In Glasgow, a city of relentless precipitation, the population had mastered the ‘magical realism’ of water (rain) in an interpretation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Light is Like Water (1978). By merging the principles of the imaginary and reality, the city strategically harnesses a flickering misty sky. ‘The House for Rain Lovers’ collects rainwater in open bagpipe structures and reed bed ponds, before sending the water through a distillation process, similar to whiskey production. The distillation cycle inside the glass façade of its office spaces and laboratories mimics a Glaswegian tenement block, albeit not stone, which frosts up during the day but reveals with great clarity the machinery and spaces inside the building at night. The true materiality of the architecture is in the sound of rainwater droplets, amplified to the city from the bagpipes. This constantly changing caustic marvel is reflected off water surfaces, and one hears splashing sounds in the heated pools.