Type & Location: Atlantic City Urban Infrastructure
Client: Citizens in the Eight Sea level Risking Cities
Size: East Coast Sinking Area focusing on Atlantic City
Instructor & Time: Greg Keeffe, Cornell AAP; 2021 Fall Group Studio
Co-worker: Eduardo Cilleruelo Teran, Thakan Navapakpilai, Jin Kyung Cho
‘Mutability is the epitaph of worlds. Change alone is changeless. People drop out of the history of a life as of a land, though their work or their influence remains.’
----G Linnaeus Banks. The Manchester Man 1876.
America’s East Coast is dissolving into the Atlantic due to delayed effects from the last ice age, with being exacerbated by global warming, which makes severe land sinking. As global leaders negotiate a deal to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, we as designers must prepare for the drastic change in the built environment. This reimagining of the American city investigates complex infrastructural shifts while also considering the socio-cultural impacts of a changing way of life.
After deeply investigating the histories of eight cities along the eastern coast of the States, we focus on the climate protocols (Macro Scale; Meso Scale; Micro Scale) and the territory of the geology coastal landforms. Additional mapping and drawings illustrate the response and how it transforms the city’s relationship with the sea. Our team does vignettes of possible “future experiments” in investigating one aspect of climate change. The last chapter, Alternative Futures, includes all the potentialities left out of the major chapters that may yet be viable and exciting responses to sea level rise.
Project1A1:History and Legacies of East Coast Sinking Cities
A research schemes shows the geology, transportation, civilization, industry, defense, economics, politics and ecology background.
Project 2A1: How the Zone Addresses the Possibilities of Replication
An adaptive infrastructure system keeps this city alive when sinking, which supports the existing buildings as well as manages all fundamental daily life supplements.
Project 2A2: The Floating Vice Infrastructure
A comprehensive system against urban sinking
Under the scope of this uncertainty scenario, we approached a development tool to engage this happening in the future of Atlantic City. The project brings a floating structure and protocol in order to become a gambling and non-regulated city, operating as a micro-state that will emerge from the ruins of the previous city. Players, investors, curious and tourists will be welcome to join this elevated structure, where communication happens mainly by sea. It will be constructed as an autonomous entity, obtaining resources from the salt water as well as providing farming and crops to feed visitants.