LTAW: films on water

In Delft the LTAW arena also draws on rich local knowledge available from its other partners UNESCO-IHE, Deltares, and WWF-the Netherlands. This year’s theme was Design with Nature: Collision or Collaboration? After watching films, water scientists, engineers, students and the general public critically debated the hard engineering interventions of the past, such us rivers buried under cities and large hydroelectric dams.

Landscape architecture assistant professor at TU Delft, Steffen Nijhuis, hosted a master class on spatial design in the Dutch Delta at the architecture faculty on Friday February 19. Nijhuis presented examples of the power of maps as tools for visual thinking and for understanding the processes of water and nature in the landscape. “Making maps helps us to get knowledge from data and then, through interpretation, can serve as a basis for invention, for design,” he said. “Creative thinking is united with scientific models.”

Esther Blom, ecologist and freshwater expert at WWF, presented examples of projects to restore freshwater ecosystems in the Netherlands that use nature as an ally to ensure resilience.

Five MSc students from the three disciplines of architecture, urban design and landscape architecture presented their project work done in the Delta Interventions and Flowscapes graduation studios.

Their designs showed a highly visual, layered approach to designing in the Dutch delta, integrating spatial and temporal scales and ecological cycles.

A film researcher from New York, Linda Lilienfeld is the director and originator of the LTAW concept. “I believe the public needs to understand climate change in a more elementary way,” she said.

“A coherent and powerful message is needed and I chose water as the element that knits it all together,” she said. “Yet in the scientific community, water experts and hydrologists are some of the worst communicators.”

This is where movies come in. “Film is the medium to communicate ideas to people,” said Jérôme van Dam, co-organiser from Delft’s arthouse cinema, Filmhuis Lumen. “At every LTAW screening we also have guest expert speakers from the partner organisations and encourage debate about the film afterwards.”

“LTAW has funding for three years until 2017 and has grown every year,” said Van Dam. “Next year’s theme will be Water and Power. We would like to invite more partners like the South Holland water board and Delft municipality, and also involve local schools. We want to promote Delft as the world’s water capital.”