Water Sustainability

On July 7, the Enric Miralles Foundation, in collaboration with Roca Barcelona Gallery, presented the discussion “Water Sustainability: Architectures for a Hydrological Future,” part of the “Architecture for Human, Urban, and Planetary Well-being” program, an event held as part of Barcelona World Capital of Architecture 2026. The event invited participants to reflect on the role of water as one of the key determinants of architectural and urban design in the 21st century.

For decades, water has been viewed primarily as a technical infrastructure for urban water supply and sanitation. However, the current situation—marked by a climate emergency, prolonged droughts, water stress, and territorial transformation—calls for a fundamental reevaluation of this perspective.

The question is no longer just how to manage water, but how to design with it.

From this perspective, water ceases to be a resource external to architecture and becomes a structural condition of contemporary design, capable of influencing the form of buildings, urban systems, public policies, and the relationships between the city and the surrounding territory.

Through a dialogue between architecture, landscape, environmental innovation, and resource management, the session explored new strategies for integrating water cycles into the design of our cities, promoting more resilient, regenerative, and adaptive models.

A critical shift was thus proposed: from water infrastructure to water culture; from resource management to ecological planning; and from sustainability understood as efficiency to sustainability understood as coexistence with natural systems.

The issue is no longer simply how to manage visible water in buildings and cities, but how to understand and transform the invisible water footprint embedded in materials, production processes, and the global systems that shape both contemporary architecture and our ways of life.

During the session, attendees had the opportunity to visit the pavilion designed by EMBT Architects for the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale and now presented as an installation at the Roca Barcelona Gallery for 2026. The “Architecture of Virtual Water” pavilion stems from research conducted jointly with Waterspace, a collaborative initiative co-curated with NEWAVE and promoted by the Enric Miralles Foundation.

Through an immersive, multisensory experience, the project reveals the invisible flows of water embedded in materials, infrastructure, and global production chains that underpin both contemporary architecture and the way we live.

The dialogue is part of the program “Architecture for Human, Urban, and Planetary Well-being,” promoted by the Enric Miralles Foundation. It is a platform for research and debate that explores the transformative role of architecture in addressing major contemporary challenges.

Speakers:

– IÑAKI ALDAY
Co-founder and Principal Architect at Aldayjover, Dean of the School of Architecture at Tulane University, New Orleans

– MIREIA LUZÁRRAGA
Co-founder and Principal Architect at TAKK, Adjunct Professor and Coordinator of the “Core I” Program at Columbia University’s GSAPP

– JOSE GUERRA
Director of Communications and Branding, Veolia Spain.

This event is part of the program for Barcelona 2026 World Capital of Architecture, a distinction awarded by UNESCO and the International Union of Architects (UIA) to the city hosting the UIA World Congress of Architects, and transforms it into a global forum for architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture. From February 12 to December 13, a multidisciplinary program will be presented in collaboration with schools, universities, and professional and cultural organizations throughout Catalonia.

Barcelona 2026 World Capital of Architecture is supported by the Barcelona City Council, the Government of Catalonia, and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.

The “Architecture of Virtual Water” Pavilion is an initiative funded by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda.