Milling Water

Inheriting a Swiss heritage building - a watermill - initiated a process of looking closer, observing and re-tracing what relatives had built years ago. This revealed water as the key transformation element, traces demonstrating its absence or long term presence. Water shifted into the focus of the observations and became the common denominator - the meta context - of the research.

In Switzerland, water is public good. However, the infrastructures making water accessible result in the privatization of water and binds a cost to its usage. Fountains are the only designed structures allowing free access to fresh water in urban areas. Recent initiatives for stream revitalizations require designing open river beds for aquatic life. By making this water accessible to everyone, these river designs transcend the modern separation between infrastructure, nature and culture while also highlighting the mill as a typology of water infrastructure. Within our contemporary context, the mill needs to go beyond historic functions of capitalizing water to enter into a new kind of symbiosis. Much like a plant, it absorbs water into its structure, revitalizing both the stream and the mill – giving new life and meaning. The mill dissolves the boarders between private, public and common water. A shared space is created where people, species (animals, plants), and elements (water, rock, wood, etc.) come together and enter into an exchange. This is physical, through form such as the large roof providing shade and protection for water and its natural habitats as well as for the building itself. It is also material, the wooden beams and their tissues, providing the buildings structure while originally serving as water transport channels. The water now flowing through the building remembers these materials. The space of water becomes multi- sensory, allowing human bodily qualities to overcome our being, in a way that crystalizes that we are not much different than other life – all dependent on water. The exchange is then one of emotion and understanding, a rekindling of our attitude and sense of belonging as part of nature. With this, the boundaries separating the natural and built environment are dissolved and in that, our relationship to our ancestors and future descendants is conceptualized. The mill starts filtering, protecting, preserving and mediating waters – milling accessible water. In the middle of it all is the water keeper. An expert in aquatic habitats, constantly balancing and monitoring the revitalized environments around water. This keeper performs an ecological service centering the understanding of value away from profit and towards ecological sustenance and understanding. Continuously asking society to imagine a new legacy; is this a heritage to leave behind for the next generation?