Tracing Wetness: Micro Stories of Invisible Water Systems in Semi-Arid Cultural Landscapes

Monica Veras Morais is a Brazilian researcher based in the Netherlands graduated at Delft University of Technology (TUD) in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment in the Netherlands in Landscape Architecture in the Circular Water Stories lab (2020). Her work today explores shared landscapes through the evolving interplay of design, governance, and social-ecological systems. She approaches landscape architecture as a situated, time-based, and relational discipline, exploring how humans and non-humans jointly shape landscapes and contribute to their reimagining. Her research spans a range of contexts, from residential gardens and urban interstices to peri-urban territories. Her doctoral research at TUD examined the long-term transformation of shared residential gardens, leading to the development of design principles that support evolving social and ecological needs. More recently, she explored networks of urban leftover spaces as sites of multiple forms of inhabitation through the project Everyone’s Land: Reimagining Urban Interstices for the More-than-Human. Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher at TUD on the project FAIR: Fostering Water Circularity in Peri-urban Landscapes, in cooperation with Inge Bobbink, collogues from Vienna, Austria and Florence, Italy co-designing circular water strategies for European peri-urban regions and explores how water, as a shared landscape resource, drives spatial transformation.

Gerdy Verschuure-Stuip is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. She is a trained architect and holds a PhD in Landscape Architecture on Dutch country estates. She is the Program Leader of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus program Global Heritage and Development and departmental education manager for Urbanism.
Her research and education centre on themes such as landscape architecture, heritage, participation, and landscape biography. She collaborates on European and Dutch research projects across a wide range of topics, advises on European and national agricultural policy and feminism, and organises co-creative workshops. In Delft, she teaches several BSc and MSc courses in the Landscape Architecture and Urbanism master tracks. At the University of Leiden, she teaches interdisciplinary BSc and Minor courses on Heritage Landscape Design and Participation in the master's program Applied Archaeology, funded by the National Cultural Heritage Agency. She is greatly interested in the work of the Circular Water Stories lab and open to contribute to the research.

Emmanouela Maria Armoutaki is a Greek architecture engineer, currently working for the Department of Environmental Structures at the Directorate of Engineering Projects in Iraklion Regional Unit, Crete on public building projects. She holds a Master of Science in Landscape Architecture from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands and a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Architecture in Architecture Engineering from the School of Engineering of Democritus University of Thrace, Greece. Her graduation project “Yofyros. A river beyond banks”, focused on revealing and redefining a river landscape and the locals living with water, connected to the place’s water-related memories and traditions. She conducted het graduation project in the Circular Water Stories lab (2022). Armoutaki’s primary professional experience on a wide range of projects, such as housing, playgrounds, and the restoration of historical heritage, progressively oriented her towards designing collective spaces open to everyone while incorporating their natural, cultural, and historical backgrounds.