Designing with Water: Harnessing Cultural Heritage for Innovative Climate Change Adaptation Strategies

<p>Climate change is a global challenge, which is evidenced by increasing flooding globally. Current infrastructure techniques, that are defensive, in nature, exacerbate these issues, as they render communities unable to respond to environmental challenges. Hence, globally, communities are not resilient to climate change. This paper focuses on “Designing with Water’ and proposes integrating heritage water management techniques into modern infrastructure design to offer sustainable flood solutions, to not only live with water, but exist in unity. The paper is informed by the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and comparative case study analysis, to generate recommendations for how to ‘Design with Water’ in the context of climate crisis, between: Hull, UK; the Historic Sukhothai Kingdom, Thailand; Wuhan, China. From this, the study advocate for an integrative community-based approach, which prioritises holistic, natural heritage solutions through understanding heritage wisdom and knowledge, to strengthen water resources and enhance urban resilience globally. The recommendations are adaptable in diverse architectural contexts, fostering an international shift towards integrating heritage management practices into modern developments. </p>