Designing With Water

One of the myriad consequences of climate change is the increased amount of flooding that communities are incurring. This includes not only coastal communities flooding due to sea level rise and the resultant impacts of astronomical high tides, but also severe storm flooding happening along estuaries and even further inland along rivers and tributaries. Our built environment should permit water’s presence and, thus, designers must begin to accept a perception of water within the built environment and anticipate new interactions between ecological and human systems. How can the dissection of water and its hydrologic movements become the base for exploring how design interventions may tap into this system thoughtfully? How do we allow water to re-enter our built environment, not as a treacherous element as seen in the past (and current) paradigm, but as an element that enriches? In 2020, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) released a feasibility report and environmental assessment to address coastal storm risk for the Charleston Peninsula. In 2021 the City asked Clemson University’s Master of Resilient Urban Design Program to produce a parallel design study in order to examine counter proposals to the USACE proposition, particularly nature-based design strategies. This paper articulates the process and product behind the counter proposal to offer suggestions for design grounded in social and environmental concerns in addition to physical and fiscal ones.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.110.40

Volume Editors
Robert Gonzalez, Milton Curry & Monica Ponce de Leon

ISBN
978-1-944214-40-1