Liquid Forms: Design as a Means for Sensing and Conceptualizing Water

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the academic fields of design history and design studies as entries into studying philosophical aspects of water related to sensual perception, cultural meaning, and agency of water.
The point is to establish and explore an aspect of human engagement with water, overlooked in previous research: the role of design solutions for organizing, facilitating, and accessing water and, further, attributing cultural meaning to it. We work from the assumption that design (in the form of objects such as bottles, drinking glasses and kitchenware) and larger systems (such as, e.g., sanitation in households) operates interfaces with functional, aesthetic, and symbolic features for sensing and experiencing water, and that an analysis of these features feeds into obtaining a more conscious relationship with one of our most important resources.
Taking a focus on “design” as a strategy of human invention, design studies and design history offer, on the one hand, systematic frameworks for analysing the complexity of the cultural, societal, and political circuit of design (e.g., Fallan 2010; Julier et al. 2019), whether contemporary or historical, and, on the other hand, a close analysis of concrete features of designed objects and solutions, for instance through the concept of aesthetics apt for investigating how design objects frame sensual engagement and conceptual understanding (Folkmann 2023). Being affiliated with the humanities, these approaches open for interpretations of cultural meaning, but in contrast to the so-called “Blue Humanities” (Mentz 2023), studies in design do not focus on representational means of water (in, e.g., art) but on actual objects giving the liquid material of water a specific form and agency. Until now, however, water’s formative role for design has only gained little attention in the design-related disciplines. Most comprehensively, the design of water is the core theme in a study on the design history of fishways (Graesse 2022).
The thesis of the paper is that 1) water has been a driver in the development of design and, conversely, that 2) design as an “aesthetic medium” for managing and cultivating water has shaped cultural perceptions of water. We propose two entries into philosophizing water through design:
1) The “design history” of water: Which role has water played, historically, for the development of design? Preliminary research shows that there is ample material in design archives for undertaking such an investigation, but that most of the material is organized and archived in relation to other topics. The purpose is to explore the way water has influenced design both in style and function, but also materially, symbolically, and environmentally.
2) The “design aesthetics” of water: Our thesis is that design attribute form and materiality to water. Hence, we aim to investigate the impact of the “forms” given to the liquid, “natural” material of water for sensing and understanding it and, furthermore, how the containment, management, disciplining and/or commercialisation of water affect its agency.

References
Fallan, Kjetil. 2010. Design History: Understanding Theory and Method. Oxford, New York: Berg.
Folkmann, Mads Nygaard. 2023. Design Aesthetics: Theoretical Basics and Studies in Implication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Graesse, Malin Kristine. 2022. Structures in the Stream: Fishways as design interventions in grey ecologies. PhD Thesis. Oslo: University of Oslo.
Julier, Guy, Anders V. Munch, Mads Nygaard Folkmann, Hans-Christian Jensen, and Niels Peter Skou, eds. 2019. Design Culture: Objects and Approaches. London: Bloomsbury.
Mentz, Steve. 2023. An Introduction to the Blue Humanities. London: Routledge.