Fountain Futures : Shared Campus Waters

This project examines water as a medium through which universities construct identity, reputation, and sustainability narratives. Drawing on landscape theories of aesthetics, feminist water literature, and critiques of institutional sustainability discourse, the project positions water as both infrastructural system and relational aesthetic experience. Through precedent studies of fountain typologies and a focused site intervention at the Martha Piper Plaza Fountain at the University of British Columbia Point Grey Campus, the project questions how water features shape institutional values. It proposes reimagining the fountain as a relational and more-than-human design, one that transforms reputation from symbolic display into a site of ecological responsibility, care, and collective engagement.