the Shape of Water analysis
the Shape of Water
The form of the formlessness an analysis
1. Project Introduction
This project aimed to explore the shape that water may take through three spatial scales: the ocean, the pool, and the fountain. Each represents a unique interaction between water, space, and the body—from immersive vastness to controlled leisure to playful urban interaction.
Through these scales, the project investigated how water expresses itself under different physical constraints and social contexts, and how its behavior gives rise to evolving spatial patterns. The final goal was to extract and abstract these water-formed patterns as 3D geometries. These geometries were then translated into a cylindrical spatial form—a continuous surface capable of expressing the layered complexity of water’s pattern across scales.
2. Immersion, Sensory Engagement, and Controlled Paradise
All architectural spaces are experienced through bodily movement over time. Yet a swimming pool, unlike traditional architecture, immerses the entire body in the very substance that defines the space — water. It stimulates touch, sight, and even smell to their fullest, creating a state of controlled freedom. Pools are often read as artificial paradises, where gravity is suspended and danger is neutralized. Within their rigid boundaries, water becomes a passive element of pleasure and control — a steady, slow equilibrium symbolizing societal pursuit of relaxation and leisure.
Here, the form of water is tamed: not dynamic, but regulated. The spatial experience is immersive, yet enclosed — a space of freedom paradoxically achieved through constraint.
3. Beyond the Edge: The Ocean as Formless Form
What happens when water is released from its boundaries?
The ocean offers an opposing condition — not one of containment, but of vastness. Without rigid limits, water loses its immediate legibility as a space. It becomes ungraspable, felt more through sensory surrender than spatial comprehension. Tides, wind, and currents turn the ocean into an unpredictable, shifting field where the body becomes both the navigator and the subject — caught between agency and surrender.
This evokes a deep, almost childlike awe: a sense of floating without control, where water transcends its role as a shaped medium and becomes an experiential vastness. In this state, water is neither entirely formless nor entirely formed — it is an evolving pattern shaped by rhythm and relation.
4. Fountains: Water in Public Imagination
In the urban landscape, fountains and water installations serve as symbolic and functional mediators between humans and the idea of water. Traditionally enclosed by stone or steel, fountains choreograph water into aesthetic display — reducing interaction to passive observation, confined to sight and sound.
But when those boundaries dissolve — as in open field fountains that allow spontaneous interaction — water reclaims its spatial vitality. Children anticipate the next burst of water; they move, play, dodge, and engage. The fountain becomes a field condition — a porous, shifting space where controlled design meets unpredictable behavior.
Here, water blurs the line between designed spectacle and spontaneous event. It transforms urban space into a fluid zone of social gathering, tactile discovery, and momentary escape. This condition mirrors the ocean’s unpredictability but in a condensed, accessible form.
5. Pattern, Form, and Temporal Emergence
At its core, water reveals an alternative logic of form — one based not on permanence, but on transformation. Its patterns are not fixed geometries, but rhythmic organizations of force and relation. Form arises momentarily, only to dissolve again, shaped by the interplay of internal coordinates and external conditions.
This constant reshaping is most evident in the ocean, whose surface is never still. What, then, gives shape to this vast, ever-moving field?
Forces That Shape the Ocean Surface:
Wind: The most immediate force. Wind transfers energy to the surface, creating ripples that grow into waves. The stronger and more sustained the wind, the larger and more patterned the waves.
Gravity and Tides: The gravitational pull of the Moon and Sun causes tidal rises and falls, producing massive but predictable vertical motions. These cycles rhythmically stretch and compress the shoreline.
Earth’s Rotation: Through the Coriolis effect, Earth's spin subtly curves moving water, shaping large-scale currents that, in turn, influence surface form.
Thermohaline Currents: Temperature and salinity differences drive deep-ocean movements that rise to the surface in certain regions, subtly reshaping water distribution and temperature patterns.
Atmospheric Pressure and Storms: High- and low-pressure systems, along with hurricanes, generate large swells and surges that temporarily reorganize vast areas of the ocean surface.
Surface Tension: On small scales, surface tension creates micro-patterns — tiny capillary waves that give the ocean its texture even on still days.
Geological Events: Earthquakes or underwater landslides can trigger tsunamis, causing sudden and massive deformations of the surface.
These forces interact in real time. Their choreography shapes the ocean’s surface as a living pattern — one that is rhythmic, nested, and constantly evolving.
The surface becomes a mirror of invisible forces: stacking, interlocking, intertwining — not as permanent form, but as ephemeral relation. It’s here that pattern becomes the language through which matter expresses itself, not by fixing itself in space, but by adapting in time.
The pattern cracks and reforms, shifting scale or organization, responding to every change in condition — never failing, only transforming. This is the nature of water: it doesn’t hold shape, it performs shape.
6. Water and the Redefinition of Space
Conventional space is defined by enclosure — walls, floors, ceilings. Water, however, proposes an alternative: a space defined by interaction, perception, and fluid transition. Whether in the suspended stillness of a pool, the unpredictability of ocean tides, or the social energy of a public fountain, water generates environments through movement, immersion, and sensation.
Its form is always temporary. Its presence redefines spatial logic — not as a container, but as a connective field. Water is the medium through which form and formlessness meet. It is a surface that produces lines, a line that becomes a surface. It is both material and metaphor, both controlled and resistant to control.
7. Conclusion: Toward a Spatialized Pattern
By studying water at the scale of the ocean, the pool, and the fountain, the project extracted abstract patterns that express water’s shifting behaviors. These patterns—formed by forces rather than fixed shapes—were used to develop a cylindrical form that consolidates and amplifies the qualities of water’s transformation across scales.
This final cylindrical structure acts as a spatial memory of fluidity: a vertical surface upon which dynamic pattern becomes spatial form. It expresses water not as a literal material, but as a form-generating system—one shaped by movement, scale, and the temporal unfolding of interaction.
