Lo-Res: Architectural Strategies of Localized Resilience

Rather than considering coastal architecture and flood defense infrastructure as having incompatible agendas, this paper argues for a study of new architectural and infrastructural hybridizations with a focus on the underlying systems that not only determine manmade fortifications that control the movement of and access to water but also offer discrete spaces for inhabitation. A study of water management infrastructural types, paired with vulnerable, remote, and unprotected coastal and riverine sites, anticipate alternative methods of resilience that serve to mediate human inhabitation in flood-threatened territories. What strategies of resilience can we establish that go beyond the typical (that accommodate flooding, flee from it, and fortify against it)and begin to incorporate dynamic characteristics of the physical environment with architectural form? The projects discussed in this paper explore these questions and are a product of the Cornell University architecture studio Lo-Res: Architectural Scales of Localized Resilience conducted during Spring 2016.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.Intl.2016.45

Volume Editors
Alfredo Andia, Dana Cupkova, Macarena Cortes, Umberto Bonomo & Vera Parlac

ISBN
978-1-944214-10-4