E-STUDIO

A Public Space for Water, Shade, and Social Interaction

Water is increasingly becoming a contradictory resource in our cities. While prolonged dry spells cause streets and squares to heat up, heavy rain events can overwhelm existing infrastructure in a short period of time. Rain falls on roofs and impervious surfaces, is collected and drained away, and usually disappears just as quickly from public view. The “House of Rain” project takes this contradiction as its starting point and asks how water can once again become part of the city’s visible and communal life—not merely as a technical resource, but as a spatial medium that cools, provides shade, creates atmosphere, and brings people together.

Kassel’s downtown serves as the field of study for this project. Here, impervious surfaces that heat up significantly in the summer meet a city whose public spaces are largely shaped by movement, traffic, and consumption. At the same time, there are squares, interstitial spaces, rooftop landscapes, and underutilized areas whose potential has hardly been tapped so far. The search for a suitable location therefore becomes part of the design itself. The goal is to find a situation in which the city’s water does not simply disappear, but can be collected, retained, and made visible. Through rain and drought, shade and evaporation, a new place can emerge: a space for sitting, waiting, meeting, observing, and shared use.

The design calls for a public infrastructure for water and social interaction, whose spatial form remains open at first and evolves from the specific site. It can complement, overlay, or alter existing areas and collect, store, allow water to seep away, or return it to its surroundings. What is crucial here is not the technical system itself, but the architecture that emerges from these processes. Water flow, vegetation, shading, and public spaces become parts of a shared spatial system. The “House of Rain” thus views infrastructure not as something hidden, but as a livable part of the city: a place that responds to heat and rain, makes the water cycle tangible, and at the same time creates new opportunities for public life, exchange, and interaction.