Atlas

Pororoca: abraz(ç)o de río y mar is a project co-designed and developed by Catalina Mejía Moreno, Felipe Arturo, Gabriela Leandro Pereira, and multiple collaborators in Brazil, Colombia, and the UK, following a grant awarded by re:arc Institute Public Discourse fund in 2023.

Pororoca, from the Tupi word “porórka,” refers to the sound made when tidal waves meet a river. It describes a meeting where the Atlantic tide pushes against the river current, creating waves. This encounter forms a space where sweet and salt waters merge, bringing geological, colonial, economic, migratory, and climatic histories. In this space, waters move sediments, memories, waste, and futures. Pororoca mobilizes exchanges between different bodies and systems, proposing possibilities for transformation.

A counter-map illustrates connections between three river systems: the Río Magdalena in Barranquilla, the Rio Paraguaçu near Salvador, and the Thames in London. These rivers flow into the Caribbean, the South Atlantic, and the North Sea, respectively.

Pororoca invites spaces for situated dialogue, listening, and attention to colliding bodies and waters. It addresses colonial histories, local practices, and the entanglements of embodied, spatial, architectural, urban, and territorial waters.

The project develops through three immersions: Paraguaçu River, Bahia (Brazil), Magdalena-Yuma River (Colombia) and Thames Estuary (United Kingdom). Each immersion engages with rivers shaped by tides, multispecies adaptations, and processes of dispossession. Listening to the waters informs the work and the shared experiences.

OPEN-GROUND is a design for a public architecture that operates as both climate infrastructure and space for outdoor leisure in communities disproportionately affected by climate change. The project proposes a microclimatic engine in the form of a sports court that integrates below-ground water reservoirs for stormwater detention and an above-ground insulating roof connected by thermal chimneys for passive cooling, hybridizing the relationship between public life and water systems in Houston.

Fondation pour la Protection de la Biodiversité Marine (FoProBiM) improves the health of coral reef and mangrove ecosystems through restoration and rehabilitation. Its activities include environmental education, capacity building, fisheries management, coral restoration, mangrove rehabilitation and reforestation, and the development of environmentally friendly and sustainable alternative livelihoods, such as apiculture and eco-tourism, in close collaboration with coastal area inhabitants.

Missing Waters is a large-scale water map painted on surfaces throughout the Santa Fe Railyard. Over the course of three days, Levy collaborates with local artists, students from the New Mexico School for the Arts, and passersby to apply the water map directly to the existing hardscape, using hydrological patterns created by moving water through laminar flow and turbulence. The painting is meant to be temporary, wearing away in days under foot traffic or washing away with the next rainstorm.

Ice complicates a world view where solid, stable land is positioned opposite liquid, mobile water. Ice melts and freezes; it breaks apart and moves; it has both land-like and water-like social properties; its edges are unclear. From 2014 through 2019, the ICE LAW Project investigated the potential for a legal framework that acknowledges the complex geophysical environment in the world’s frozen regions and explored possibilities for an ice-sensitive legal system.

Adoptacoastline invites humans to explore their own wellness and interconnection to nature and the circle of life through stewardship and serving the living waters and vital ecosystems that are rapidly perishing. From grassroots beginnings as a one person initiative Adoptacoastline has organically grown to include hundreds of volunteers, community alliances, global collaborations and impactful campaigns centered on stewardship of nature.

Launched in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics in July 2024, the Swimmable Cities alliance supports a global, grassroots movement for swimmable urban waterways. With 126 diverse signatory organisations from 72 cities and communities across 27 countries, the Swimmable Cities Charter champions the Right to Swim, celebrates urban swimming culture, and honours the sacredness of water.

In 2022, ecoartspace partnered with Our Humanity Matters in New York City to site a series of eighteen billboards focused on water in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Western Massachusetts. Water as a source of Life mediates our planet’s ecosystems for humans and nonhumans alike, including all watershed beings such as trees, forests, fish, animals, insects, soil and mycorrhizal networks. The final images were selected by ecoartspace over 600 ecoartspace members.

In the early 20th century, Lake Chalco near Mexico City was deliberately desiccated by a Spanish immigrant, leading to environmental de- vastation and the collapse of local indigenous economies. This man-made disaster continues to impact the region with floods, water contamination, land subsidence, and infrastructure damage. The Return of a Lake is a project which aims to revive indigenous history and culture, challenge co- lonial legacies, and promote sustainable living.

Ethnological, historical, archaeological, and toponymic study. It offers an approach to the history of the irrigated fields, crops, customs, related trades, organization, construction, and maintenance of elements linked to irrigation. The 1862 Municipal Irrigation Ordinances have been made available to the public and help resolve conflicts. The memories of the elderly confirm the practices and customs recorded in the documentation, and they outline a resilient system that must be valued and reclaimed.

The Casita del Agua, created by Centinelas del Agua in the community of Solferino, is an educational and community space that promotes sustainable water management and environmental awareness. Through workshops, playful activities, and training programs, it strengthens local knowledge and empowers both children and adults in the care of water resources. Its social impact lies in fostering resilient communities committed to ecological and collective well-being.

This project maps practices of social justice in Tohoku (Japan) enacted by communities as a reaction to the Central Government’s decision to build a 400 km long, 15-18 metres high seawall along the coast after the 2011 triple disaster. Indeed, the seawalls in place before 2011 lulled the communities into a false sense of security; the massive walls would damage the seabed’s flora and fauna; and a wall of that size creates a physical and emotional separation between communities and water.

WAMU-NET is a non-profit NGO that promotes the cultural and natural heritage of water and counts 130 members in 44 countries. Museums play a key role in showcasing humanity’s relationship with water: they highlight sustainable management practices and knowledge that have shaped water uses for centuries. By connecting institutions across the world, WAMU-NET promotes new perspectives on water management and the need for collective action to restore humanity’s deteriorating relationship with water.

One of the main challenges faced by families in Barbuda is access to potable water. This program seeks to re-establish water harvesting practices within the community to improve household access to safe water. To address this need, barbudanGO provides thirty-five 600-gallon water tanks, sourced from a supplier in Antigua and shipped to Barbuda for distribution. A mason, working with apprentices, builds platforms to install the tanks.

Following the catastrophic events of Mumbai in 2005, Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha called for designing Mumbai as a relentlessly wet terrain. Inhabited Sea is a research collaborative of scientists, designers and artists that examine practices of dwelling in the sodden city to generate new paradigms for governing cities in the future.

This project empowers Mesoamerican communities to manage water and sanitation through local boards. It focuses on long-term environmental sustainability, addressing the rising impact of tourism. Key initiatives include a revised water rate structure, experiential exchanges, innovative school water management systems, and raising awareness about water conservation and waste management to foster a culture of sustainability.

This research explores the relationship between the Patiño Aquifer and the urban development of Asunción and its Metropolitan Region. It analyzes its vital role as a water source for 2.5 million inhabitants and how unplanned growth has impacted water systems. Through historical and cartographic analysis, a progressive loss of connection with water is revealed. The thesis proposes a rethinking of the city by integrating its natural and hydrological patterns into future planning.

Walking the Wetland is a scientific-cultural project that seeks to explore and make wetlands visible through direct experience. It proposes walking as a method for discovering the territory. Wetlands, located between solid ground and deep waters, serve key functions: they protect against flooding and filter urban pollutants. This practice allows for the rediscovery of little-known landscapes, structures, and ecosystems.

Historically marginalized, water bodies were reduced to limited functions, ignoring their ecological role. This fragmented biophysical systems, in contrast to urban flows that transcend boundaries. In the still-developing San Francisco neighborhood, there is significant potential to transform water from a threat into a driver of change—strengthening local identity and promoting a sustainable and resilient community.

From 2020–2023, CAWACON project united communities, organizations, and government to tackle water pollution by technical solutions and community-based models for water reuse, pollution prevention, and environmental data access. Its collective efforts strengthened local capacities, promoted water reuse, improved data access, and supported water policy-making, including the Law on Water Resource 2023. The model of collaboration serves as a foundation for sustainable water conservation in Vietnam.

This project reimagines urban flooding as a catalyst for adaptive, incremental urban redevelopment. Using Brederode, Antwerp, as a prototype case, it proposes a network of small-scale interventions (to infiltrate, connect, buffer and protect) that embrace water as a spatial agent. It fosters resilient, participatory design in dense urban fabric vulnerable to climate-driven flooding.

In 2003, an exceptional situation has been declared in the Vorniceni village, Republic of Moldova, because at the “Ion Inculet” lyceum was identified 75 cases of Hepatitis A. This situation motivated the first step of solving the problem: creating The Moldovan Network of Rural Volunteering Centers for Water (MNRVCW). The MNRVCW Mission aims at expanding its activities including other villages, countries on local, regional, national, European and International level.

In an ongoing effort to understand the connections between water resources, water systems, and international security and conflict, the Pacific Institute initiated a project in the late 1980s to track and categorize events related to water and conflict, which has been continuously updated since. The database, most recently updated in August 2024, presents the information as a chronology and map. Use the links below to explore the chronological list of events or the interactive events map.

The project addresses reduced food security and livelihood losses due to poor WASH conditions, climate change and soil degradation. The primary beneficiaries of the project are 1,300 women who are members of 40 self-help groups in remote rural villages in south-eastern Kenya. The project introduces an ecological sanitation model featuring a composting, urine diverting dry toilet. The source seperated urine and appropriately treated compost can be used as ecological fertilizer.

In flood-prone communities where the land dissolves with each rising tide, the Community Dock offers an amphibious architecture of resilience and care. Co-designed with local residents, it serves as a floating commons—a space for gathering, learning, and anchoring daily life. More than infrastructure, it is a living threshold where people and water meet, adapt, and imagine a future in balance.

Lobau Listening Comprehensions (LLC) is a site-specific, acoustic investigation of the Lobau, the Vienna Danube floodplains, by Julia Grillmayr, Christina Gruber and Sophia Rut. This investigation includes personal experiences, ecological conditions, more-than-human voices, current political negotiations as well as historical events. We work with sound from different perspectives and through different practices: collective listening, oral histories, acoustic ecology, science communication.

The projects demonstrate how to create settlements that are healthier, more resilient, more beautiful, and more just. Since 1987, it has collaborated with community partners to design and build community gardens, develop a digital database, create and implement a middle school curriculum, and propose strategic approaches for the reuse of vacant urban land—including the use of green infrastructure to reduce flooding, mitigate combined sewer overflows, and improve water quality.

The project “Dniester River Youth Summer Schools” hasa win-win nature. At first, during 10-days-duration summer school 70 youngsters (age 16-20) receive the knowledge on integrated river basin management and related issues. Both banks situated in conditions of frozen conflict are equally presented which permits to also build trust among youth. The school is organised from 2008 until present each year in July.

A “Blue Community” adopts a water commons framework that treats water as a common good that everyone shares and is the responsibility of all. Because water is essential for human life, it must be governed by principles that allow for reasonable use, equitable distribution and responsible treatment in order to preserve water for nature and future generations. The Blue Communities project is an opportunity for all people to come together to protect water.

The project explores how water infrastructures shape emotion, intimacy, and daily life. Through performance, autofiction, and film, it treats water as both material and metaphor, tracing affective geographies across Rotterdam, Venice, New Orleans, and Rome. It proposes an embodied, poetic lens on the climate crisis and the architectures that hold and divide our lives.

The research is articulated around the notions of infrastructure, invasive species, hydrology, mobility, and land-use. In order to pursue multispecies sustainability, we need to move beyond conservationist discourses and compensatory measures, and reconsider urban life from a post-anthropocentric approach. We create narratives that result from being attentive to the complex non-human life forms and facilitate new forms of understanding, relationship and responsibility in a more than human world.

“Weavers with the River” is a participatory textile project focused on the Sinackse River in Taiwan. Once scarred by war and migration, the river now borders Danhai New Town. The artist mapped the stream and invited locals to weave their visions of the riverbanks. With simple techniques, participants—residents, scholars, families, and newcomers—created a tapestry blending flora, architecture, histories, and imagined futures, highlighting the river as a space shaped by collective imagination.

MS-FUSION AIR is an ‘Artist in Residence’ programme on the special ship, optimized for operation on rivers. This ship, a floating sculpture, is available to artists & scientists for river regions to realize their projects, a tool for artistic research, fieldwork and projects. Prohaska has experience since 2007 with artworks on rivers and construction and operation of 4 research ships. Since 2019 the unique ambience of the river is to be made accessible to a larger number of artists.

Step wells in India are magnificent groundwater bodies characterized by their values of geodiversity, these are known as Jhalra & Baori which are good practices of ground water harvesting,conservation & management system & are magnificent artefacts showcasing historical, cultural, archeological, Architectural & civil engineering geomonumental heritage of India. In absence of any methodology & guidelines, hydrological heritage aspects of step wells are least explored for their geoheritage values.

Young innovators design and install decentralized rainwater harvesting systems in urban schools and community centers, using modular tanks and smart filtration. This is an initiative under our climate cafes launched at COP27 in Egypt and currently running 846 cafes across 38 African countries within our vulnerable climate frontline communities. Impact: Reduces runoff and urban flooding, Provides clean water for non-potable use and Educates the community on water cycles and conservation

P.A.D. is an open initiative of sea plants, artists/activists and critters. Organizing lectures, performances, seaweed cuttings and ceremonial tastings/bathings. Inspired and choreographed by the tidal movements and migration patterns, guided by the moon phases, it pursues an interrelated linguistic embodiment of seaweed rights and seaweed spirits. It’s a model to identify and promote the urgencies of critical resistance, to expand narratives and support the inclusion & equality.

MS-FUSION AIR is an ‘Artist in Residence’ programme on the special ship, optimized for operation on rivers. This ship, a floating sculpture, is available to artists & scientists for river regions to realize their projects, a tool for artistic research, fieldwork and projects. Prohaska has experience since 2007 with artworks on rivers and construction and operation of 4 research ships. Since 2019 the unique ambience of the river is to be made accessible to a larger number of artists.

FREE GENIE is an artistic conversation piece dealing with the spiritual value of water and its appropriation by the bottled water industries. It consists of 60 unique secondhand waterglasses engraved with quotes of spiritual terminology used by brand names and marketing slogans of bottled water products. FREE GENIE aims to reclaim and de-commercialize our relationship to water. It invites to (re-)connect to local (tap) water by drinking rituals and reflection dialogues.