Post-Professional Master of Science, Advanced Architectural Design

America’s east coast is dissolving into the Atlantic due to delayed effects from the last ice age.  This sinking is being exacerbated by global warming, which is raising sea-level by an alarming and increasing rate.   Gradual sea level rise isn’t the only issue – there is also increased storminess due to planetary heating which is leading to storms with incredible surges associated with them.   This is some of the most densely populated land in the US: something has to give.    If we are to continue to live by the sea – our cities and their architecture will have to adapt – and quickly… by the end of the century, sea levels will be more than a metre higher than now – and storm surges due to hurricanes could add another 10 metres to that.

Climate Adaptation is one of the most difficult challenges of not only this century but also beyond.  Climate change will not stop suddenly: it is likely that it will continue for 500 years at least.   This long term impact challenges us as designers to think beyond a singular intervention, but understand a series or process of continual adaptations.  

 ‘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.

There are also serious ethical issues – leaving the mess for the next or future generations, when it is us and our parents who created the problem is not fair – but investing now in changes that may not be needed for a century or more is equally pointless.   We need solutions that deal with both these conflicting positions.  This is a wicked problem.

A wicked problem is one that is open-ended and has actors and their actions as part of the problem.  Sea level rise is just that: in the middle-ages King Canute of England famously showed the weakness of man in the face of the geologic:

“With the greatest vigour he (Canute) commanded that his chair should be set on the shore, when the tide began to rise. And then he spoke to the rising sea saying “You are part of my dominion, and the ground that I am seated upon is mine, nor has anyone disobeyed my orders with impunity. Therefore, I order you not to rise onto my land, nor to wet the clothes or body of your Lord. But the sea carried on rising as usual without any reverence for his person,and soaked his feet and legs. Then he moving away said: “All the inhabitants of the world should know that the power of kings is vain and trivial, and that none is worthy of the name of king but He whose command the heaven, earth and sea obey by eternal laws”.
(Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum)

We have treated the coast as a man-made and permanent structure and we are beginning to see the error of our ways:  the coastal condition is a dynamic equilibrium, not a static condition and our cities will have to adapt to extreme sea-level rise sooner or later.