Context
Our urban landscapes, including campuses, are filled with what I call Wet Lands, spaces that span the range between terra firma and the fluid substance that you try to hold in your hands. They include traditional wetlands but also river zones, drainage swales, and stormwater structures. They are complex territories because they are simultaneously wet and dry and because they are always contingent upon other forces: water budgets, vegetations, root systems, underground conduits, chemistry, rain. Culturally they are most often considered marginal lands that must be simplified towards the polar ends of wet and dry to be useful. Yet it is precisely their marginality, ambiguity, and complexity that makes them such fecund territory for design.

The Life of Water is part of Kathy Poole's exploration of the complex range of expressions that Wet Lands offer. Like all of her research, this work is a blend of technical, theoretical, and historical subjects. The work is concerned with both hydrology, the natural science dealing with the properties and movement of water within the nonhuman created environment. It is also concerned with hydraulics, the sicence of engineering interested in the practical movement of water for the use of humans.