In Frank Herbert’s famous1965 novel Dune, he describes a planet that has undergone nearly complete desertification. Dune has been called the “first planetary ecology novel” and forecasts a dystopian world without water. Although this science fiction novel sounded alien back then, the concept of a water-poor world is quickly becoming a reality, especially in the American Southwest.
Sietch Nevada is an urban prototype that makes the storage, use, and collection of water essential to the form and performance of urban life.
Inverting the stereotypical Southwest urban patterns of dispersed programs open to the sky, Matsys Designs, designed the Sietch as a dense, underground community.
A network of storage canals is covered with undulating residential and commercial structures. These canals connect the city with vast aquifers deep underground and provide transportation as well as agricultural irrigation.
The caverns brim with dense, urban life: an underground Venice.
Cellular in form, these structures constitute a new neighborhood typology that mediates between the subterranean urban network and the surface level activities of water harvesting, energy generation, and urban agriculture and aquaculture.
The caverns brim with dense, urban life: an underground Venice.
Cellular in form, these structures constitute a new neighborhood typology that mediates between the subterranean urban network and the surface level activities of water harvesting, energy generation, and urban agriculture and aquaculture. 
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