Nenad Dabic

Supervisor: Professor Alan Pert

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Learning from Water: testing infrastructures of care in the southern Murray Darling Basin

Learning From Water investigates the anthropogenic forms of the southern Murray-Darling Basin. It attempts to reformulate a narrative - amongst many competing ones - of this vast region and its bindings with our cities. Amid the backdrop of exorbitant attempts at governing water scarcity and massive stress evident in rural Australia, this design thesis will test structures and infrastructures of care that may reverse water management's polarising processes.

Davies' and Lawrence's anthropological study compares the basin's modified watercourses as "elongated machines." It becomes apparent that distant features in this vast landscape are parts of macro inter-related networks. The ongoing management of waterways and reservoirs, inflows, and outflows is unavoidable - and the idea of a second-nature is omnipresent. Acknowledging the dynamism of the Anthropocene, how does architecture navigate such a complicated situation?