31 October – 6 November
ALPHABET CITY FESTIVAL 2009 : WATER
presents
HYDROCity

HYDROCity explores the relationship between cities and water, presenting visionary leaders and design projects from around the world. Water shortages are changing patterns of urbanization and requiring increasingly elaborate infrastructures by which to source and transport water to urban centers, which in turn need to be redesigned and retrofitted to conserve, collect, repurify, and recirculate water resources. HYDROCity asks: What forms of urbanism and landscape systems will emerge, and what design potentials exist, in this expanding liquid infrastructure?

All of the HYDROCity events are free and open to the public. HYDROCity was made possible through the generous support of the Mondriaan Foundation and The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Ottawa, and was developed in partnership with InfraNet Lab.

Monday 2 November
5:30 pm
HYDROCity Panel : Water, Cities, Disaster
Arbour Room, Hart House, University of Toronto, 7 Hart House Circle
First 25 to arrive receive a free copy of Alphabet City’s Water anthology
Panel sponsored by The Dominion of Canada General Insurance Company
Panelists George L. Cooke (President and CEO, The Dominion of Canada General Insurance Co.), Prof. Robert Kirkbride (Parsons The New School for Design, NYC), Paul Kovacs (Executive Director, Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction), and Tracy Metz (Dutch Delta Commission on Water Safety; visiting fellow, Harvard Graduate School of Design) discuss a future in which global warming drives catastrophic changes in hydrology even as cities face massive infrastructure investment deficits.

Tuesday 3 November
1:00 pm
The Building of “Waterpleinen/Watersquare”: Jeroen Bodewits
John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto
Room 106, 230 College Street
Created for the City of Rotterdam, Watersquare responds to the increasingly violent rainstorms that will be driven by global warming by seeking to catch rain and thereby create playful public features while preserving the water quality in the canals. Watersquare was designed by Marco Vermeulen and Florian Boer and constructed by Jeroen Bodewits. Model on exhibition at Daniels through 13 November.

Thursday 5 November
6:00 pm
HYDROCity Exhibition Opening
Toronto Free Gallery, 1277 Bloor Street West (at Lansdowne)
Curated by Anneke Abhelakh, Chris Hardwicke, Ghazal Jafari, Sara Kamalvand, John Knechtel, Mason White
Exhibition runs to 5 January 2010
Exhibition presented, in part, through the support of RBC Blue Water Project™
Opening party sponsored by Netherlands Consulate General, Toronto

Friday 6 November
9:00 am – 1:00 pm & 2:00 – 6:00 pm
HYDROCity Symposium on Hydrology and Urbanism
John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto
Room 103, 230 College Street

Symposium presented, in part, through the generous support of Cities Centre, University of Toronto. Alphabet City gratefully acknowledges the partnership of University of Toronto's John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

Participants: Anneke Abhelakh (independent curator), Alan Berger (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Aziza Chaouni (University of Toronto), Jandirk Hoekstra (H+N+S Landscape Architects, Utrecht), Michael Hough (York University), Nina-Marie Lister (Ryerson University), Liat Margolis (University of Toronto), Koen Olthuis (Waterstudio.NL, Rotterdam), Katherine Rinne (California College of the Arts), Catherine Seavitt (Catherine Seavitt Studio, New York), Kelly Shannon (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), Richard M. Sommer (University of Toronto), David Waggonner (Waggonner & Ball Architects, New Orleans), Mason White (University of Toronto), Jane Wolff (University of Toronto), Robert Wright (University of Toronto).

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WATER festival presented through the support of: Mondriaan Foundation; MIT Press; Canada Council for the Arts; Ontario Arts Council; Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Ottawa; Cities Centre, University of Toronto; RBC Blue Water Project™; Netherlands Consulate General, Toronto; Drake Hotel; Warren’s Waterless Printing; Cascades; CLARITY; Opera in Concert; The Dominion of Canada General Insurance Company; The City of Rotterdam; Circuit Gallery; Toronto Free Gallery; TYPE Books; Hart House.