For a long time, humans have attempted to control the environment which we inhabit for our own benefit. As we have reached the age of the Anthropocene and have uncovered more of the accidental consequences of our colonization, we are now questioning some of our earlier decisions.
Throughout Studio 1 we looked at the impact’s climate change and particularly sea level rise will have on the coastal region around the North Sea. It became apparent that most of the coastal change will occur in low lying, predominantly agricultural areas. Further investigation revealed the reasons for this, many of these areas were on peat soils of former wetlands which had been drained, often claimed from the sea in a human centric colonization of ‘coastscape’.
Studio 3 therefore seeks to find an alternative way to inhabit these coastal wetland habitats which does not rely on such a human centric control of water levels. Instead allowing these regions to return to a more natural land/sea fluctuation and in doing so reducing carbon emissions & biodiversity loss. To achieve this, past methods of inventive bottom-up solutions born from locally specific necessity are referenced, creating many Heath Robinson microtectures which combine to enable/create a large scale coastscape change.
