Water management has been a key component in the creation and consolidation of civilizations and has materialized in different physical and socio-cultural structures. Due to their similar biophysical and climatic conditions and to their geographical proximity, the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East, have shared water challenges and solutions for millennia, giving shape to a common water language that can be perceived in water infrastructures, water management codes and techniques, architectures, in a general level, in the generation of closely related landscapes. This socio-ecological convergence is also visible in gardens, in which we can perceive how this long tradition of water management is distilled into places of pleasure, leisure, and production that replicate, in a small scale, visions of an idealized world or paradise.
By incorporating an integrative and combined reflection on water, culture, landscape, and heritage, this course is expected to promote the following values:
- Local Identity
- Culture-based landscape evolution
- Green Infrastructures and Urban Ecology
- Intergenerational Thinking and Transcendence
- Risk management
- Sustainability
- Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation
- Cultural and societal exchange
CONTENTS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES
The course, “Paths of the water, paths of the memory” will combine a set of lectures and practical exercises to investigate how cultural water systems have given shape and function to the fertile agricultural plain that defines the landscape matrix of the Metropolitan Area of Valencia (Huerta de Valencia). Starting with the Water Jury/Court (one of the oldest courts in the world, created by the Islamic rulers more than 1000 years ago), the students will study how infrastructures, architecture, agricultural techniques, terminologies, and management systems have evolved over the last centuries and how they can offer now new insights to imagine a more resilient future for Valencia. In parallel, the students will be invited to explore similarities with other water systems around the Mediterranean Basin and Middle East.
During its first phase, the course will address water management, cultural heritage and landscape through the following thematic paths:
- Ethnography and immaterial culture
- Architecture and water Infrastructures
- Programme and Interpretation
- Aesthetics, Landscape and Gardens.
In the second phase of the course, the knowledge and ideas developed by the different groups of students in their thematic paths, will be combined through the development of proposals for the reactivation and renovation of the pilot site. These proposals incorporate the four dimensions of the course listed above.
Since all the knowledge generated in the course by students and teachers will be shared in public reviews, all the students are expected to achieve the following Learning Outcomes:
- Capacity to detect, understand and translate into design codes material and immaterial culture commonalities between different historical irrigated lands in the Mediterranean Basin and Middle East.
- Capacity to develop new programmes and interpretative materials or routes for agricultural areas of cultural interest and with a high concentration of heritage elements.
- Capacity to integrate immaterial and material heritage, new programmes and interpretative uses, and landscape design principles in the development of new gardens and outdoor spaces inspired by Islamic traditions and codes.
From a different pedagogical perspective, the course will be designed to promote the acquisition and development of the following transversal or soft skills: Intercultural skills, Interdisciplinary and Integrative thinking, Research skills, Communication skills, Analytical and solution-oriented skills, Managerial and organizational skills.