Geoff Manaugh is a design and architecture writer, contributing to publications such as Dwell, New Scientist and The New Yorker, as well as authoring several books and the long-running design and architecture site, BLDGBLOG.

Manaugh’s perspective on the drought focuses on the ripe opportunities for improving California’s remarkably inefficient, and in some ways, “undesigned” water systems, extending from its physical infrastructures to the economic market for buying and selling water rights. “I think that the actual pragmatic, ecosystem-based solutions to this – as well as the rethinking of agriculture on a statewide basis, as well as individual water use – I think is something that is really exciting and interesting about this contest.”

In collaboration with Smout Allen Architectural & Design Research, Manaugh will be participating at the Chicago Architecture Biennial this fall.

Have an idea for how to address the drought with design? Submit your ideas to the Dry Futures competition!