HTW

How’s the Water?

“This studio invites you to engage with the hydro-landscapes of Manitoba as active, living archives—spaces shaped by flows of water, land, and human intervention.
Offered in the fall of 2023, this first-year master’s course unfolded as a small, immersive studio with four international students. Taking a “road trip” approach, the group embarked on a collective journey of site discovery, using fieldwork, mapping, and design as tools to ground themselves in their new context of study.

Titled How’s the Water?, the course centered on the historic site of Pointe du Bois, located along the Winnipeg River. Students were invited to explore how landscapes shift over time, and how design might respond to these changes—ecological, infrastructural, and cultural. The term unfolded across three evolving phases—Test Plot, Territory, Project—each building on the last to foster a layered understanding of site conditions, landscape narratives, and environmental systems. Through walking, documenting, experimenting, and testing representational techniques, students developed design proposals that grappled with hydrological forces, territorial histories, and the shaping role of human presence.

By the end of the studio, projects reflected not only a sensitivity to place but a growing ability to work across time, scales, and media—toward landscape architecture as both inquiry and intervention”

2023