16th September 2019

Water world: Q&A with Jane Withers

For this year's London Design Festival, Brompton Design District has become a hive of activity as this year’s Nature/Nurture programme turns the west London hub into an exploration of urban biodiversity and sustainability. Packed with exhibitions, talks and installations, the theme will examine the impact design can have on shaping our relationship with the natural world and develop strategies to protect and encourage biodiversity for generations to come.

The curator behind this programme is Jane Withers, a long-term advocate of design’s power to shape the world and its future for the better. Trained at the Courtauld and the Royal College of Art, Jane worked as a journalist, curator and author before setting up her eponymous studio in 2001 and has been researching and presenting topics like water scarcity, circular design and plastic pollution long before they became mainstream concerns within the industry.

A passion for water has informed many of her key projects, from 2015’s Selfridges Project Ocean Exhibition and Water Bar, which campaigned for customers to stop using single-use plastic, to the Wonderwater Café as part of this year’s Broken Nature XXII Triennale di Milano, which highlighted the water footprint of visitor’s lunch choices. Earlier this year Jane curated Water Futures at A/D/O New York, a year-long research project that challenged designers to develop imaginative and human-centric solutions to current and imminent issues, such as drought, food production in a warming climate and ways to facilitate mass behaviour change.

Ahead of the opening of Nature/Nurture, which runs across various venues in Brompton Design District between 14 and 22 September, we caught up with Jane to find out more about her fascinating practice and what to expect from this year’s LDF.

Insect habitats by Marlene Huissoud, Brompton Design District, photographed by Andy Stagg

Sustainable practices are the bedrock of your curatorial interests. When did this take hold of your imagination, was there an aha! moment or has its growth been more gradual?

I think the growth has been gradual but there have been key moments when I have realised that we need dramatic change. I spent a lot of time looking at London’s waste processes about a decade ago writing a cover story for the Observer Magazine and found it really shocking. That was when I began to get a sense of the magnitude of the problem, how little was being recycled and also the growing plastic crisis. I had the realisation that we had lost all sense of time and long-term perspective for short-term gain.

What are some key projects that have shaped your career? Did you have a breakthrough moment?

Not really, it was more of a cumulative effect of researching and exploring certain areas, and developing ideas and an approach. However the exhibition 1% Water & Our Future at [Belgian gallery] Z33 in 2008 was a sort of manifesto of my thinking around the future of water that still holds true today – we need to explore the crisis and how design can respond to this. So many of the ways we use and abuse water currently no longer make sense for a water-stressed future. But we also need to reconnect to water emotionally, intellectually and physically, and develop a new water consciousness. Many ancient water cultures were so much richer than ours is today, and there are so many vernacular practices that make sense again. 1% Water had a section called Sacred Waters that brought together rituals from different eras and cultures, showing how water is a flow that connects people through the centuries. As well as water conservation, we need to revalue water and connect to it more responsibly but also more pleasurably.

A/D/O Water Futures

I’ve read that you’ve been obsessed with water since you were a child. Why was the young Jane excited by the stuff and how has that developed through your life?

Yes, I’ve been obsessed for as long as I can recall – aquaphiliac you could say. I’m not quite sure why except that the aquatic world always seemed so much more alluring, imaginative and three-dimensional than dry land. I used to dream of flooding buildings, swimming though museums and cathedrals. As a seven-year-old I remember going to see the Roman Baths in Bath and naturally I thought I was going to swim there. I couldn’t believe that it was a heritage site and not used for its real purpose. It made no sense and still doesn’t. I spent a lot of time that summer plotting how to slip in quietly. It’s a big regret that I didn’t manage it. But I have bathed in a Roman bath in rural Tunisia that, after the end of the Roman Empire, was converted into a hamam.

Bathing and bath culture has always been a passion and I have bathed my way around as much of the world as I can, from saunas in Finland to Japanese onsen, Russian banya and Ottoman hamams, as well as quite a few of the fading European spa towns. Some of this was documented in the exhibition Soak Steam Dream, which looked at bath house culture and the contemporary revival, and the reasons behind this. I do think there is an important connection between water cultures and consciousness and treating water more responsibly and sustainably. Ivan Illich writes beautifully in H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness about how, since industrialisation, we have lost this close connection to water and take it for granted as a cleaning fluid always on tap.

Wonderwater Café, Tian Hai restaurant, Beijing

We’re now quite aware of the idea of food miles and carbon footprint, why do you think the ‘water footprint’ has taken longer to break through? Why is it so important?

It is a complex idea and quite abstract. Also the figures are so large. Most of us have grown up learning that we each use about 150 litres a day for cooking and bathing and so on so people find it really hard to understand that the reality of water consumption is more like 4,500 litres of water per person per day and most of that is for food, products and services. Added to that scientists are often not good communicators and the mass food industry does not seem keen to raise awareness of these issues among the general public. At the Wonderwater Cafe we applied the concept to real life choices, so that it became more tangible.

What role should designers take in the fight against climate crisis?

Designers are really good at thinking around problems in 3D and imagining alternative futures, making new visions seem tangible as well as understanding behaviour and what makes people aspire to change. I do think imagination and vision is vital. We both need to imagine the immensity of climate change and also other ways of doing things. Another critical issue where design can lead is through shifting perspectives, looking at design and impact more holistically, such as design for non-humans. And of course looking at circularity, lifecycle and impact.

Indus by Bio-ID Lad, Brompton Design District, photographed by Andy Stagg

A lot of environmental problems are structural (mass agriculture, industrial pollution, etc) that require huge infrastructure change rather than just a change in consumer behaviour. How do you see designers affecting change at this level?

Design is useful as an incubator for new ideas, often ones that industry could not imagine or would want to develop because they threaten the status quo. Experimental design increasingly works as a sort of R&D lab for future change, in materials and natural systems. We are seeing ideas developed by designers over the past decade suddenly being taken up on a larger scale as we realise the urgent need for change. But I also really believe change is important at a personal and community level. People need to be empowered and hope is an important motivator. While the problems are large-scale, much of the pressure is coming from grassroots activists.

Many of your projects showcase radical and experimental ways of solving real-world problems. What are some of the obstacles faced when trying to translate ideas from an exhibition context to the real world?

Scale and resources are frequent obstacles, but also support and vision. There needs to be a reason for something to come out of the concept phase and make an impact on a larger scale. This is about need but also about convincing people alternative futures are possible.

Don’t take our word for how mind-blowing Jane’s programme is, plan your Brompton Design District visit using the programme, here.

Jane Withers