Inside, simple but airy units maximize views and cross ventilation, but with relatively small windows to reduce heat gain and glare.  

Elevated walkways weave between buildings, providing shade and connection, while open-air corridors ensure that every resident—whether in a ground-level unit or a second-story home—has a clear view of the nearby San Jacinto Mountains. Graphics provide wayfinding and identification via large, colorful letters, and establish an artful sense of place via color and pattern. 

As for the site’s two warehouses—repurposed steel-frame structures that originally had no insulation and were leaking—the team effectively built new buildings within. The first warehouse was transformed into a hub of essential services: a commercial kitchen, communal dining area, laundry facilities, case management offices, and job training programs. Gathering areas have double heights, wide hallways, and colorful graphics that both welcome and orient. The second warehouse, known as the Early Access Center, offers 50 overnight-shelter beds.

The project’s biggest challenge, remembers firm cofounder Alice Kimm, was to create a special, humane place that wasn’t too nice. “The operator was afraid people would never want to leave,” she says. (Residents are encouraged to stay for six months before finding more permanent housing, with help from the center’s staff.) Ultimately, the design team struck a balance—warm and colorful, but not indulgent, comfortable but still transitional. The approach proves that emergency housing doesn’t have to feel institutional, and modular design doesn’t have to be rigid or impersonal.

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• Government
• Healthcare
• Residential

• Adaptability
• Affordable Housing
• Community Engagement
• Energy efficiency
• Equitable Design
• Sam Lubell

Tiles are among the most enduring building materials. Glazed brick tiles have been discovered in archaeological sites and in ancient and medieval buildings around the world. The first glazed porcelain tiles, which date back to 15th-century China, are still around today. And yet, when one thinks of sustainable building products, tile might not be the first to come to mind.

More often than not, today’s building industry—with its culture of constructing and demolishing—fails to take advantage of tile’s inherent sustainability. In today’s context, we require that building materials have the lowest possible carbon footprint and be easily reused or recycled. So, how can tile—with its thousands of years of history—fit into today’s frameworks? And how can we build better with this time-tested material in North America? 

In the latest episode of Deep Green, created in partnership with AHF and Crossville, host Avi Rajagopal sits down with Noah Chitty, vice president of sustainability and technical services for AHF. Part of the AHF family of brands, Crossville has made great strides in optimizing tile manufacturing by innovating with new technologies and providing transparent information to the design community—efforts Chitty has helped drive. To learn how this ancient material is being reimagined for a more sustainable future, read an excerpt from their conversation below or listen to the full episode on the Surround Podcast Network.

Avi Rajagopal: Could you give us an introduction to sustainability in tiles? What makes the ceramic tile inherently sustainable, and where is the scope for improvement? 

Noah Chitty: If we look back and take a general view of it, probably durability and low maintenance are the two things that stick out. It depends on when we say what’s sustainable about it, who the audience is, and what is the customer looking for when they look for sustainability. 

The qualities of durability that you talked about have been around for a long time, and the easy-to-maintain aspect takes care of some of the harsher chemicals. Innovation in the tile industry has come from digital printing 10–15 years ago, which allows us to replicate natural materials—or anything else—much better than we used to. Pressing has changed in the last 10 years too, allowing for larger sizes and thinner profiles, which also have sustainability benefits from using less energy to fire. So, we have lots of opportunities, just like any other industry.

AR: Given the current landscape, how did Crossville determine its carbon emissions goals? I understand sustainability in general, but when it comes to carbon footprints—which became a topic of discussion a decade ago, particularly regarding embodied carbon materials and building products—could you take us back in time and explain the initial steps Crossville took to establish its focus? 

NC: The first step probably started in 2013 with the first EPD we published—a product EPD in 2014. That allowed us, like everyone else who takes this step, to understand what the baseline is, what our product is, and what it’s doing. It probably wasn’t until the second EPD in 2019 that we saw we could reduce things through simple steps, like changing motors and other components that weren’t as efficient as they could be. 

That’s when we realized we could make progress. It also helped us understand the impact of natural gas and electricity, which we have less ability to control. We started to look at what we can control now and what we can build on long-term. This process led us to set a 30 percent reduction goal by 2030. For a long time, many organizations had 2050 goals, but we realized that if we wait until 2050, we either won’t achieve it, or it’ll be too late. So, the goal came from asking, “What can we do if we work really hard without making it too easy?”

Honestly, more than just reducing carbon emissions, it was important for me to start a conversation about carbon emissions—to get people to understand what they are and what we’re targeting. Could we add an extra column to the ROI spreadsheet that asks, “Does this achieve all our objectives, and does it reduce emissions too?” 

That conversation was the most important part—more than the goal itself. 

AR: Often, that’s the case when it comes to carbon assessment. We’ve done things a certain way for so long, and while our methods have evolved—obviously for some advantages, such as producing efficient and affordable products—it’s important to reconsider these processes. 

Once you layer a carbon assessment onto these methods, it prompts you to think about your processes differently. Could you take a step back and explain how tiles are made? Also, could you highlight some of the concerns you just pointed out?  

NC: I’m going to focus more on the porcelain process because that’s mainly what we’re making, but it’s not much different from some of the others. Porcelain tile is mainly made of three things: feldspar, which makes up about 50 percent of the body. It’s a material that naturally occurs in granite and is extracted from granite; about 30 percent is clay, a mixture of different clays that gives us low carbon and high strength. Then there’s usually a filler like sand or quartz, making up the remaining 20 percent—in those ratios: 50, 30, 20. What’s important, since we’re essentially taking three materials from the earth, is that we’re close to them. That’s why we’re here in Tennessee, where we have easy access.

We take these raw materials and add a whole bunch of water and grind them into a mix. We can add color if needed, and then we turn it into a powder—a little coarser than beach sand—with a moisture content that allows us to pack it into a die. We press it hard, bring it out, dry it a bit so it doesn’t retain too much water, and then put it through a kiln at almost 2200 degrees Fahrenheit. It sounds simple, but it’s not simple.

AR: In what parts of this process did you realize that there was scope for reducing carbon emissions? 

NC: Scope 3 emissions are obviously harder to figure out and have less ability to control. So, you look at Scope 1 and Scope 2 and say, “Okay, where’s the opportunity with natural gas, where’s the opportunity with electricity?” We found when we did our last EPD that TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), which provides us with energy here in Tennessee, is actually better than the national grid mix. We saw a better reduction in our last EPD when using our mix as opposed to the national grid mix.  

One of the things we can do is figure out where TVA is going and how quickly they are going to get greener. In the meantime, because we’ve still got natural gas—which has some potential for improvements but is still a fossil fuel—it is going to be what it’s going to be. 

The opportunities we’re looking at include determining if we are using that gas as efficiently as possible. Are we firing at 55 minutes? Could we fire at 53 minutes? Do we have a tile that’s nine and a half millimeters thick? Could it be nine millimeters thick? Can we recycle more things? So, those were the initial considerations: let’s go see if we’re doing everything as optimally as possible and using these things—like gas and electricity, that we can’t get rid of immediately—in the best and most efficient way. I think we still have some strides to make before we hit the wall.  

AR: You have EPDs so people can see the carbon footprint of your products, but you also offer a few collections of carbon-neutral tiles. Tell me a little about at least the two newest ones—Billion and Arjun 2.0—and how you achieve carbon neutrality.

NC: The first thing that may not be apparent is that there’s nothing different about those two collections compared to the other collections we make. Those collections that we call carbon neutral aren’t manufactured any differently than any other collections. 

Those were collections we decided to take to the market and say, “Hey, you guys were asking us for carbon-neutral, zero-carbon products. We can’t provide you with zero-carbon products today because we don’t have the technology to get there, but here’s what we can do—let’s start having a conversation and push things forward.”  

In my view, if we can’t eliminate gas and electricity today, and the client need a product that’s carbon neutral, my only available path is to lower my carbon footprint as quickly as possible and offset in the interim. It’s buying into the problem, but I think a lot of people perceive it as buying out of the problem. We must make sure we have this conversation that clarifies it’s buying in, especially if you’re coupling it with reduction at the same time. 

AR: I think that’s an interesting conundrum. I think the most interesting thing you said is that these collections are not any different; they just have this additional investment in carbon offsets. It really depends on the people conducting the LCA (lifecycle assessment) of buildings to figure out how much this matters and which numbers they want to use effectively because the product is the same. 

Tile is not a material that’s known for being easily recyclable and yet you created this program. Tell me why it was important and what it achieves now?  

NC: In the early ’80s, the Crossville factory had started the process to recycle all the water in the factory. They also had started a lot of processes to try and capture all the unfired tile that was either quality checked or didn’t make it through the process. There are fired pieces that are landfilled or even out in the market. What do we do with them?  

At that point, we weren’t owned by AHF. Our current family had some connections with a mining company who was able to find a mining piece of machinery that was durable enough to break fired tile into something small enough that we could reuse it.  

A building in Illinois asked if we could take the tile out of the building, recycle it, and send it back. We said yes and that led to a second question: “Can you take all the toilets and sinks too?” And a final request: “We want those things recycled and put into the actual tile that’s going to go back into the actual building.”  

It was an incredibly difficult undertaking—honestly, a horrible experience. But we did it! We lost money, but it brought us to this place of being able to do something that we couldn’t before. It brought us to the partnership with Toto, recycling unfired toilets that were coming out of their Morrow, Georgia, plant and finding these resources that we could use that weren’t virgin raw materials. 

AR: There’s a lot to love about this story. 

NC: Yeah, it’s a good story. With the fired tile, we’ve increased our recycling percentage. We are now having a conversation about take-back programs. I get  all these questions: I don’t know if it’s better for us to take a pile of dirt from a mile from here or if to put toilets on a truck from 150 miles away and add its carbon footprint to come to our facility. 

AR: I love that you bring that up because that’s exactly where I was going. You take this building material that’s made to last—maybe hundreds of years unless you take a sledgehammer to it— and then you invest in very specialized equipment to break it down to make a durable product. 

Again, I think the design community should also be asking: how can this durable product actually endure? 

NC: Right. That should be the only important thing. Let’s look at the inputs and ensure they’re accomplishing what they’re supposed to. 

Listen to the full episode for more on how tiles are being reimagined for a sustainable future.

Anthony Brower recently attended the Net Zero Conference, an annual event that convenes climate leaders to collaborate on global solutions for change in the built environment. Hosted by Verdical Group, the event is a hub for people in the industry to gather to bridge knowledge gaps. Now in its twelfth year, the conference came at a pivotal moment for attendees like Brower to discuss the future of the movement and what is needed to create necessary change at scale.

This is not a new or isolated story. Net zero now stands where every movement built on voluntary virtue eventually lands. A good idea worn thin by its own optimism. For years, public safety campaigns begged drivers to buckle their seatbelts. Adoption was nonexistent until laws required it, and cars themselves protested with persistent warning chimes that ceased only when we clicked in. Recycling began as an act of personal responsibility but participation only truly began when cities issued bins, set pickup schedules, and left unsorted trash on homeowners’ doorsteps uncollected. Smoking bans followed a similar path, workplace safety found its turning point with OSHA, and building codes for fire safety emerged after tragedy forced our hand.

Each of these examples reveals a quiet trend of how voluntary progress eventually stalls, but they all started with hope and succeeded with regulation. Enduring change happens when we set the floor, not when we beg people to climb. The systems changed, and human behaviors followed. Participation was no longer dependent on willpower, but design.

This is the moment that the idea of net zero finds itself in today. Once it was a rallying cry, now it’s more like the half-torn banner at a decaying and empty stadium. The problem is not that the goal was wrong, but that we built it on volunteerism and jargon instead of shared language and mandate.

For decades, we have created fluency in a language that almost no one else speaks. Acronyms, checklists, energy curves, carbon coefficients, all traded like currency. While our clients nod politely, attention wanes. They want to see the recipe before deciding on a chef, but they seldom stay for the meal.

Rethinking the Language of Net Zero

We surely are missing something, but it’s not the concept that’s broken, it’s the story we tell. Firms race to differentiate in a crowded design market, trying to translate physics into persuasion, and along the way the meaning dissolves.

Engineers speak performance data, clients of cost, users of comfort. Architects live in the space between those two languages, often serving as translators rather than designers. When we tell a client the building’s energy use intensity (EUI) is dropping, they hear math. When you tell them their employees will breathe easier, they hear purpose.

Interestingly, the builders are starting to bridge the divide. Several design-build teams at Verdical Group’s 2025 Net Zero Conference noted that net zero no longer costs more than conventionally conceived projects. The unguarded enthusiasm revealed that the tools are ready, it’s the alignment that needs work. When teams share in the literacy of the effort everyone pulls toward a common goal.

This is a key structural flaw. We’ve been treating a fever, operational energy, while the rest of the body, embodied energy, stands by unattended. Each of these efforts represents a monumental task that, independently, can become overwhelming. Together they can, in our clients’ eyes, represent a recipe for a brownie so heavy that we default to something lighter, easier, known.

Voluntary programs were designed to lead, to create a proof of concept for those visionaries on the near side of the curve. A handful of temples have been built, shining as examples that the impossible is indeed possible, but heroics do not scale; codes do.

Context deepens the confusion. In California at noon, the energy grid is nearly carbon free. Come evening, it isn’t. A kilowatt-hour has a different accent depending on where and when it’s spent. “What does net zero even mean in this context?” asks Ismar Enriquez of Practice at the conference. The definition itself, and key nuances, keep changing. Ismar is right, translation is not about better storytelling, it’s about broader fluency. We need a way for financiers, developers, tenants, and politicians to hear the same message and believe it belongs to them.

The future will not hinge on new or clearer acronyms but on plain speech. Regenerative design will shift the frame from subtraction to repair. Homeowners will not ask for EUI metrics but for air that doesn’t trigger asthma. Engineers will describe waste heat as warmth for families instead of recoverable loads. Policy needs to stop sounding like a punitive burden and start sounding like a shared purpose.

Net Zero Belongs to Systems, Not Heroes

The lesson from every public campaign and building code is that progress accelerates when responsibility becomes a collective action. If ten percent better on every project creates greater impact than one hundred percent better on an immeasurably few projects, imagine what eighty percent better on every project would mean as a standard. For design, this means writing performance into the contract, the zoning, and the financing. Design intent needs to survive value engineering.

Policy is often treated as the villain of creativity, but regulation has always been its crucible. The best designers find clarity inside constraint. Cities are tying incentives to verified performance. Developers are seeing energy resilience as a way to protect asset value. Insurers are opening opportunities to reward buildings than anticipate problems instead of reacting to them, resulting in fewer claims. Each of these is a step away from persuasion and toward fluency.

The end of net zero is not a loss. It is the handoff we need now to pivot from hope to habit. You’ll know the moment it happens because we’ll stop asking for miracles and start to design for memory.

About the Author

Anthony Brower, FAIA, LEED Fellow, is an architect and climate strategist whose career spans nearly 30-years and multiple building typologies worldwide. He has guided projects to over 400 design awards and is known for turning sustainability into design opportunities by inspiring teams to move beyond checklists toward narratives that elevate both performance and experience. Anthony is based in Kansas City. Contact him at anthony_brower@theclimatearchitect.com.

About the Net Zero Conference

The 12th annual Net Zero Conference was hosted at the Los Angeles Convention Center on October 1, 2025. The conference convenes climate leaders to collaborate on global solutions for change in the built environment. The event is a hub for people in the industry to gather, bridge knowledge gaps, and inspire a net zero future. It features inspiring keynotes, educational sessions, an expo hall featuring leading decarbonization technologies, and the Trailblazer Awards Ceremony. This year’s keynotes included Joel Cesare (Growth Lead, Cambio), Leah Thomas (Environmentalist), and Nalleli Cobo (Environmental Activist), and Michael Ford (Founder, The Hip Hop Architecture Camp). The Net Zero Conference is produced by Verdical Group, a sustainability consulting firm that specializes in decarbonizing the built environment.

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• Anthony Brower
• Courtesy Net Zero Conference
• Ling Lou

The idea that water is fundamental to life is a truth acknowledged by cultures throughout world history. The Lakota phrase Mní wičhóni, which translates to “Water is life,” became the rallying cry of Indigenous activists protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. The same idea is central to Western understandings of biological evolution; indeed, the search for extraterrestrial life is, in many ways, a search for water. 

In spite of water’s life-sustaining power, humans became masters at rendering it invisible over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Creeks were buried, waterfronts walled off. In 1984, a Berkeley landscape architect led an effort to “daylight” a portion of Strawberry Creek, the first documented example of an urban waterway being exhumed. The 40 years since have seen cities gradually reversing course, with billions of dollars invested in daylighting projects and waterfront redevelopment. And yet even decades of daylighting efforts have not obviated the need for artists and architects to help visualize this vast planetary system. 

Few people know this better than Anthony Acciavatti, an associate professor of architecture at Yale University. Acciavatti’s exhibition Grounded Growth: Groundwater’s Blueprint for Intelligent Urban Form, currently on view as part of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, argues that the pace and scale of groundwater extraction worldwide represents the “hidden front line of climate change,” contributing to both land subsidence and sea level rise—and enabling patterns of human settlement and agriculture that are fundamentally unsustainable. 

The Role of Groundwater in Shaping Climate Resilience

The exhibition revolves around a series of suspended sculptures that make visible the world’s aquifers, the subterranean reservoirs on which more than half of the global population now relies for drinking water or irrigation. Focused on two of the most embattled aquifers on earth—beneath North America’s Sonoran Desert and India’s Indo-Gangetic Plain—the exhibition encourages attendees to view groundwater as a global commons. 

“In 1898, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled—and it was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1906—that groundwater is a constituent part of someone’s private property,” Acciavatti explains. In reality, he said, these water bodies are as inseparable as the air in the atmosphere. And yet, around the world, aquifers are being depleted at speeds that don’t allow nature to keep up. In 2017 alone, humans pumped out the equivalent of two Lake Eries, Acciavatti notes. More recently, a team of scientists concluded that groundwater extraction had measurably altered the earth’s tilt. 

Reimagining Water & Architectural Interventions

Acciavatti’s sculptures are fabricated out of wood and wire mesh, employing the language of architectural scale models but inverting it: Buildings and infrastructure are upside down, the straw-like mechanical wells extending upward through the diaphanous aquifers. In form, the tubular dioramas recall geological core samples, as well as water wells themselves. “I always had a deep affection and interest in how to model ground as not just a single line,” says Acciavatti of the three-dimensional models.

As a problem, groundwater extraction will require political solutions, but Acciavatti sees promise in site-scale interventions as well. He has proposed converting Arizona’s derelict shopping centers—including Tucson’s former Foothills Mall, demolished in 2023—into large artificial sponges that can collect water during the rainy season and allow it to recharge into the aquifer. In New Delhi, he envisions underground cisterns to store rainwater from monsoons, a natural resource that could replace the city’s reliance on often-contaminated groundwater.

A body of water doesn’t have to be buried to have lost its place in the collective consciousness. In cities around the country, rivers and lakes remain hidden or are inaccessible. This was one of many observations made by the architects and planners at Ayers Saint Gross, following a yearlong investigation into various American universities’ relationships to water. Since 1998, the Baltimore-based design firm has selected a group of college campuses to compare as part of an internal research project. Initially only concerned with universities’ size and spatial arrangements with no hydrological component, the initiative has grown to take on different annual themes. In 2024, the firm decided to tackle water.

A University’s Water Connections

“You listen to the news about flooding and storms, and a lot of people think they just [affect] the coasts,” said Jessica Leonard, a principal at Ayers Saint Gross. In reality, across the country, “water is a huge issue. It’s anything from stormwater to flooding to drought and irrigation.” The most recent edition of Comparing Campuses analyzed the locations of eight major institutions of higher education, mapping university structures and open spaces in relation to existing rivers and wetlands, the 100-year floodplain, and projected sea levels in 2050. 

The diagrams are more than simple visualizations of risk. The team also analyzed how universities currently engage with their nearby water bodies, whether through athletics, academics, or current planning initiatives. The central gathering space at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, for instance, is set directly on Lake Mendota, making it a hypervisible part of campus life. Additionally, students use the lake for rowing and for research; the university is considered the birthplace of limnology, the study of lakes. “They’re on an isthmus, so [water] has completely defined the way the city and the campus have been built,” Leonard says.

In contrast, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has relatively few physical connections to the adjacent Tennessee River. “You’re seeing it, but there’s a huge wall. There’s no way to physically get there,” Leonard says. Ayers Saint Gross is actively working with the university to identify potential access points, originally through a 2023 campus master plan and now through a study analyzing the river corridor in more detail.

Reconnecting Los Angeles to Its River

If facilitating a sort of repair between a river and its residents—both human and nonhuman—is the task at hand, it is demonstrably easier said than done. Metabolic Studio’s Lauren Bon has spent more than a decade working to reconnect a sliver of the Los Angeles River to what historically was its floodplain. 

The simplest way to describe Bending the River is as a water diversion project, an infrastructural act that takes water from one place and delivers it to another, in this case from the L.A. River to Metabolic Studio, where it is cleaned by wetland plants, and finally to the Los Angeles State Historic Park, where it is used for irrigation. And yet the artwork is meant as an act of repair, restoring L.A.’s fractured hydrological system and reconnecting Angelenos to their river. 

Infamously restricted to a yawning concrete channel as a means of flood mitigation, the L.A. River is representative of many urban waterways: hyper-rationalized, hyper-controlled, largely devoid of life. With Bending the River, Bon is attempting to undo a tiny portion of that hyper-rationalization and stir the public’s imagination about what a river is and should be.

“It’s already poetic to call it a river,” Bon says. “I felt like in referring to this project as a bend, it starts to give the river back its flow. Bending implies an active action, which is very river-like. But I also meant it in a playful way, to talk about bending the rules.” Indeed, the rules that govern the L.A. River are a large part of the project; in some ways, they are as much the artwork as any other part of Bon’s intervention. The project, which conveys 106 acre-feet—roughly 4.5 million cubic feet—of water less than a mile, ultimately required more than 75 government permits. 

Rethinking our relationship to water will require a kind of institutional and imaginative daylighting. It requires a commitment to unmaking, unbuilding, and to doing so at scale. But it will also require new infrastructural typologies, new rituals, and new language to accompany them. “Architects have been, since the founding of the field, invested in the ways in which infrastructure can be given a civic presence,” Acciavatti says. “For me, the role of an architect or landscape architect today is, how do you not just engineer [a solution], but also give it a civic presence?”

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