Metropolis

21 November 2018

Architecture Firm Ooze Harnesses Natural Systems to Solve Freshwater Crises

by Bridget Newsham

"We have moved away from the systems nature has provided to us, it's time we move back," says Ooze cofounder Eva Pfannes.

On a small strip of land between the Emscher River and the Rhine Herne Canal in Germany once sat a rest stop whose colorful appearance belied its radical purpose. The structure’s artful design consisted of pipes leading from two toilets and the Emscher (the most polluted river in Germany) that converged at a small community garden and drinking fountain. The garden was, in fact, a manmade wetland that collected, treated, and cleaned the effluence from the toilets and river—making it drinkable.

The 2010 project, known as Between the Waters, was one of the earliest projects of Rotterdam-based Ooze Architecture and its two founders Eva Pfannes and Sylvain Hartenberg. Ooze is focused on one very specific goal: finding solutions to the world’s clean water crisis through observing, imitating, and socially normalizing naturally-occurring water purification processes. “The solutions are already there, they’ve always been there, ingrained in nature,” says Hartenberg. “We just use these ideas the environment has presented to us all along, and modify them to make systems that are efficient, low-tech, and easily maintained.”

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Every Other Street, New York

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