"You drink the building."
Elizabeth Diller, a professor at Princeton University, said with a smile during an architecture lecture. It sounded like a scene from a cartoon. Drinking a building, not eating a cookie—what could that possibly mean? The work she introduced was literally "architecture made of mist and water." Yet this unfamiliar and delightful scene takes on an entirely different weight when juxtaposed with today's reality of disappearing water.
In Iran, water is no longer an object of sensory experience but has become a desperate resource threatening survival. On top of already vulnerable water resources weakened by prolonged drought and climate change, recent conflicts have mercilessly struck reservoirs, water supply systems, and purification facilities. As water supply networks falter, securing drinking water has become difficult in some regions, leading beyond mere inconvenience to a survival crisis. Water scarcity spreads into social unrest, becoming a cause of protests and conflicts. Here, water has become a strategic asset directly linked to national stability—an invisible form of "security." Water has moved from the background to the center of politics, survival, and power. In some places, people discuss the artistic experience of "drinking a building," while elsewhere, even drinking water is disappearing.
"The Blur Building," unveiled at the 2002 Swiss Expo, is experimental architecture that places water at the core of structure and space. Installed over a lake, the structure emits fine water vapor, appearing like a giant cloud from afar. The building's form becomes blurred, and visitors walk through the mist, experiencing the space with their entire bodies. Here, water is wall, air, and sensation itself. Beyond being the site and structural material of the building, it feels like a symbol of gastronomic pleasure. People breathe in the vapor while experiencing architecture, literally "drinking the building."
