Scholarship Funds Water Research

Young Sydney architect, Tse-Hui Teh is the first to admit her research project is daunting, but she's also quick to add that it's extremely important.

Tse-Hui, chosen as the 2007 Lysaght Research Scholar, is hard at work at University College London, researching the development of new, integrated strategies to improve urban water management.

Put aside thoughts of suburban rainwater tanks, spreading laundry water over the garden or spending less time under the shower. Tse-Hui's interested in the much bigger picture.

The Lysaght Scholarship, which provides a A$45,000 bursary to support original research, is intended to foster an atmosphere in which members of the architectural profession consider research activities as a valuable step in their career development.

Tse-Hui Teh was chosen for her proposal to investigate "Hydro-Urbanism: Tactics and Strategies for an Urban Future of a Distributed Water-Cycle Infrastructure".

In broad terms she's trying to suggest ways in which new neighbourhoods, settlements and even the entire population of catchment areas might make better use of available water resources.

Her work will focus on establishing environmentally sustainable urban environments through different design processes and ultimately, the building of new infrastructure and development controls through planning and building design law.

"In the past three years it has become obvious that this is a very important issue," she said. "I'd been waiting for someone else to do something about it when finally the realisation came that perhaps it should be me?"

"The thing with water is that you need to consider it on an entire river catchment scale, coming down to a tributary scale and then down to a neighbourhood scale and ultimately down to a household scale."

The Big Picture

"You try to look at all of those scales to see how they affect each other. Let's face it, you can't really solve your water supply challenge at a household level. You need the bigger scales."

"I'm expecting that I'll have to shift between those different scales, going beyond the typical practices of architecture where you are often constrained to an individual site."

Tse-Hui points out that there has been quite a lot of work done on the water content of building materials and on water saving devices, but very little on the infrastructure side of things, to see how architects can contribute.

"There is an idea that there are very basic rules out there about how you achieve some sort of water equity, but then again every catchment is different," she said.

"This is the area of my interest. Perhaps there are rules which you have to apply in each situation to ensure equal access to water, but you might need a different solution to achieve them in each unique setting."

Tse-Hui has a Bachelor of Architecture from UTS and a Masters of Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University. She has won numerous awards and prizes, including a Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship and a Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship.

There's a certain urgency about Tse-Hui's work, even though an early review of the enormity of what she is undertaking forced her to lower the scope of what she is hoping to achieve.

Her world view gives a pointer to one of the reasons for her interest in the topic she has chosen.

"The point is not whether climate change is happening or not," she maintains."The point is that we are now so populous that we have such a big impact on the global environment because of our numbers. We need to reassess how we live in the world. My research will involve extensive reading, then field studies followed by the development of design ideas."

"As architects we generally don't write, we draw, and that is a very powerful way to influence people."

"Once I have a system for the whole idea of our water cycle infrastructure, basically using water many, many times, it could be applied to poor communities who, after all, are going to be the people most affected by water scarcity."

"If the design provided a low cost infrastructure which residents could help to build, then that would reduce the cost even further."

"There would be a lot of retrofitting required for existing cities, but perhaps an even larger requirement would be the provision of water infrastructure for climate change refugees forced to move to flood secure areas."

"Maybe there would be so many of them that you would be forced to devise new, permanent solutions to cope with water supply problems which would otherwise just repeat themselves."

In awarding the 2007 LYSAGHT® Research scholarship, Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) National President Alec Tzannes said: "The integration of sustainable water practices in the design and management of urban environments is a critical issue in the world today and especially relevant in Australia."

Underlining his words Alec Tzannes has agreed to act as mentor for Tse-Hui throughout her research undertaking.