Embedded Files
Audio Experience: running water.
This audio plays in the exhibition hall and adds the auditory experience that brings in a facet of nature in a constructed space.
flowing river video water sounds short clip.BY 4k NATURE.mp3New Sanitation
"The nozzle cup are at the outer ends of flexible tube whose inner ends connect with the water supply, and the water flow up freely through an opening in the center of a dome-like plate rising almost to the top of the cup, so the users can drink without touching the metallic parts of the cup, out of which the water constantly flows in a stream" - this is how the Scientist American described the New Sanitary Drinking Fountain in their 1913 issue. The public use of drinking fountains started in the 1800s as a response to the spreads of cholera through polluted water in overpopulated cities. However, its design of a common cup, which was used by thousands, was soon found to be undesirable as it led to the spread of many community diseases. “The abolishment of the common drinking cup has been a noteworthy achievement. Prohibited in the state of Kansas in 1904, the public cup is today a national outlaw”(Dunlap, 1917). Therefore, subsequent redesigns for the “New Sanitary Drinking Fountain” were tested, including the use of nozzles, the free individual cups,...all aimed to tackle the problems of public health relating to the public drinking fountains. In the middle of the 20th century, the arched stream was discovered and has been widely used till today as it was designed to keep people from touching the spout directly with their mouths. However, with COVID-19 and other future infectious diseases, how will the design and technology of drinking fountain be evolved to adjust to new concepts of "sanitation" while continue to serve the public?
Find more information at these links: https://www.jstor.org/stable/Newsanitary
"There had always been discrimination"
“There had always been discrimination” marks the 19th panel in Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series, a 60-panel artwork depicting the 20th century migration of Black people from the rural South to Northern cities. In this panel, Lawrence represents segregation in two ways, both tied to water: through the riverfront that literally separates the white woman from the Black woman and child and through the enduring symbol of the drinking fountain. That the drinking fountain was such a contested site in the segregated South is a reflection of the highly intimate nature of public drinking fountains, which raised as many concerns about contamination (in this case, the idea of racial contamination) as they resolved. And the high level of symbolic importance attached to drinking fountains by Black migrants and by civil rights advocates — by 1941, when Lawrence completed this painting, the drinking fountain had become a widely-understood shorthand for the broader strictures of Jim Crow segregation — points to an understanding of drinking fountains as important at least in part for the way that they mark inclusion in or exclusion from public life.
This object is unique among those in our exhibition for, among other things, its visual focus on two mundane water fountains in the rural South. But Lawrence’s panel demonstrates how drinking fountains mediated a very different relationship between city and nature for Black people living in the Jim Crow-era South, as a form of infrastructure whose very presence represented the kind of white supremacy motivated many to flee the “countryside” for the city.
Find more information at this link: https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2015/onewayticket/
Bad Furniture Proposal
Created by Laura Aldridge and James Rigler, "Bad Furniture" is a collaborative project with the aim of creating a modern drinking fountain inspired by the elaborate drinking fountains of the past. The creators wanted to step out of the norm of modern water fountains as dull and mundane, by creating "a sense of exuberance and the celebratory" into the sculptural form. This drinking fountain, while retaining function, celebrates form. The fountain is described as a central ceramic circle signaling the water source. The backdrop is made of flat aluminum. The featured imagery was inspired by The Fountain of Youth (1536) by German artist H S Beham. The simplicity of this installation effectively showcases its effectiveness as a drinking fountain and bottle-filler by showing the workings of the fountain's delivery while retaining a simple and unique form. It would turn the act of connecting with nature into an activity to connect with past extravagant forms while retaining a modern silhouette.
Find more information at this link: https://www.designexhibitionscotland.co.uk/laura-aldridge/
Lewis C. Cassidy Academics Plus Elementary School Water Fountain
This water fountain, as an object, was one of the most common and everyday pieces of architecture that could be imagined. It was found in Lewis C. Cassidy Academics Plus Elementary School, located in Overbrook, Philadelphia. Within the public school, it was in a basement hallway in a heavily trafficked area across from the cafeteria and gym. The fountain can be described as a "deep, oblong white basin with four spigots". The piece was designed with utility in mind; children line up at the fountain multiple times throughout the day, and the fountain was designed knowingly. However, this fountain is one of many in Philadelphia's schools that is contaminated with lead. Cassidy has been described as "possibly the most toxic school in the Philadelphia school system". Located in a poorer neighborhood in Philadelphia which is primarily attended by children of color. This object, and this school, is an example of the gatekeeping of the morality and purity of nature for the benefit of the white and the upper class. Here, we can see that even the most mundane of objects has deep, violent implications. While water fountains were implemented into the urban landscape in order to bring the moral purity of the countryside into the city, black people, and other people of color, were excluded from this process, as explored within other objects. Purity, and thus morality associated with clean drinking water, through various means, has been reserved for the white and wealthy. Clearly, this practice continues to this day.
Find more information at this link: https://www.inquirer.com/lead-paint-poison-children.
“In Williamsburg, four shower-heads connected to a hydrant, rigged up by a local resident several years ago.”
This is a more informal design project than many that we chose to showcase in this exhibition; unlike the next object, which similarly uses the New York City fire hydrant as a base from which to create a new form of water infrastructure, and which was designed by two credentialed architectural designers, the shower head outgrowth was installed by an anonymous resident of Williamsburg. It’s also not, by most definitions, a public drinking fountain. However, this project speaks to broader themes of expanding urban access to water and of using mundane water infrastructure to facilitate deeper connections between the city and nature. It demonstrates the crucial, and highly improvisatory, role that mundane water infrastructure already plays in shaping urban life; the shower-heads provide space at once for play, for cooling off (a particularly important goal in a neighborhood like Williamsburg, where many working-class residents lack access to air-conditioning units and where a lack of green space drives temperatures up in the summer months), and for sanitation. While distinct visually, it also evokes the open fire hydrant, which has become for similar reasons central to New York City’s public/communal life, symbolized particularly by the block party.
Additionally, the project demonstrates an abiding interest, particularly among working-class urban residents of color, in water access and in expanding water infrastructure, that complicates the dominant narrative of community mistrust or apathy towards existing public drinking fountains. It suggests that this mistrust is not inevitable, and that it’s driven more by the particular historical and contemporary factors that have made water fountains inaccessible and unsafe than it is by a broader lack of interest in public infrastructure.
Find more information at this link: https://urbanomnibus.net/2019/01/new-public-water/
New Public Hydrant Project, Tei Carpenter and Christopher Woebken, NYC.
Tei Carpenter and Christopher Woebken designed these series of low-impact interventions in their New Public Hydrant project to offset New York City's plastic bottle consumption. By equipping a fire hydrant with shalllow, drainable trough and six faucets for direct drinking or filling bottles, the fire hydrants thus become portable drinking fountains, usable by both humans and animals. Therefore, in taking advantage of the dense distribution of NYC's fire hydrants, Carpenter and Woebken hope to make drinking water a publicly accessible good. This small-scale program is part of the larger campaign, called OneNYCPlan by Mayor Bill de Blasio, to have zero waste sent to landfills.
The New Public Hydrant project achieve visibility for two typically overlooked infrastructures, fire hydrants and drinking water fountains, by reimagining the ways their functions can be reconciled. First, Carpenter and Woebken put the fire hydrants at our forefront attention by taking them out of the context that they were intended for: as water system used in emergency, as unclean water that has yet to be filtered, and as an invisible infrastructure located on the sidewalk that people shouldn't tamper with. Carpenter and Woebken then put a more personal spin on them by adding the pipes, faucets, and troughs in the contrasting blue color and turning the hydrants into objects of curiosity. Thus, they encourage adults, children, and pets to interact with these "drinking fountains," transforming once functional urban objects into personal ones. These simple interventions have the added effect of making city's fire hydrants into portable fountains that can easily be installed and removed, therefore allowing a simpler method of making drinking water accessible. Playfully innovative, New Public Hydrant invites us to rethink the way we perceive the neglected daily infrastructure in our lives and adding our personal touch to them.
Find more information at this link: https://urbanomnibus.net/2019/01/new-public-water/
The WaterHall, Orient Occident Atelier, Sneung, Cambodia.
The WaterHall is a 60-square-meter structure in Sneung, Cambodia that harvests and filters water from a nearby lake and a rainwater reservoir. Designed by the Hong Kong architecture studio Orient Occident Atelier, the structure comprises of an open hall meant for civic gathering and activities, "an inner and outer half-wall, and a concave metal roof supported by concrete pillars" (Hahn, "Orient Occident Atelier Builds Community Hall..."). The project combines both the locally sourced materials with modern designs to create an architectural structure that acts as an alternative water source for the residents while encouraging communal gatherings.
Compare to other projects in this exhibition, the WaterHall operates as a drinking fountain on a much larger architectural scale, muddling our images of "drinking water fountain." Firstly, it serves dual function as a water well and as a civic center. The design of the WaterHall thus manifests the second invisible aspect that drinking water fountains often do, to draw people in and create an invisible zone of congregation and human activities. Secondly, the WaterHall offers a different take on what we normally conceptualize as a drinking fountain, toppling our original understanding of this public infrastructure to redefine and reimagine what a drinking water fountain can be. As a result, the WaterHall in Cambodia creates a space that would intertwine the relationships between nature, city, and people, allowing for the exploration of a new drinking fountain typology.
Find more information at this link: https://www.dezeen.com/2020/08/26/orient-occident-atelier-waterhall-cambodia-architecture/
WaterSeer Project, VICI-Labs, CA.
“Wind-powered device works 24/7 to produce clean drinking water out of thin air” is the advertisement for a drinking fountain project that aims towards an environmentally friendly and sustainable solution to water scarcity. Researchers at VICI-Labs developed a device that condensates pure water from the air with wind power and temperature differences of soil and air. “WaterSeer uses no power or chemicals of any kind. It is completely non-polluting and its simple construction is inexpensive and maintenance free", claim the innovators. As climate change and imbalance use of natural resources are leading to severe water scarcity, innovative ideas for inexpensive, low-tech and sustainable solutions like this are needed now more than ever to create water self-sufficiency in communities around the world.
Find more information at this link: https://www.thecivilengineer.org/nwind-powered-device
Sabeel Water Fountain, Dubai
Sabeel Water Fountain was designed for Dubai’s Jebel Ali site of Expo 2020 by Riyad Joucka and their team. The architects’ created this project with the idea of the fountain that will “work with the challenges of a harsh arid environment to its advantage, to evolve on the ingenuity of the past with the innovation of the present for the longevity towards a sustainable future.” This fountain is one of the best examples from HALOA’s chosen objects that precisely matches our ideal image of a drinking fountain – the one that connects the city with its local nature and creates an inclusive space. Not only the design of this fountain is impressive, but also the idea that lies behind it. The creators literally “learned from nature” and incorporated that knowledge into Sabeel Water Fountain. As a result, they got a sustainable self-sufficient fountain. Stepping back from our advanced technologies and learning from natural occurrences is the best way to build a bridge between natural and man-made worlds. This fountain is a great case where we can see that an object belonging to the city can easily be considered “natural” not only through design (“that also allows for inclusivity of people of all ages, heights and physical abilities to get access to clean water”), but also through its mechanical side.
Find more information at this link:
https://www.m-e-a-n.design/projects/sabeel-water-fountain-expo-2020
Drinking Fountain in Bysistorget, Stockholm
This project – the fountain in Bysistorget, Stockholm - was developed by Revaz Berdzenishvili for his master’s degree thesis. He tried to convey water~human relationship through the design and accessibility of the drinking fountain. Revaz chosea material that adds more meaning to the fountain, instead of just being a mechanical advantage. The fountain is made from two layers of perforated metal in order to create a water effect. The designer’s goal was to mimic an “unpredictable movement of water waves in nature” and by choosing a perforated metal, the illusion of moving water is created. In his thesis, Revaz mentions that “both human and water are in constant movement. In real space-time, when a human body moves and has an eye contact with the fountain, even with a slight movement and relocation of the body, water wave effect is activated on the fountain. There is a constant dialogue between the human and the fountain.” His strategy of taking an advantage of not only the freedom of choosing the design, but also of the surroundings of the drinking fountain is definitely something that other designers and architects should keep in mind as well. Other than that, the designer did a great job of anticipating the accessibility and hygienic issues.
Find more information at this link: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1324286/FULLTEXT01.pdf.
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