Water commons, water accessibility, public art, design
~ Sam Cheng
Common Water is a public installation-experiment that aims to stimulate awareness about the water commons through the technology of rainwater harvesting. Put simply, framing water as a commons means that water is a collective resource over which no one has exclusive control or property rights. This project also embraces David Bollier’s expanded definition of the commons as “the practice and ethic of sufficiency” which “requires that there be a community willing to act as a conscientious steward of a resource.” [1]
New York City arguably has some of the cleanest tap water in the country, yet many people still prefer to purchase bottled water (one of the more prevalent water privatization schemes), especially when access to free public drinking water and refill stations is limited. Common Water facilitates increased public interaction with the water commons by first inviting passersby, whether they are caught in the rain or looking for shade on a hot day, to seek refuge under the installation’s inverted umbrella. There, they will find and are welcome to drink from fresh rainwater taps through which water collected and stored on top of the umbrella is delivered to the user.
Users will also find a small tap closest to the ground that is not available to drink from, but may be used to water an enclosed patch of soil at the foot of the umbrella. This is where the experiment comes in: it is the hope of the project creators that this installation will generate the kind of community and ethic that David Bollier argues is needed to properly manage and care for a common resource. Users under the umbrella will be able to see the volume of stored rainwater that remains; they can make the choice to drink or not depending on the water level, and if they notice it, users can also make the choice to water the soil and seedling below them. The creators of Common Water are eager to begin tracking not only the growth of the seedling, but the growth of a community that thinks like a commoner.
This project was inspired by Tei Carpenter, Arianna Deane, Ashely Kuo, Zeynep Ugur, and Chris Woebken’s “New Public Hydrant,” a project proposing several design interventions that transform city fire hydrants into collective drinking fountains.
[1] David Bollier, Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons (Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers, 2015): 24.
Bio – Sam Cheng
Sam Cheng is a senior at Gallatin concentrating in Urban Agroecology. Her interests lie in urban farming, regenerative agriculture, and food sovereignty. She is deeply committed to the work of collectively building alternative food futures in which both people and land are honored and nourished.