Liège, water opportunities: landscape, infrastructure, event

The conference is organized as a moment of dialogue between students of the two project courses ( Atelier projet d'Espace Public and Pays Art) of the academic year 2020/2021, the artists Edoardo Aruta and Paolo Rosso (Microclima) and the architecture critic Marc Dubois. A microlecture introduces the debate through a presentation of the territory of Basse Meuse, between Liège and Visé. In particular, the relationship between water and territory is treated in two moments: a historical excursus and the current context. The historical approach traces the transformation of the river first as a matrix of the landscape and the shape of the city, later as an infrastructure, accompanied by the creation of the Albert Canal. The technics, celebrated with the Universal Exposition of 1939, is called into question today in the current context of the Anthropocene, where the artificialization of the river has created environmental and spatial impacts that the actors of the architectural and urban project must know and take into account to develop sustainable strategies. Taking care of water as an energy resource, ecological system, and landscape feature of the territory is now an imperative, not only in the local context but also on the international scale. With reference to IABR 2020-221, the theme of the relationship between city and water directs research and teaching of architectural and urban design towards multidisciplinary issues, such as: mobility, energy production, ecological restoration, and public space design. The local context of Liège-Visé touches on all these themes, which are dealt with by the students of the two courses ( Atelier projet d'Espace Public and Pays Art) at the Faculty of Architecture in Liège