Symposium: Water Cycles – COP28 Design Conversations

Collaboration within a symposium at Jameel Arts Centre (Dubai, December 2023) exploring how artistic and spatial practices engage with water as a cultural, social, and environmental condition. The work considered how water is understood and represented across different contexts, and how these representations inform design approaches, spatial imaginaries, and relationships between societies and their environments.

Engaging with questions of perception, situated knowledge, and collective practices, the contribution reflected on water beyond its technical dimension, situating it within broader social and spatial contexts shaped by infrastructures, governance structures, and cultural practices. The project drew connections between artistic research, spatial thinking, and interdisciplinary approaches that address water through forms of inquiry grounded in place.

The symposium brought together practitioners working across architecture, research, and artistic production, including Carola Hein (TU Delft), Ain Contractor (IHE Delft Institute for Water Education), Anjali (Yugma Collective), and Aziz Motawa (Akkaz Collective), contributing to an ongoing exchange on how creative practices engage with water across different geographies.