The World Architecture Festival revealed the 2018 winner of its inaugural Water Research Prize.
The innovative, community-led water management system was designed by a team of students from Pontificia Catholic University of Peru (PUCP), which captures, stores and treats rain-water and inserts it into pre-existing water networks. This winning project receives a £10,000 prize from sanitary-fitting specialist and founding partner GROHE to support further research.
The students beat 12 other projects drawn from more than 60 entries. Its focus was on the integration of water and sewage provision in the Peruvian Amazon where only 31% of the population has access to water, despite living in an area with the highest levels of annual rainfall worldwide.
Differing from the traditional water tank system, the PUCP team developed a system of tubes to capture, store and treat rainwater and serve as a non-load bearing wall that occupies less space and can be more easily integrated with existing architecture.