UrbanLab presented the Great Lakes Aqueduct project in the Chicagoisms show at the Art Institute of Chicago curated by Alexander Eisenschmidt and Jonathan Mekinda. The project proposes to combine architecture and water infrastructure.

Nearly half the people in the world today do not have access to the kind of clean water and sanitation services that were available to the citizens of ancient Rome. So why not resolve this modern-day crisis with the same technology that the Romans used? We propose an aqueduct running along the entire 10,550 miles of the ridge around the Great Lakes Basin. This aqueduct will not only define a growth boundary around the abundant fresh waters of the Great Lakes but also serve as a dense “main street” of housing, public space, economic activity, and resource management.