WATER INDEX [CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS]

The University of Virginia School of Architecture would like to extend the invitation to submit visions for the future of water to be considered for inclusion in the upcoming book entitled WATER INDEX.   This book will catalogue the world’s most promising and provocative visions for the future of water and humanity.  This is an open call for projects and papers that acknowledge and challenge the pressing water issues confronting the 21st Century.  Submissions can vary in scale and discipline. Submissions can be at the scale of a cup or a dam, a fountain or a city. WATER INDEX is a search for intelligence about how to create a sustainable, productive relationship between water and people.

The WATER INDEX will be structured as an index that positions emerging terms, mechanisms, and strategies within a framework of three pressing water topics: The Rising, The Contaminated, and The Disappearing.  These three conditions of water present fundamental complications for humanity’s dependence on water and will become thresholds within the index.  Flowing between these three thresholds is a gradient of terms and topics from which the selected submissions will be indexed.

Terms for Speculation
Submissions may specifically align to one of the identified terms below or suggest other water terminologies or topics to be included in the WATER INDEX.

Rising, Antarctic Ice Sheet, Arctic, cataclysmic cycles, Catastrophism, coastline, control, creation, currents, drowned, dynamics, erosion patterns, expansion, flood, flood channels, flood mark, glacier, ice, Kona storm, landslides, liquefaction, living material, measurement, melting, monsoon belts, new territory, Northwest Passage, rate, retreat, saltwater intrusion, sea level, sea surface temperatures, sheet flooding, snowmelt, storm surge, super storm, SuperDam, Tibetan glaciers, transformation, turbulence, underwater, water-laden, Contaminated, waterborne, water mafia, water cartel, urbanization, toxic, salinity, recharge, putrid coast, public health, popcorn shrimp, petrochemical, paving, nonlinear localized water infrastructure, living ecology, hydrological dystopias, Gulf of Mexico, fertilizer, diarrhea, decentralization, cracks and fissures, cholera, black mayonnaise, Amphibian Apocalypse, agricultural runoff, Disappearing, aquifer, artesian basins, biofuel plantations, depletion, desalination, dissipative structures, double cropping, drying out, ephemeral, hot stain, hydraulic decoration, irrigation, lawns, leaky infrastructure, Manifest Destiny, megadrought, over consumption, Owens Lake, pools, sinkholes, species, subterranean water, suicide, sweat, urban heat islands, water mining, wetlands.

About the Publication
WATER INDEX looks to employ the dystopian threats surrounding water as a provocation. The 21st Century is facing an elevating crisis with water.  The seas are rising, the deserts are expanding, and the cities are growing at alarming rates. We must construct new mechanisms for subsistence.  In a state of expanding fragility between water, economy, ecology, politics, and culture, the question is the format for deliverance.  Is it sufficient to build life support systems that offer momentary alleviation?  Is it possible to reframe the problems in order to formulate new solutions?  The WATER INDEX will provide a catalog for the future of water and humanity.   The book is a resultant of a yearlong focus on water at the University of Virginia School of Architecture.  The content will include selected submissions from students, faculty and professionals from around the world.

WATER INDEX’s relevance is ever growing as our complications with water continue to become more and more severe and frequent.  In the last year, the news has been dominated by tragic water related catastrophes:  Hurricane Sandy drastically disrupted the northeastern United States taking over 150 lives and causing over 50 billion dollars in damage, Hurricane Isaac hit the Gulf Coast exactly 7 years after Hurricane Katrina, the summer of 2012 brought the worse drought to the United States in a quarter of a century, the Mississippi River shrank to its lowest levels in a quarter of a century, flooding has brought chaos to the Philippines, and scientists at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center reported in August that the amount of ice covering the sea surface has shrunk to its lowest recorded level.  Population growth and climate change are drastically effecting how we interact with water.  Water feeds life, but so often it also takes life.

Final Submission Deadline: 11:59pm EDT on May 31st.

Submission Instructions
All submissions are to be uploaded from the book’s website: www.waterindex.info . Entries may be submitted by individual authors or as a group or team. There is no limit to number of entries allowed, but all entries must be submitted independently with proper identification. We will be accepting both projects and papers for consideration in the book.

Project Submission Requirements
Refer to waterindex.info for submission requirements and formats.

Selection Process
Submission does not guarantee inclusion in the publication.  Selection for the publication will be a highly competitive process.  Projects will be evaluated based on significance, relevance and originality.  Selected authors will be notified in early July 2013.

Website address: http://www.waterindex.info