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- Herausgeber: AADR – Art Architecture Design Research
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Climate change, and the inevitability of sea level rise, will require much more of us than simply pulling back from the coastline. The thesis of Weston Wright's More Water Less Land New Architecture is that we need to start thinking in an entirely different way about the relationship of cities to waterfront sites and of the relationship of buildings to water, which means rethinking many of architecture's implicit premises. If architecture has been confrontational with water—think bold towers erected beside the sea, as if to dare the water to challenge them—Wright's argument is that we will need to be modest, accommodating, and accepting of the power and presence of water if our cities are to survive. He knows that nature is stronger than we are, and that best chance mankind has to build successfully will be to build with, not against, the reality of water. This is an important book, not least because its quiet, sober tone balances natural history with architectural history, and reaches across the world to show examples of architecture that accommodates to the water ranging from small vernacular houses on stilts to huge megastructures anchored like islands in the sea. Although Wright's argument transcends aesthetics or style, his book is, in the end, a case for the strength that comes from restraint, and perhaps even for the lasting power of gentlenes
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More Water, Less Land, New Architecture
Sea Level Rise and the Future of Coastal Urbanism
Weston Wright
© Copyright 2022 by Weston Wright and AADR (Spurbuchverlag)
ISBN 978-3-88778-588-8
eISBN 978-3-88778-941-1
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://www.dnb.de
No part of the work must in any mode (print, photocopy, microfilm,
CD or any other process) be reproduced nor–by application of electronic systems–processed, manifolded nor broadcast without approval of the Copyright holder.
AADR – Art, Architecture and Design Research publishes research with an emphasis on the relationship between critical theory and creative practice. AADR Curatorial Editor: Dr. Rochus Urban Hinkel, Baunach & Melbourne Production: pth-mediaberatung GmbH, Würzburg
Design and Typesetting, Jan Fairbairn, Fairbairn + Company
Printed in the European Union
For further information on Spurbuchverlag and AADR visit: www.aadr.info / www.spurbuch.de.
MORE WATER
LESS LAND
NEW ARCHITECTURE
SEA LEVEL RISE AND THEFUTURE OF COASTAL URBANISM
WESTON WRIGHT
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Ode to Water
FOREWORD
Kenneth Frampton
FOREWORD
Ana Tostoes
INTRODUCTION
Part1 WATER’S METAMORPHOSIS
Temporary to Everlasting
INTERMITTENT WATER
EARLY RESPONSES
Tel Hreiz
Catalhoyuk
Bajau
Venice
Marsh Arabs
CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES
Lumcon
Farnsworth House
Kansai Airport
PERMANENT WATER
Spatial Disruption
Containment Upon Arrival
Contextual Change
Erasure of Place
Part II EVOLVING DETERMINANTS
Consequences of Warming
Ice Sheet Melt
More Water
Less Land
Liquefaction
Consequences of Urbanization
Subsidence
Part III WET TYPOLOGIES
New Architecture
WET ARCHITECTURE
A Singular Expression
Interactional
Conjoining Dissimilar Contexts
Partial Lift
Full Vertical Lift
Full Horizontal Lift
Mobility: Assembly + Functioning
Scale/Configuration
Habitable Parts
The Platform and Mobility
Supporting Leg System
Operability
Divergency
Rangebound
Material Adaptation
WET URBANISM
A System of Elements
A New Arrangement
Connectivity
Scale/Configuration/Placement
Urban Renewal
Welcome
Placemaking
Continuance
AFTERWORD
Rasmus Waern
Karsten Harries
APPENDIX
Bibliography
Chronology of Images
Biographies
Acknowledgments
For my mother, father, and sister.
To my wife Janice for her unending support, and patience; without which the book would not have materialized. I also thank our son lan for his questions, support, and renderings.
I want to thank Vivien Li, both the former public director of The American Institute of Architects, and President of The Boston Harbor Association, for encouraging me to write the book over coffee at the Thinking Cup on Newbury Street in Boston. I want to thank my long time friend and urban planner Lucy Thompson for her probing questions, exchange of views, early editing, and perhaps most importantly, her inquiry which led to working with Phil Langdon. I am also grateful to my business partner Carolyn Ancona Crook for her contemplation, ensuing discussions, and innumerable draft reads.
I thank Charles Jencks for his early support and push towards the Metabolists. I especially thank Kenneth Frampton for his very early support and patience with me since 2017. I also thank Karsten Harries for his early support, patience throughout the years, and invaluable, overarching writing guidance. The initial support from Charles, Kenneth, and Karsten provided me with the incentive to forge ahead, and to take a deeper research and writing dive than I thought myself capable of. I am also grateful to both Ana Tostoes and Rasmus Waern for their immediate willingness to write their respective pieces. I want to thank Phil Langdon for his immediate grasp of the subject matter, his accessibility throughout the process, and for his overall editing prowess. I am also appreciative of Jan Fairbairn’s, the book’s graphic designer, interest in the project and her design sensibilities.
I am also indebted to both Paul Goldberger and Shlomo Angel for their ability to delicately assess the spirit of the book. Lastly, I want to thank Rochus Hinkel, the founder and curatorial editor of AADR for his immediate support, guidance, flexibility, patience, and sincere belief in the book.
Author’s Note
The inspiration for this book came from a conceptual design I presented in 2013 for a site known as Clippership Wharf, in Boston, Massachusetts. The buildings at Clippership Wharf were to be erected on a site that touched the water along the inner harbor in East Boston. In 1988, the site’s footprint totaled 13 acres (5.3 hectares), but as years went by, the vacant, essentially flat, horseshoe-like property (image 1) lost more than an acre to water. By 2013, it was reduced to 11.5 acres (4.65 hectares).
Three buildings were envisioned: two apartment buildings plus a 210,000-square-foot (19,510 square meters) three-tiered (labeled as Tray 1, 2 & 3, image 2), five story building referred to as the “central pod” (image 22); the initial concept (image 58). The proposed collective of buildings would have totaled approximately 444,000 square feet (41,249 square meters).
In reviewing a 1988 Final Environmental Impact Report on Clippership, our team discovered the entire site was comprised of tidelands, as defined in Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 91; and, thirty-five percent of the upland site area was vulnerable to flooding during a 100-year storm. The site contained three different flood zones: one area vulnerable to minimal flooding; a second area predicted to flood once in a century, and a third area impacted by a water’s rise between a 100-year and a 500-year flood level occurrence (Vanasse Hangen Brustlin 1988). In the final analysis, because of its low-lying elevation, I concluded, that Clippership was particularly vulnerable to sea level rise.
To conserve both the site’s edge, and its overall footprint, defensive measures such as silt curtains, floating attenuators (which provide wave and wake protection), and new perimeter sea walls would be needed. The first floor, we found, would have to be elevated with approximately three feet of compacted fill.
Courtesy of Winn Development
Research told us, however, that sea level rise would not abate over time; on the contrary, the water’s rise would be interminable. Dr. Robert Thorson, a geologist at the University of Connecticut, says “if [Cape Cod in Massachusetts] were to become a national park, I would advocate removing all coastal defenses against erosion” (Thorson 2018). Similarly, the effectiveness of conventional strategies for staving off the water’s rise and preventing Clippership’s deterioration appeared uncertain. They seemed like mere stopgaps. The rising sea would likely breach any revetment strategy. Raising the first floor elevation by depositing fill on all or parts of the site, seemed not to be an effective solution. At what elevation would the building be safe from water’s intrusion? Instead, we conceived a building design that could adjust itself vertically and horizontally. The concept would allow the site’s natural topography to remain as is, absent raising it with fill.
By 2013, some 25 years after the initial Environmental Impact Report, the Clippership site had already partly succumbed to water’s ceaseless consumption. Absent strategies to fortify the site, the remainder of the dry land would continue to contract, until water covered it entirely.
Furthermore, the speed with which land was being lost would likely accelerate because of maritime wave action and the expected increases in the frequency and intensity of storms. Our conclusion, therefore, was not to interrupt water, but rather to accept it. As designers, we would use water as a determinant for forging a new type of architecture, one that could remain in place and perform its functions regardless of inundation.
Since inundation could alter, if not sever, access to the roads, power sources, and public water and sewer infrastructure of East Boston, all three Clippership building’s were to be designed as self-contained structures. The central pod, in particular, would be configured with a principally east-west orientation (image 2) that would maximize the solar gain and enhance the potential for off-grid power.
While the central pod’s orientation did not reflect conventional ideas about the site’s highest and best use—the new configuration reduced the building density—it did provide an opportunity, albeit on an interim basis, to create more green space, which could absorb floodwater and at other times be put to community use.
The conceptual design of Clippership embodies acceptance of the fact that to reside near a coastal body of water today, architecture and urbanism must take new forms and adapt to different circumstances.
•Warming of the planet will cause water to rise continually—essentially, in perpetuity.
•Synthetic revetment strategies—walls, gates, and absorption or collection techniques—are mere stopgap strategies.
•Conventional coastal urban development is at an end point. It is maladaptive to water’s continuing rise.
This conceptual project led me to deeper research on sea level rise and to exploring how our understanding of what constitutes architecture could be broadened.
Ode To Water
Coastal settlements, as a consequence of warming, are on a collision course with water.
In the past, dry land and water had a more or less predictable and stable interface.
Water has now altered the relationship.
Today, water is warming, expanding, and rising.
Her rise is interminable.
Water will confiscate large swaths of land.
She will act with impunity.
Water does not lament.
She is indifferent to the ramifications of her annexation.
Water’s indifference renders a coastal settlement’s usual defenses ineffectual.
Thus, coastal settlements are forced to renegotiate the interface.
Ultimately, coastal settlements must accept less land.
FOREWORD
Kenneth Frampton
This well researched, stimulating and disturbing study, written by a practicing architect will surely become required reading in the near future given the melting ice caps, the escalating intensity of precipitation and the elevation of the sea; all phenomena with which we shall have to contend, with increasing frequency in order to survive. Hence the paradoxical concept of ‘wet urbanism’ which the author has had the temerity to posit as a new normative condition.
From the onset the author acknowledges the fact that despite the futile construction of sea walls, we shall not only have to abandon many of our coastal settlements but also cope with ever more frequent flooding inland. Thus, seasonal flooding will soon join equally seasonal wild fires and drought among the environmental hazards of our time, along with increasingly frequent and powerful hurricanes and other un-natural, ‘knock-on’ phenomena such as the plague of mosquitos that recently bedeviled the northeast coast of the US. While the author reminds us that since the Ice Age the earth has been subject to major changes in its climate, it has never until now been subject to simultaneous transformations affecting the entire globe. And in this context it is sobering to note that half a century has elapsed since the 1972 MIT Report for The Club of Rome warning us that we shall eventually have to curb our insatiable appetite for economic growth along with our mindless commodification of the environment which has so evidently laid the natural world to waste over the past fifty years.
The author opens his study with a brief historical overview of the various ways in which our species has been able to live in close proximity to water, either on the edge of the sea or, alternatively, close to the estuaries of large continental rivers in order to take advantage of a seemingly infinite supply of fish. This brings him early in the text to the pre-historic mound civilization of Catalhoyuk in Turkey, built on the wetlands of the Carsamba River. He will pass from this to consider similar mound communities, such as the so-called, ‘floating villages’ of the Marsh Arabs, sustained across time at the convergence of the Tigris and the Euphrates or the mound settlement of Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley, dating back to 2500 BC. Passing from mound to pile dwellings, Wright reminds us of the Bajau people living in timber huts, poised on timber piles in the shallow coastal waters of the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. This habitat may also be found in Borneo, the worlďs third largest island, where the Bajau have lived for centuries either on pile dwellings or on boats. For us, in the developed world, the survival of Venice built on a conglomeration of islands and protected since 2003 by the MOSE sluice gates (Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico) with which authorities hope not only to prevent the further inundation of the city but also to resist succumbing to the extraction of ground water and the accumulated weight of urbanization, as we find in other coastal cities around the world as in Miami, San Francisco, Lagos, and Jakarta. In the case of Venice, the sinking of the city is also due to tectonic movement, particularly the Adriatic Plate, on which the lagoon rests.
By way of highlighting some of the more dramatic interactions between water, land and architecture, Wright cites the perpetual flooding of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House and its recent elevation above the flood plain of the Fox River. He contrasts this with the construction of Kansai Airport on land fill in the midst of the sea, with its massive air terminal designed by Renzo Piano, that has to be constantly raised by computer monitored hydraulic jacks in order to compensate for the settlement of the site. It is of significance that this audacious piece of engineering was only constructed in the ocean because the residents of the Kansai region strongly objected to the constant noise pollution that inevitably accompanies the landing and take-off of transcontinental jets.
Demonstrating that coastal buildings may be expressly designed to resist the increasing level of the sea Wright cites the example of the DeFelice Marine Center built as a research facility on the Louisiana coast to the designs of O’Rourke, Gossen & Associates. However, it is symptomatic of worldwide coastal erosion that this coast according to one expert, loses a football field of soil every hour.
Although the inland containment of flood water in man-made or natural basins is already a familiar strategy for dealing with the ever more frequent incidents of torrential rain such drastic antediluvian provisions are in potential conflict with the depletion of arable land either through man-made desertification on a vast scale or through the unremitting loss of such land via urbanization. As Wright points out more than 60% of the worlďs croplands are located in or close to cities, many of which are located in the worlďs most fertile deltas. Among the potentially serious consequences of elevated sea levels is the relatively sudden disappearance of time-honored settlements and communities as in the case of the island city of Malé in the Indian Ocean, the capital of the Maldives archipelago. Situated on the top of extinct volcanos these islands would virtually disappear with only one meter rise in the level of the sea.
All of this stands to be exacerbated by that which the author, in the second part of the study, euphemistically calls evolving determinants, ranging from melting permafrost to the disappearance of the polar ice sheet which would contribute to an apocalyptic 200-foot elevation in the surface of the sea. While it is unclear how the stages of such a disaster might eventually unfold it is undeniable that the ocean systems have become irrevocably changed. Despite this evident threat it seems that further urbanization is economically unstoppable given the current prediction that by 2050, 75% of the worlďs population will live in cities.
The third part of the book which is ostensibly devoted to speculating as to the forms which a wet architecture and urbanism might adopt, is somewhat elusive since it is virtually impossible to predict what kind of environmental typology might be truly feasible in the face of global inundation. Clearly as the author suggests land reclamation, here and there, might be a feasible option and seemingly such a civil engineering feat is already underway in the rich Mediterranean province of Monaco which is currently expanding its buildable terrain into the Ligurian Sea. More generalizable perhaps is the fact that the greater part of the Netherlands is below sea level and clearly this remains an option providing one has the resources, the collective culture and the technological prowess to build and maintain an elaborate system of dykes to hold back the sea.
Wright’s search for some notion of a viable post-diluvial architecture understandably returns him to Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Bay project of 1960; a still unmatched, inspiring proposal for systematically expanding Tokyo into the sea. It is evident that Tange’s oceanic vision was an inspiration for the next generation of Japanese architects, above all, for the so-called Metabolists of which we may single out the precocious figures of Kiyonori Kikutake and Kishu Kurokawa who projected one phantasmagoric design after another for building settlements in the open sea, culminating in Kikutake’s proposal of sinking a gigantic, buoyant cylinder into the surface of the ocean, the interior of which would be lined with ‘limpet’ urban settlements clinging to the walls of the cylinder. Among the saner metabolic visions was Arata Isozaki’s Joint Core System, borrowed from Tange, of deep latticework bridges of habitable space spanning above a flooded terrain between large cylindrical pylons containing the means of access and essential services. More realistically, sixty years later, Wright concludes his search for a viable aquatic future with two recently realized, diminutive floating villages. However, it is clear that neither of these buoyant, microcosmic utopias displays much promise with regard to accommodating the densely urbanized megacity populations of the future.
What one may well ask, is the answer to this conceptual challenge a more valid ‘wet’ form of environmental design? One thinks that the first order might be not only to devise a denser more topographic mid-rise form of urban development but also one capable of assuming a softer more flexible approach to inundation. The other stratagem would be to mandate that all future development must be on brownfield sites in order to conserve existing agricultural land as much as possible. At the same time, we are aware that by now the only way out of this climatological nemesis would be a fundamental change in the world economy which remains in effect a socio-political impasse.
Kenneth Frampton
FOREWORD
Ana Tostoes
The need for a new architecture
In More water, less land, new architecture, Weston Wright offers a unique view of the challenges to come in architectural production and thought. He considers the issues of climate change and the impending rise of sea levels, and their implications for sustainable design strategies in architecture and urbanism. The world is posing new challenges for architects, and we all recognize the need to work together on ideas to respond to them.
This work by Wright focuses on water, its relationship with humankind, and the role of architecture in this process. Incorporating the latest knowledge on the subject, he discusses it at length and identifies the risks the climate crisis represents to this relationship and the urgent need to respond to them.
It is one of the first works within the discipline of architecture to comprehensively analyze these particular phenomena. Wright argues that an architectural approach that takes into account the relationship between water and existing settlements is ur gently needed. Applying this approach to the consequences of global warming and urbanization, the author proposes a new discipline he calls “wet urbanism”.
Central to this is a renegotiation of the interface between land and water, with less emphasis on land, and more on water!
For the author, our planet has always been vulnerable to flooding, and floods are a natural part of the human experience, and we have been coping with watery settings from our first settlements. History shows us that humans have always sought water as an essential element for life. Water is not just another resource, it is the most vital resource!
The book is organized in three parts. The first considers the metamorphosis of water, its role in the history of settlements, and addresses contemporary developments. The second part focuses on what Wright describes as “evolving determinants” to discuss the consequences of global warming on urbanization. Finally, the third part contains the conclusions and, more positively suggests solutions for dealing with these problems in the field of architecture and urbanism. When humans began to settle, they preferred locations near water resources—rivers, sea, or oceans—which gave them sources of food and fertile ground for crops, essential for their survival. With time, small settlements grew, and the first cities were established, mostly near or along waterfronts.
With this growth, exchange routes were established between cities, and trade routes were frequently faster by water than overland. From this arose the need to build specific facilities—ports—where the transfer and sale of goods took place, and whose importance grew significantly during the Age of Discoveries in the 15th to 17th centuries. The trading of goods fostered an exchange of cultures and information, stimulating the evolution of knowledge in areas such as science, technology, and the humanities. This created and attracted wealth and the wealthy. Famously, the Medicis, on the river Arno in Florence, became one of the most powerful families in Europe from their lucrative investments in wool and textiles, founding first the Medici Bank and then becoming patrons of many artists and humanists of the Italian Renaissance. Thus, cities on the water were quickly seen as important places not only for trading, but also for exchanging culture and knowledge.
However, these locations were always more susceptible to natural variations in water levels and tides, and were frequently flooded, especially in the spring and autumn. Building technology underwent an almost natural adaptation to this in various places, such as Venice, Bajau, and the land of the Marsh Arabs. Settlements close to water were more susceptible to natural catastrophes such as tsunamis. This sometimes led to their partial destruction, as occurred in Lisbon in 1755, when an earthquake followed by a tsunami completely destroyed the downtown area named Baixa. This catastrophe gave Ьirth to the first modern plan from the Enlightenment Era: the reconstruction plan of 1758.
With the Industrial Revolution and the growth of industries on their periphery, cities experienced exponential growth outwards but also inwards, as their waterfronts became densely occupied. Today, due to climate change, natural catastrophes are becoming more frequent, and have destroyed entire coastal cities, especially when they were poorly prepared.
Furthermore, rising sea levels have increased the risk of flooding in many coastal regions which has led to the progressive inland advance of the waterline, so that some regions have become totally submerged.
If uncontrolled industrial development and carbon emissions are not halted, it seems inevitable that rising sea levels will destroy numerous inhabited areas in the coming decades. More coastal cities will disappear, along with their architectural heritage.
This means we all have a duty to work against climate change, but we must also rethink the architecture of our cities and how we intervene in them and adapt so they can be preserved.
This is precisely how Wright’s book intends to make an important contribution. Analyzing specific cases, from the cities of early civilization (Catalhoyuk) to contemporary examples (Lumcon and the Farnsworth House) he tries to understand strategies that can be used to adapt not only architecture, but also building technologies and materials, so that they can be in frequent contact with water, and still preserve their original identity.
In this book, Weston Wright introduces the idea of “wet architecture” as a typology to counteract the rising waters, in which buildings are designed so that they can permanently exist in water and illustrates this idea with a conceptual model he designed for Boston.
As the author argues, “communities and societies need to devise effective architectural and urban responses when water puts them on the threshold of a dramatic contextual change”. That is why, in 2021, the International Union of Architects declared their principal commitment to be the provision of “A clean environment for a healthy world”.
Thus, if we are to maintain architecture as the most civic of the arts, we must face these issues, which are both age-old and urgently contemporary, with creativity and responsibility, and engage with them as a stimulating challenge for the future.
Ana Tostoes
