Eilidh McKenna

Imaginary Rivers: common grounding through water 

Imaginary Rivers draws on Tangier’s interwoven development with water—historically shaped by the interzone’s contradictory relationships and treatments of it. Embedded in the northern cliff of the Marshan District, overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar and near the Phoenician tombs, the project renvisions water as an "imaginary river" that connects the city’s spatial, cultural, and historical narratives. 

Flowing through four explorations—"Contact Water Zones," "The Slow Vernacular Commons of Water," "Form Flows Through Earthen Vessels," and “Imaginary Rivers”—the project frames water as a common, vital to both community resilience and connection. 

In Tangier, water has long served as both a functional necessity and cultural connector—woven into religious practices, communal rituals, and daily life. Yet, with growing water scarcity and rapid urbanization, these traditional flows are increasingly disrupted. Imaginary Rivers responds by positioning water within a framework of sustainability and resilience. It reclaims water as a communal good: collecting rooftop and cliff surface water, channeling it through aqueducts, and redistributing it for reuse in passive cooling and filtration. 

This network gives rise to water-centered spaces—a ceramic workshop, a hammam, and a mint tea café—each inspired by traditional practices. The project’s phased development mirrors the cyclical nature of water. It begins with site terracing to establish the workshop and salvaging earth to be repurposed as rammed earth. The ceramic vessels produced on-site, fired in the shared furnace, serve both as exploratory vessels and architectural components, embedding the slow traditional practices into the site itself. 

These stages reflect a return to forgotten practices while testing the material’s relationship to water and its sustainable performance. Ceramic water pots, reflective pools, and cascading aqueducts invite users to reconnect with ethereal and sensory experiences historically associated with the sacred water rituals in Tangier—where the sound of flowing water and the tactile coolness of earthen surfaces evoke a deeper connection taking it beyond its modern utilitarian role. 

Imaginary Rivers is both critical intervention and poetic reclamation. Blending vernacular knowledge with contemporary sustainability values, it challenges modern patterns of water overconsumption and privatization. In doing so, it invites a reconceptualization of water—not just as infrastructure, but as public memory, cultural artifact, and shared right. Much like the humble street water pot fountain encountered during fieldwork, it stands as a quiet call to reimagine water as an urban commons.