Central to this project is the question of negotiating between the dominant linear character of the water supply at the local level as against the capillary, or rhizomatic character of the system as a whole, which brings into play rivers and streams, typography, watersheds, and complex natural systems. Clearly in order to function, the water supply needs to regulate and domesticate this wild proliferation; as part of this project, the researchers wish to bring something of the overall character of the system down to the local level. By calling attention to the vast infrastructure necessary to support the city, architecture can increase awareness of the city as a complex interrelated system which must be treated with respect. By focusing attention on the system as a whole—a complex which extends throughout much of New York State—new definitions of site are proposed on the basis of a systemic integration of political, regional, and natural factors. The intention is to use these monumental structures as an occasion of architecture.

Stan Allen came to the Princeton School of Architecture as dean in 2002. He is a practicing architect and principal of SAA/Stan Allen Architect. From 1989–2002, he taught at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where he was also the director of the Advanced Design Program. After working for Richard Meier and Partners in New York and Rafael Moneo in Spain, he established his own practice in 1990. His built work to date includes galleries, gardens, workspaces and a number of innovative single-family houses. Responding to the complexity of the modern city in creative ways, Allen has developed an extensive catalogue of urbanistic strategies, in particular looking at field theory, landscape architecture and ecology as models to revitalize the practices of urban design. His urban projects have been published in Points and Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City (Princeton Architectural Press, 1999, reissued in 2004) and his theoretical essays in Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation, reissued in 2008 by Routledge. Landform Building: Architecture’s New Terrain, a 450 page book based on the conference held at the School in 2009, was published by Lars Muller in 2011.

New York-based artist Polly Apfelbaum has been showing consistently in the US and abroad since 1986. Recent solo exhibitions include Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY (2015); Bepart, Waregum, Belgium, (2015); Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA (2014); Electric Zinia Factory, Germany, (2014); Lumber Room, Portland, (2014); Burlington Cirt Arts, VT, (2014); Mumbai Art Room, Mumbai, (2013); T-Space, Milan, NY, (2012); Galerie Nachst St. Stephan, Vienna, (2012); D’Amelio Gallery, New York, (2012); and at the Carlow Visual Center for Contemporary Art in Carlow, Ireland. Her work has been featured in important group exhibitions including Beyond Borders, Beaufort Biennial, Ostend, Belgium (2015); Pretty Raw, Rose Art Museum, Wltham, MA, (2015); Petroleum Jelly, Clifton Benevento Gallery, New York, (2014); and Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, (2012).

Jesse Reiser received his BArch degree from the Cooper Union in New York and completed MArch at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He was a fellow of the American Academy in Rome in 1985 and he worked for the offices of John Hejduk and Aldo Rossi, prior to forming Reiser + Umemoto with partner, Nanako Umemoto. He is professor of architecture at Princeton University and has previously taught at various schools in the US and Asia, including Columbia University, Yale University, the Ohio State University, Hong Kong University, and the Cooper Union, and has lectured widely at various educational and cultural institutions throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Nanako Umemoto received her BArch from the Cooper Union in New York in 1983, following studies at the School of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture at the Osaka University of Art, and formed Reiser + Umemoto with partner, Jesse Reiser, in 1986. She has taught at various schools in the United States and Asia, including Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Hong Kong University, Kyoto University, and the Cooper Union, and she has lectured widely at various educational and cultural institutions throughout the US, Europe, and Asia.