Architecture on the water: 10 projects to discover

Submerged, suspended, floating, overlooking, flooded: in water architecture finds a design material it can dialogue with. Those who build on water or near water know that part of the project will be decided by something else. The tides ebb and flow, the cove freezes over in winter and the river overflows when least expected. We’re interested in the different ways projects cope when faced with this instability. Some keep the water at a distance, limiting themselves to gazing at it from above; some let it into the ground level and design a course for it; some use it as a floor, and some plunge beneath it to observe it from within. Then there are those who build a whole neighborhood on top of the water, while more modestly others float on it through the summer. 

We have selected ten projects that express these different approaches. Some are cornerstones of twentieth-century architecture: Wright, Scarpa, Siza, Ando. Others are recent buildings or temporary experiments. Not all of them are even buildings in the strict sense. One of the most interesting works we will encounter is a swimming pool that fills itself with the undertow, while another is a collective space set up beside a disused airport. 

Fallingwater — Frank Lloyd Wright, Bear Run (Pennsylvania), 1935 

The client asked for a house overlooking the waterfall, and Wright built it right on top. The concrete terraces jut out from the rock over the waterfall, which the owners almost never see. They only hear it, since the murmur of the stream passes through the whole house. In the living room, a staircase descends directly to the surface of the water and leads nowhere.