Feeding Waters: Emerging Perspectives on Traditional Agricultural Landscapes

Catalina Rey-Hernández is a Chilean architect and landscape designer with a special interest in resilient and nature-based solutions to create design alternatives for a sustainable future. She gained her master in Landscape Architecture from Delft University of Technology (TUD), the Netherlands and was part of the Circular Water Stories lab (2019). She has worked as an architect in Chile and as a landscape designer in the Netherlands. Currently, Catalina is a PhD researcher in the Riverhood project at Wageningen University & Research, where she focuses on territorial design and counter-design in riverine landscapes. Her research aims to investigate how river management through landscape design and territorial planning has generated socio-material transformations that directly affect river communities and their livelihoods, generating local confrontations with imposed designs. Within this framework, she is particularly interested in investigating how these confrontations are supported through instruments of counter-designs and counter-cartographies. 

Naeema Ali is an interdisciplinary designer at Witteveen+Bos, working from their Dubai office. An emerging professional in the built environment sector, Naeema collaborates with diverse teams to develop landscape design strategies, nature-based solutions and climate-resilient infrastructure. In her role as a project coordinator, she oversees international and urban development projects. Her work portfolio spans the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, India, and Azerbaijan, where she applies systems thinking, nature-based engineering methods, and community engagement to her projects. Focusing on cities and climate change, she has further explored these issues through publications, activism, research, and academia. She works closely with global think tanks and research groups like the LoTEK, which designs climate-proof futures by applying indigenous knowledge. During her graduation year, she developed an integrated water management approach to landscape architectural design, using the case of the below-sea-level Kayalnilams in Kerala, India. This project “Land can sometimes be Water” conducted in the Circular Water Stories lab (2020), was exhibited in the London Design Biennale, 2021, inside the India Pavilion under the clean water category. Naeema holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the National Institute of Technology, Calicut, India and a master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from Delft University of Technology (TUD), the Netherlands.

Rapa Surajaras is a landscape architect with a strong interest in the relationship between water, people, and changing environments. Originally from Bangkok, Thailand, where water has long played an integral role in urban life and culture, her upbringing inspired an enduring curiosity about how societies can adapt to environmental challenges. In 2017, she moved to the Netherlands to pursue a Master of Science in Landscape Architecture at Delft University of Technology (TUD). During her studies, she participated and graduated in the Circular Water Stories lab (2019), an experience that influenced her graduation project on adaptive strategies for living with water in informal settlements in Vietnam. The project received the Blauwe Kamer–KuiperCompagnons Graduation Award 2019 and second prize from IFLA Europe. Currently she is a Senior Landscape Designer at OKRA Landscape Architects in Utrecht, the Netherlands, she brings professional experience to projects across Europe and beyond. Working across diverse cultural and environmental contexts, she applies a water-sensitive approach to create resilient landscapes, bridging research and practice to develop adaptive strategies that enhance the quality of life for communities, cities, and the environment.

Yuan Yuan is a Chinese landscape architect who focuses on ecosystem sustainability. After completing her undergraduate studies at Harbin Institute of Technology, she decided to pursue a master’s degree in Landscape Architecture at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, where she gained extensive experience and knowledge of excellent European design concepts and methods. During her studies in the Netherlands, she joined the Circular Water Stories (lab, where she researched the circularity of the traditional water system in Yunnan's Hani terraced fields (2022). She delved thoroughly into the sustainability of agricultural systems and the millennia-long symbiotic relationship between terraced fields and residents, highlighting the tremendous importance of traditional wisdom for modern water and agricultural systems. She is currently a PhD student at Harbin Institute of Technology in China, where she conducts scholarly research. Her research interests include ecosystem service planning and biodiversity, to provide scientific and systematic theoretical underpinnings for sustainable landscape design.