Five dimensions of the stormwater landscape

Designing the urban landscape for stormwater management involves confrontation with an interweaving of multiple aspects: ecological and technological, material and immaterial, technical and political. To navigate this multi-faceted terrain, an interpretation of the stormwater-responsive landscape architectural projects is proposed through five key dimensions that help reveal their depth and implications: cyborg, subversion, emotion, excess/absence, and justice. Far from being watertight compartments, the proposed categories represent perspectives that overlap, dialogue, and mutually contaminate. Manifested in the interweaving of these five categories is the complexity of a project that aspires to be adaptive, hybrid, and inclusive, striving to embrace the unexpected and give voice to what has often been marginalized or rendered invisible. In this sense, the five proposed dimensions act as interpretive tools, through which it is possible to read the extreme weather event as a pretext for redefining how we build, perceive, and inhabit urban space, transforming the landscape architectural project into a multi-level narrative and a shared experience of adaptation and care.