The Project, RESources in Coastal groundwater Under hydroclimatic Extremes (RESCUE), funded by Water 4 All and co-funded by the European Union, is delighted to see the topic of groundwater also making an appearance at the 19th edition of the Venice Biennale on Architecture this year.
Sophie Burton of the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics – OGS, which leads communications for RESCUE, had the pleasure of attending the pre-opening to interview Anthony Acciavatti, Diana Balmori Assistant Professor at Yale University, whose exhibition Grounded Growth: Groundwater’s Blueprint for Intelligent Urban Form, appears at the Arsenale site.
RESCUE already featured Prof. Acciavatti’s work at the end of last year on its website, titled The Story of Groundwater is Spreading, which featured his previous exhibition Groundwater Earth: the World Before and After the Tubewell at the Yale School of Architecture.
This latest exhibition differs from the previous by focusing on the developments of two ongoing projects with teams in India and Arizona, which concentrates on groundwater as a collective resource while attempting to give it a civic dimension in the context of architecture and urban design.
“The message of the exhibition is that we live in the age of groundwater. More than half of all agriculture is irrigated with groundwater and nearly half of the human population drinks groundwater on a daily basis. Groundwater has become integral, not only to agriculture, but to urban life more generally, and the exhibition looks at how this resource has changed the way we live on the Earth and how dependent we are…”
Prof. Acciavatti is often based in New Delhi, which is a major epicentre of groundwater extraction, and sees the location as a core example of understanding the pros and cons behind the process as well as building cultures around extraction.
The next exhibition will take place in June at the Welcome Collection in London, which has one of the largest collections of science and art in the world, where once again, Prof. Acciavatti’s work on groundwater will be on view.
Prof. Acciavatti also underlined the value of the RESCUE Project, commenting that it provides the science community and the public with a “…better understanding [of] the nature of the subsurface of the Earth…and offshore aquifers is something we know so little about and is really crucial, not just from the point of view of the Earth Sciences, but … raises all kinds of questions about ownership, property, rights of the sea versus rights of land so…the work you are doing cuts across many different disciplines and has value that extends well beyond the typical hard sciences, and to a much larger discourse that we need to have that is integral to climate change today.”
You can visit Grounded Growth: Groundwater’s Blueprint for Intelligent Urban Form at the Biennale from now until the 23rd November this year.
RESCUE, led by the University of Trieste (UNITS), aims to build knowledge on offshore and deep onshore low salinity aquifers in European coastal areas, to evaluate novel freshwater resources, and help secure a steady supply of water to both population and industry, in times of hydroclimatic extremes. The Project joins a growing body of research on groundwater extraction when the world is facing an unprecedented level of water shortage as climate change takes hold.
The Consortium of the 36-month long project, which began in March 2024, also includes Ruden AS, University of Derby (UoD) and University of Malta (UM).
