Why can’t architecture be more like water?

Oceans, lakes, ponds, fountains, pools, puddles, droplets, multiple-meaning, complements, paradoxes, and metaphors, 1957–1994

Abstract

Explored in this paper are reflections on the importance of water to the work of American architect, educator and writer Charles W. Moore (1925–1993). Written by Martin Schwartz, whose Masters of Architecture degree was supervised by Moore in 1977, and who collaborated with him in the production of a series of drawings for a proposed book on water after graduation, the essay traces the persisting reference to water in Moore’s work—being the subject of both his PhD dissertation in 1957 and a book published posthumously in 1994. As Schwartz notes, both share the title Water and Architecture. The primary subject of the essay is twelve ‘medallions’ or ‘logos’ appearing in the drawing Schwartz and Moore conceived together, and which Schwartz drew, titled “The Qualities of Water.” The medallions themselves set out to capture the difficult-to-pin-down, and at times paradoxical, attributes of water, attributes, as Schwartz asserts, may be considered as “metaphors for architecture” itself.