Anthony Acciavatti works at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and the history of science and technology. He is interested in experimental forms of scholarship, pedagogy, and design afforded by humanistic inquiry. He is the author of Ganges Water Machine: Designing New India’s Ancient River (Applied Research & Design, 2015), which is the first comprehensive mapping and environmental history of the Ganges River Basin in over half a century. He spent a decade hiking, driving, and boating across the Ganges to map it and to understand the historical conflicts over water for drinking, agriculture, and industry. Combining fieldwork with archival research, the book is an atlas of the enterprise to transform the Ganges into the most hyper-engineered landscape in the world. In 2016 Ganges Water Machine was awarded the John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize.
This lecture by Anthony Acciavatti will be on the exhibition of his work at Hastings Hall.