Water Heritage: Valuing the Tangible and Intangible

Gloria Rivero-Lamela is a faculty member at the Department of Architectural Graphic Ideation at the Polytechnic University of Madrid. Until 2025, Rivero was a faculty member at the Department of Architectural Projects at the University of Seville. She trained as an architect at the University of Seville (2014), where she received the Extraordinary End-of-Degree Award, and completed a master’s degree in Architecture and Historic Heritage (2016). Rivero obtained her PhD from the same university in 2020, with a dissertation focused on the form and territorial structure of hydraulic architectures linked to productive landscapes. She has completed international research stays at Delft University of Technology where she got involved in the work of the Circular Water Stories lab and the University of Porto, participated in several international congresses, and published numerous articles in indexed journals. Her research addresses territory, heritage landscape, rural architecture, drawing, mapping, and cartography. She serves on the editorial board of the scientific journal Proyecto, progreso, arquitectura.

Ran Yan is a landscape designer with a master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands in the Circular Water Stories lab (2021). Growing up in a riverfront city, she developed a deep curiosity about the relationship between water, landscapes, and communities. This interest has shaped her perspective on how landscape design can influence ecological systems and cultural identity. She is particularly drawn to landscape biography, water systems, and planting design, exploring how these elements interact to shape both natural and built environments. Currently based in the Netherlands, she works as a landscape designer. Her work and research reflect a continuous exploration of how landscapes evolve, how people engage with them, and how design can respond to both environmental challenges and local narratives.

Farnoosh Bazrafkan is a landscape designer based in Amsterdam with a master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. She conducted her graduation project “From ambigious borderscapes to pluralism: An alternative landscape representation as a way of integrating ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ around the Hunze valley” in the Circular Water Storis lab (2022). Her interest lies in an interdisciplinary understanding of the landscape, between the natural world, cultural context and architecture as a human endeavour. She has long been inspired by biophilic theory and, in her work, seeks to ensure that people have exposure to and interaction with green environments and living ecosystems. To unearth new connections, through research and design, between nature, cities and our place within them. Farnoosh currently works as a landscape and urban designer in Rotterdam, contributing to new residential projects and urban transformations where different scales, disciplines, and users intersect. 

Anubhuti Chandna is an architect and urbanist specialising in sustainable spatial development and energy transition. Trained in architecture in India and holding a master’s in Urbanism from Delft University of Technology (TUD), the Netherlands. She graduated in Urbanism (2019) and became part of the Circular Water Stories lab out of interest. Chandna combines systems thinking, design, and visual communication to address complex spatial challenges. Now based in Germany, she previously spent five years in the Netherlands as a project leader and spatial designer at Generation. Energy, where she led integrated spatial–energy projects at regional and municipal scales. Her work bridges policy and design, using scenario building and serious gaming to support collaborative decision-making in the energy transition. Earlier, as a research fellow at the Charles Correa Foundation, she examined building crafts and heritage in Goa, and her formative experience with B. V. Doshi deepened her understanding of architecture’s social and cultural dimensions.