AO Summer School — Water Commons (Regenerating Water Culture and Landscape)
NGO "Educational cultural Foundation MC6"
Ukraine
AO Summer School explores water as a shared ecological and cultural resource in mountain communities. In the context of climate change and growing social fragmentation, small water landscapes can become spaces for dialogue, participation, and collective care.
The project focuses on the Slavsko community in the Ukrainian Carpathians. It aims to develop new approaches to working with local water environments and to co-create prototypes of small spatial interventions that respond to natural processes, local context, and community needs.
AO is an Architectural-Cultural platform based at MC6 Residence in Slavsko, Ukraine, a hub for creative and cultural initiatives in the Carpathian Mountains. AO organizes experimental residencies, workshops, and research programs that bring together architects, artists, researchers, cultural practitioners, students, and members of the local community to explore spatial questions through interdisciplinary collaboration.
The focus of this residency is water as a natural, cultural, and spatial force shaping mountain landscapes and community life. Participants will explore local river environments, mountain streams, and traditional water-related structures, examining how ecological processes, flora and fauna, and historical water technologies have influenced settlement patterns, cultural practices, and myths connected to rivers.
Through field research, collective discussions, and hands-on design-build experiments, participants will develop small spatial interventions responding to natural processes, local knowledge, and community needs.