Expo Zaragoza 2008 :: Shared Water

'Shared Water'

"Shared Water"

Definition and architecture

This exposition is situated in the Ebro plaza, near the river port and the Spain Pavilion. Its main purpose is to communicate the implications and opportunities of the riverbed as a management unit. In contrast to the divisions of the human and political territorial divisions, the basin is divided in a manner that obliges responsibilities to be shared among different uses and the use of resources.

Exposition: "Shared Water"

Thinking in terms of the river basin allows us to take on a different point of view (more sustainable) with the physical medium.

Definitively, the visitor will make the following voyage:

• The political world we live in. At ground level, this is a maze composed of a graphical system with a large quantity of information. It is an overwhelming environment for the visitor, highlighting administrative divisions (political) that affect the management of a natural common resource like water.
• The challenge of thinking again. The upper part of the installation is reached by a mechanical escalator. It is entered through a steam tunnel with no view outside, and using sound, the public receives the message that we have to start off on a new route to find a solution to the water-related problems we are complaining of.
• The basin. There is a look out point here, with a map of a river basin, where the visitor is reminded (using audible messages and questions) the physical medium in which we live and which is sometimes unrecognisable because of political and administrative divisions.
• Managing the basin. Descending a circular ramp, the public approaches the physical map, which explains the importance of the concept of the river basin as a water-management unit.
• The basin, our shared home. This is the final part of the exposition and the end of the plaza. The public gets close to everything that has so far been seen from afar, obtaining more detailed information about the virtues of water management in the river basin. At this point, in order to encourage active attitudes and opinions in the visitors, they are invited to modify the installation by fusing the map of the river basins with the political map. It is the so-called “action-stopper”.

The “action-stopper” concept is a symbolic act which prevents the public being just a passive subject receiving information, allowing it to interact with and modify the exposition.

In this way it becomes a personal experience meaning people leave the plaza better informed, with greater solidarity and more participative than when they enter.

The exposition area will be 900 m2 divided on several platforms. Its different levels are interconnected by escalators reaching a maximum 15 metres above ground level.