Events

Dilip da Cunha, Columbia University

We live in an all-consuming Ocean of Wetness, a wetness that is everywhere in the air, earth, sea, flora and fauna, precipitating, evaporating, storming, seeping, soaking, transpiring, osmoting, freezing. We are wetness ourselves, our wetness necessary to our existence. However, we do not learn that we live in an Ocean of Wetness. We learn instead that we live on an Earth surface called land that we take for granted as existent and place beyond all difference, assuming that all people experience it. In this talk, I present land as a product of design in an Ocean of Wetness that we fail to acknowledge. It is a design that deploys four design devices: the geometric surface, geometric line, hydrologic cycle, and language of landscape. Together they create and maintain an Earth surface that serves as the ground of observation and habitation. It also serves as the ground of a colonization that continues largely because this act of design passes unnoticed and unquestioned. What does it take to acknowledge land to be a product of design; to recognize that our real home is in an Ocean of Wetness that is everywhere rather than on an Earth surface with water somewhere? Does Ocean offer an appreciation of more fundamental difference in culture; and does it open fresh possibilities for design in the face of climate change that threatens land with destruction? 

Join us for our upcoming Grand Valley Society of Architects talk by Meredith Moore on Thursday, May 28th, from 6-7pm.

Meredith Moore is the founder of Ouroboros Deconstruction, a Toronto-based company working to recover and rehome building materials before they become waste. With over 30 projects completed and a 90% landfill diversion rate, her work spans salvage audits, hands-on deconstruction, and the development of local reuse systems that keep quality materials in circulation. She also leads Ouroboros Salvage, a registered charity focused on material recovery and community engagement. An interior designer by trade, Meredith previously served as a founding director of the Healthy Materials Library at Parsons School of Design, working to make material health information more accessible across the design and construction industries. She brings that same orientation to her work in Toronto: treating buildings as collections of materials worth understanding, preserving, and passing on, and making deconstruction a practical, valued part of how the city builds and rebuilds.

Join students, faculty, sponsors, family and staff for our annual celebration of student achievement at the 2026 School of Architecture awards ceremony on June 11.

The evening will begin with a reception in the third-floor Loft featuring light refreshments and appetizers, alongside an opportunity to explore student studio projects and connect with members of the Waterloo Architecture community. The Awards Ceremony will then take place in the first-floor Laurence A. Cummings Lecture Theatre.