METAMORPHOSIS OF THE COAST, THE

Phd Thesis, FIRST PRIZE, 12th Biennial competition on PhD thesis on architecture, 2019

We find ourselves in a post-ecological era where the archetype of nature is no longer separate from that of humankind. The most emblematic crisis in this era, known as the Anthropocene, is global warming, commonly known as climate change. In this global context, the inevitable adaptation of coastal environments to its effects must go hand in hand with a radical transformation of the conceptual framework that has led to the alteration of our coastlines through plans and projects undertaken in recent centuries. In an attempt to show what this metamorphosis of the coast should look like, this book puts forward several proposals in which current models are compared with new ones.

In addition, conceptual proposals are made which may serve as an inspiration for future coastal structures and typologies. Furthermore, thanks to the in-depth study of responses from various levels of government, scientists, urban planners and architects to the floods caused at the end of August 2005 by Hurricane Katrina (on the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama coasts) and at the end of October 2012 by Hurricane Sandy (on the New York and New Jersey coasts), a range of typological and technological climate change adaptation tools is proposed to address coastal metamorphosis and usher synthetic ecology into the design processes to achieve resilient coastal landscapes.