This project originated within life upon the Thames Estuary, an environment where the presence of water is constantly apparent. Water is often considered as an undesirable element of architecture, something to be kept out and moved away, a burden, a destructive imposter. Architects apply specific devices and treatments to architecture in order to control the water, but the water always resists being manipulated to act in a way which it finds unnatural.

The project's ambition was to invert the architectural approach towards water: to embrace its presence within the design. As a result, the project explores its fundamental capabilities as well as its relationship to people as other bodies of water. The typology of a pottery acts as a vehicle through which to investigate the architectural use of water and how it reacts with other materials – in this case with clay – to create intentional erosion, staining and residues.