The Water Potteries

The project originates within life upon the Thames Estuary within an environment in which the presence of water was constantly apparent. Water is often considered as an undesirable element of architecture, something to be kept out and moved away, a burden, a destructive imposter. Architects apply specific devices and treatments to architecture in order to control the water but the water is always resisting, being manipulated into acting in a way which is unnatural to it.
The ambition of the project is to invert the architectural approach towards water by embracing its presence within the design and, as a result, explore its fundamental capabilities and relationship to us as other bodies of water. The typology of a pottery acts as a vehicle through which to investigate the architectural use of water and how it reacts with other materials, in this example with the clay, to create intentional erosion, staining and residues.