Located in the Discovery World at Pier Wisconsin hand’s-on Science Museum, The City of Freshwater incorporates the science of water – treatment, purification, metrics, technology and phenomena – within the context of a fabricated terrain of urban landscape, re-imagining the city as an environment built of water. Operating upon the elemental notion that used water rushes downhill while cleaned water surges up, the development of program, infrastructure, and form generates an intrinsic sectional dynamism. The resultant topography acts as a physical and conceptual armature for an integrated investigation of household use, waste treatment, and water purification. Layering the architectural means by which an actual city permits ad-hoc discovery with the inherent linearity of water systems’ process descriptions, this exhibit offers a unique “spatial textbook,” encouraging the visitor to meander and interactively engage information, technology, and phenomena. As such, The City of Freshwater constructs a world organized, but not encapsulated- a world made beautiful through the amplification of informed, collateral human activities.
