This project endeavours to harness architecture to improve water literacy and, thus, water conservation and security, by bringing the user closer to the building’s water processes and systems. The programmatic function of the building is an urban living room.

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The dwellers of the adjacent social housing development – about 3000 people – are provided amenities for mostly recreational purposes. Furthermore, the tens of thousands of people who travel into Pretoria CBD on a daily basis for various government services, are provided with a place to pause, linger, and perhaps have something to eat. The architecture aims to empower the user through the provision of basic water services and surrounding secondary services, whilst at the same time enhancing the user’s everyday relationship with, and reverence of, water. Roof rain water is collected from a large 2600 m2 roof into a 450m3 reservoir, which is the catalytic feature of the project. The users of the urban living room are able to witness the water depleting in the reservoir and when it is finished the reservoir can be used as a contemplative or exhibition space. The hierarchy of the water on site is expressed physically as the potable water moves around on the top plane, the storm water on the ground plane and the black water at the bottom. The potable water is expressed in linear forms by aqueducts, the storm water in curvilinear forms along canals that are sometimes visible, audible or accessible and the black water with yellow paving and other features. The project invites water into the building in various ways that enhance the climatic conditions of the building. Unlike in the traditional manner of hiding water pipes inside walls, these water processes are made visible to the users of the building in order to increase their understanding of them. This project positions itself to add to the large body of research into the global quest for water security, underpinning itself in the context

of the Marabastad, Pretoria.