Harvard Graduate School of Design

2023 

​

“The sea and the shore belong not to any one person, but rather to the public at large” (Chapter 91, Public Trust Doctrine) 
The Commonwealth of Water aims to embrace sea level rise as an opportunity to reconfigure our relationship to water and the legislation surrounding it. 
The boundaries of water fluctuate, and so should our legislation. The static lines of Chapter 91 give way to a gradient of ecologies, to the decommissioning of structures and indexing of materials, an adaptive retreat. 

Buildings will become amphibious, and their retrofits supported by the Water Trust and the hybrid labor that humans and non-humans undertake to reproduce and regenerate our world. 

New life will emerge from the rubble and become part of our built environment, an environment neither natural nor artificial; if such a distinction is even viable. 
Water is erasing our boundaries in the same way that it will erode our anthropogenic materials and give them a new meaning. 

The transformation of Boston into an amphibious city demands a careful study of its existing typologies, construction materials, and regulatory frameworks. By cataloging the degradation of materials in saltwater and the non-human species that might colonize them, this project speculates on a future where architecture and urban design embrace dynamic, intertidal conditions. The coastline is reimagined as a shared commons, a marsh-based productive ecosystem where the built environment dissolves into a living substrate. This transition challenges the permanence of property lines, offering a vision where urbanism is defined not by static infrastructure but by evolving relationships between water, material decay, and ecological succession.

 
Drawings: Mauricio Cohen Kalb, 

Photos by Mauricio Cohen Kalb. 

Rhino, Grasshopper, Photoshop, Illustrator, Runway.