Urban Aqueduct

In the early 20th century, Los Angeles faced a severe water shortage that threatened its capacity for growth. To address this crisis, the city engineered the Los Angeles Aqueduct—an ambitious infrastructure project that diverted water from the Sierra Nevada watershed, especially from Owens Valley, a once-flourishing agricultural region sustained by its own local, self-sufficient relationship with water.

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While the aqueduct enabled the rapid expansion of Los Angeles, it came at enormous ecological and social costs. The redirection of water dried up fertile farmland, devastated agricultural communities, and turned a thriving valley into a dusty, desolate basin. What was once a regenerative, localized water cycle became a one-directional flow, transforming water into a tool for urban prosperity at the expense of rural livelihoods. The aqueduct became not only a symbol of engineering achievement, but also of imbalance—between city and countryside, consumption and care, ambition and ethics.

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This project reimagines that history by reversing the logic of extraction. Rather than pulling resources from distant ecosystems, it introduces a self-sustaining, circular system rooted in South Los Angeles—a historically underserved neighborhood that has long been excluded from the benefits of urban infrastructure. In this proposal, water is not imported but harvested from the building’s expansive roof, purified through an integrated system, and reused onsite. The building is capable of supplying up to 152.5% of its annual water demand, and in times of crisis, such as wildfires, it can serve as an emergency reserve.​