bullet points, before i forget

Rough intro + notes of new idea below. Proper English forthcoming.

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The space between land and water is architecture in the truest sense – a wholly man-made intervention that permits human experience in a delicate balance between two realms of nature. This edge as it exists along the periphery of every continent has been fortified, levied, reclaimed, dammed and drained in historic efforts to acclimatize it for suitable human occupation. The environmental, social and cultural implications that follow from uncontrolled or uncontrollable interactions with water, such as natural disaster, spread of disease, decaying industrial ports and sterile waterfront spaces, lead us to hope for a symbiotic relationship with water which not only serves human needs but also delights us with aesthetics, balance and functionality.

what interests me and why
the fantastically different yet completely appropriate ways people have mediated the space between land and sea throughout history
the role of water in civilization:
- water as economy (fishing, trading, tourism)
- water as amenity (luxury, sport)
- water as threat (tsunamis, flooding)
- water as resource (human health, irrigation, energy generation)

what I plan to do
systematic analysis of ways of occupying land/water
integrate richness of these separate types of occupation into a single site.
sausalito, CA
- vibrant houseboat community in need of an architectural connection to land

how I will do it
research current civilizations, cultural traditions, architectural styles, etc
IAP site visit to SF

why it matters that I do what I plan to do
waterfront redevelopment is rising trend for many cities, mostly motivated by economic revitalization of tourism economy
human scale/lifestyle/delight should be a factor
living on/by/near/around the water should be enjoyed to maximum
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alan says...

...make sure I know what scale of project I can realistically handle. Definitely a point that I need to be reminded of as I make draft out my thesis statement. For whatever reason, though, I am just very fascinated by the big picture dynamics of the zillions of factors that precede what we know to be "architecture."

Also to consider, another article (sort of old, 2001) that argues that urban waterfront redevelopment is becoming a national trend due to x reasons. My top guess (tourism/luxury economy) was mentioned in passing...

Maybe an approach is to critically analyze this apparent national trend, distill its major goals, program elements and strategies, and design a way to integrate low-cost residential within this context.

Actually that still sounds pretty urban plann y ...

How can I bring back my initial fascination with the richness, functionality and economy of Bangkok khlong stilt homes?

MCHG + ramble + draft

This post will be a backlog of previous thoughts that I should have dumped earlier. Ah well, prepare to scroll...

McGill's Minimum Cost Housing Group, has a GREAT website with easy navigation to a pretty good collection of past M.arch theses... all related to low (with the goal of minimum, I presume) cost housing. I was surprised to discover that a lot of them had to do with squatter settlements in SE Asia, not "affordable housing" in the Western sense.

I read Chapter 2 and skimmed a couple of other parts of Rachelle G. Navarro's thesis on improving sanitation in waterfront communities. There were definitely parts that coincided with my interests, particularly breaking down the reasons why squatters chose to squat on waterfronts. Navarro confirmed some of my initial intuitions -- most urban cities, many of them former colonies, were intentionally chosen and settled for their advantageous locations for trade and defense. She argued that while coastal lands were considered highly (economically) productive environments in rural areas (for fishing and trade I presume), the coast is seen as an “idle” region in urban areas (not sure if I agree/understand that…) I do see the point that water (be it rainfall, a river or lake, etc) seems to be a natural element in rural areas, while it is a foreign element in the urbanized environment (sewage, storm drains, etc are required to mitigate/interact with it)

She also listed a number of coastal cities with notable squatter settlements, which I've referenced here:

• Guayaquil (Ecuador)
• Recife (Brazil)
• Monrovia (Liberia)
• Lagos and Port Harcourt (Nigeria)
• Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea)
• Delhi (India)
• Bangkok (Thailand) – “khlongs”
• Jakarta (Indonesia) – “kampungs”
• Buenos Aires and Resistencia (Argentina)
• Accra (Ghana)

Other useful notes: most common concerns in waterfront settlements are clean water, sanitation (of human waste), clean/safe environment (free of insects, garbage, standing water). I quickly brainstormed possible solutions...rainwater catchment, composting toilets, incentives to recycle more comprehensively through policy (like Jaime Lerner's environmental policy to buy trash and collected recyclables from slum dwellers in Curitiba, Brazil which led to huge improvements in cleanliness of public areas).

Navarro also noted differences in disease levels during the rainy season. It seems to be that any design that involves the flood plain needs to critically consider annual flooding and change in the occupiable ground plane.

…which makes for an uncanny segue in my thoughts for my studio project at the moment. My key words: action, distribution and time; essentially, how actions and activities of people are located within a built environment and both analyzing and guiding these changing dynamics over time. For Mumbai, and other coastal cities with flooding problems, the ground plane is an active changing element in the landscape; Not a neutral plane to receive human actions, but one that immediately influences human action and distribution.

All of this is sort of melding into one big fat unrefined idea. I will attempt to dissect it, starting now.

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*40 min later. It’s taking longer than I thought -_-;; will chew on this for awhile and post later tonight (I hope).

by sunday...

why

Why are there so many squatter settlements on waterfronts? Bangkok, Mumbai, Ampang, Malaysia, Vancouver even...

My guesses ...

• access to water...ie. means to fish? (which may be a sweeping generalization about squatters on waterfronts. i have no idea if all waterfront squatters are fishermen. an occupational survey in relation to location in city (ie. proximity to coast/CBD/industrial, etc) would be fascinating...) ocean waterfront settlements obviously can't use the water for drinking, but perhaps riverfront settlements do? 
• land along waterfront is often public...and ambiguous "public space" is vulnerable to being claimed if it doesn't have good and/or defensive design. 
• normally there aren't residences RIGHT along the water (ixnay on beachfront houses) so no one bothers them if they live there...?

I think I have to revise my question. The bigger picture is actually asking what leads squatters to squat where they squat, and a subset of those squatters choose to squat along waterfronts, because of either their priorities or circumstances. 

There seems to be an obvious answer to that question though. Squatters squat where the land is ambiguously owned so they don't get kicked out on the first night. duh. 

So then what does the proliferation of informal settlements on waterfronts mean? Granted, I might be preempting myself...I have yet to check out the numbers of waterfront v. land-locked settlements. But in any of these cases, the presence of squatters is a result of what...ambiguous design? unclear planning? bad governance? Probably all....

I'm not interested in designing a typology of waterfront that is squatter-proof. Past experiences with sheer amazement at human will to live and creativity to make it happen tells me it's not possible anyway. 

I round off this pondering session with one last Google search, which yields me a treasure: McGill's Minimum Cost Housing Group. An entire chapter on "Reasons for settling on Coastal, Waterfront and Low-lying areas"... great! Will read and respond to this next time.  

if x is the amount of land on earth...

When I learned about Boston's comprehsive reclamation history in 11.001 my freshman year, I was SHOCKED. I honestly didn't know you could just "make land" like that. It must be possible though, since it seems like they did a good job of stitching together those 7 islands into the city of Mumbai too. 

My initial interest with water architecture was definitely at a smaller scale, revolving around how a household adapts to and benefits from living in a water environment. I think now, probably due in part to our Mumbai site visit, I'm interested in getting a larger perspective. 

Mumbai had a fascinating dynamic along its main waterfront, the Back Bay, which is completely artificially constructed a la the Back Bay Reclamation Plan, completed in 1970, though not without a tumultuous history. For a city that has dealt with overcrowing and some of the highest urban densities in the world, I'm curious how and why land reclamation became a technique (whether it was effective or not in Mumbai's case) for diffusing congestion, increasing public amenities and, basically, just having more space in a time when urban populations are relentlessly increasing. 

Land reclamation changes the entire nature of a waterfront. It is a completely human construct. It pretends to recreate tidal forces and contential plate movement with a designed boundary from land to water. 

The designer/planner for Boston's Faneuil Hall had the notion to leave a hint of its "natural" waterfront -- embedded in the concrete plaza are shells and traces of other ocean debris, a jagged line denotes the original former Boston Harbor. 

My current thought is to investigate the conditions, motivations and results of land reclamation projects at various scales in major cities, including Boston, Mumbai, Singapore, Dubai...and definitely others as I find out more. It would be interesting to find out if and why motivations for land reclamation change throughout the development timeline of a city as well. 

In some ways, the strategy behind land reclamation is essentially to inhabit water as though it were land. I also interested in exploring the concept of "floating cities" in a sense...a notion that many have attempted to tackle it seems (wired.com, BLDGBLOG). To me, seasteading, as they call it, raises even larger questions.....essentially dealing with redefining not just a boundary condition, but an entire earthscape. 

I admit that I'm sort of a skeptic with this type of futuristic theoretical designing...but with the pressure of urban populations exploding in the next 30 years (unfpa.org), is inhabiting the water a feasible, or even desireable, way of living?