Lecture at Studio Maria Conen, ETH Zurich


Water as Commons in Zurich and London

Several places globally demonstrate key examples of commoning practices that are improving local communities’ access to water, many undoubtedly forming exemplary case studies for exploring how we may reclaim our access to this ‘shared wealth’. We felt it was also as important to understand one’s own context as, even within wealthy cities perceived as being at the forefront of technological development, key themes can arise that help us to better understand the forces at play when dealing with the access to, and shared use of water. 

As a result, we turned to our home cities – London and Zürich – looking inwards as a starting point for understanding their individual relationship to their waterways. Water in each of the two cities presents a multitude of social, geographical and political conditions that are often present across several different contexts. 
We chose to look at each city through specific lenses, selecting themes that we believe present a condition of duality; on one hand sparking growth and innovation yet also lead to seemingly problematic outcomes. By engaging with local initiatives and collaborating with other creative practitioners, we adopted an ethnographic approach of observation and documentation to bring to light these conditions.