AQUA INCOGNITA IV: Designing for extreme climate resilience in Monterrey, MX

Aqua Incognita continues to engage students in grappling with water-resilient urbanization processes, through the design of nature-based [1] reparative actions in the water-scarce region of Monterrey, Mexico–where we will travel at the end of September. Mexico’s industrial cradle, and a region undergoing a nearshoring industrial boom, this metropolis of 5,4 million people has seen decades of unsustainable urbanization trends and is threatened by critically unbalanced water regimes. While facing its own version of a day-zero crisis in the summer of 2022, the city has also withstood recurrent flooding catastrophes over the years. These extreme climatic events are likely to intensify amidst the warming of our planet.

With the objective of drafting a vision and catalyzing actions that could trigger a more resilient water future in Monterrey, the studio will focus on one of Monterrey’s most strategic Critical Zones [2]: the Santa Catarina River. The regeneration and conservation of this river basin and riparian corridor is key to the future of water security, the reduction of flood risk and heat island, and the equitable distribution of safe and healthy biodiverse areas across the city towards climate justice. Achieving these three objectives is part of a contested vision today. The studio has established a collaboration with experts, citizen groups, academia, the government, and the regional conservation institution Terra Habitus (studio sponsor) to push the transformation of this river watershed into a climate-resilient and ecologically stable region in the near-future.

To do so, we will conduct five acts of design over the course of the semester by: 1) analyzing and learning from important case studies; 2) drafting a collective vision for the river shed; 3) enhancing this vision in a workshop with important actors and experts at the Tecnológico de Monterrey; 4) developing individual design proposals for strategic sites within the basin (both as part of upstream regional catchment areas and along the urban watershed); 5) articulating narratives to convince decision makers to change status quo postures that exacerbate these unbalanced water regimes.

Your assembled work will be published in a GSD studio report to be shared with our local collaborators. 
1 https://www.naturepositive.org/
2 https://zkm.de/en/exhibition/2020/05/critical-zones

The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 3rd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. As this course meets on Tuesday, the first meeting of this course will be on Thursday, September 5th. It will meet regularly thereafter.