Symposium
28th May 2025, Berlage Zaal, BK

Deserts cover about one-fifth of Earth’s land areas and are home to around one-sixth of the Earth’s population. This surface area is estimated to be enlarged with climate change, and the current population movements and patterns of ecological migrations will increase. In such a context, the tension over the few remaining bodies of water will probably only intensify and expand as a result of desertification and little common political grounds.

​

In their scientific classifications, deserts are often framed as environments with low precipitation, low rainfall, hostility, and aridity, perhaps compatible with how a desert or desertum (Latin) is perceived: deserted, abandoned, empty and left out. The recent scholarly works on deserts, however, have already criticized such an understanding as being Eurocentric and Western-oriented. This literature has suggested that to be able to continue living in deserts, there is a need to decolonize them as concepts, entities, processes and environments. To do so, the first step is to think of deserts as multitudes of worlds containing diverse biota that are embedded in various cultural imaginaries.

​

In this symposium, we intend to think about the desert through what it hides the most: water, in any form and state it can have, to conceal or emerge; The water that connects and is connected and the water that separates or is separated and displaced. This means not only the displacement of human bodies across borders and territories, perhaps due to drought, but also the displacement of bodies of water across landscapes to compensate for the increasing pressing scarcity. While the displaced bodies are not homogeneously impacted- considering, for example, that often the children and females are more affected by scarcity and displacement; The issues related to displacements of water may refer to various scales of events: from the daily [smuggling] operations and the flows of water in smaller scale to the state policies of re-directing and transferring bodies of water from one region to another, or a larger scale of the changing patterns of precipitations, disturbed by heat and storms. All these lead us to rethink our modes of coexistence in the desert, on the one hand, between communities (what is justice in the context of scarcity?) and, on the other hand, amongst various beings- i.e., human and non-human and life and non-life.

​

During this one-day symposium, on the one hand, we are interested in exploring the technocratic, extractive and colonial approaches to water that have led to disentangled ecologies, the imposition of borders, conflicts and wars throughout various desert landscapes; on the other hand, we would like to pay attention to the complex relationship between the entangled milieus [of water, soil and air] which have formed the deserts through weathering processes, as well as how such entanglements have been materialized in the vernacular built environment, crafts, technique on chasing [hidden] waters and indigenous modes of governance and management.

​

We are interested in the stories, cultural and philosophical implications, as well as the geopolitical, technological, and technocratic processes involved in the worlding of these water bodies. Specifically, we would like to question how the ongoing technocratic, colonial, and extractive procedures will further impact or cease to impact these bodies in the context of climate change. In other words, what we are searching for in this conversation lies in the interconnection between culture, nature, power, techniques, and infrastructures.

​

This symposium intends to establish a long-term research inquiry and a community to focus on desert landscapes where topics of water scarcity alongside the practices of spatial demarcation, migration,transgressions and even ongoing colonization, adaptation and justice can be discussed and investigated. We welcome anyone who is interested in such a conversation to join us on 28th May at Berlage Zaal at the Faculty of Architecture and Built Environments.

​

Program

9:00 - 9:15 Coffee

9:15 - 9:45 Introduction by Negar Sanaan Bensi

​

 

Morning Panel/ General Topics

Moderator: Professor Nishat Awan (UCL, Urban Laboratory, Bartlett)

10:00 - 10:45 Professor Samia Henni ( Architectural history and theory, McGill, Canada)

10:45 - 11:15 Dr. ir. Elnaz Najar Najafi ( Independent Researcher and Writer, Iran )- Online

11:15 - 11:45 Dr. ir. Henk Ovink ( Executive Director, Global Commission on the Economics of Water)- Online

11:45 - 12:15 Professor Behnam Taebi (Scientific director of CaSS)

12:15 - 13:00 Panel discussion

​13:00 - 14:30 Lunch/ Coffee

​

 

Afternoon Panel/ Specific Cases

Moderator: Assistant Professor Filip Geerts (B&T, TU Delft)

14:30 - 15:15 Dr. Muna Dajani (LSE, UK)

15:15 - 15:45 Setareh Noorani (Researcher, Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam)

15:45 - 16:15 Ameneh Solati ( Independent Architect and Researcher)

16:15 - 16:45 Amitangshu Acharya (IHE)

16:45 - 17:50 Panel discussion