Returned to the Carved Landscape of Water Part 1 Project 2023 Mackenzie Best Leeds Beckett University | UK The surrounding ruins of a rural train station located in Santa Clara Saboia, Portugal, laid the foundation to explore the interconnected relationship between landscape and human civilisation, exploring the inevitable impermanence of built form and those that use it. The project responds to the 'ruin' through intervention and reprojection, enabling reinterpretation for future use.Throughout the rural regions of Portugal, water is used as a political commodity, with existing community groups in Santa Clara protesting against the local government, in Odemira. The local councils are re-distributing the common water supplies to the coast - leaving locals with little to no supply of natural water. The project explores a poetic search for water using existing built ruins as a starting point for interventional response.Along with using water as a poetic method to ‘Re-animate the Ruin’, the project also incorporates filmwork projection as site specific intervention, uses retrieved soil as pigment for casted territories on site, and uses water from the site, the dam, and local river in cyanotype printing processes to leave traces of existence behind. The proposal celebrates water as a fundamental requirement for all life to exist. The scarcity of water is turned into a sensitively carved landscape praising the sanctity of water. Through a series of carved spaces within the landscape, the existing ruins form the framework in which visitors can bathe and connect spiritually. Mackenzie Best Tutor(s) Ashley Caruso