The project is a visual tale telling a story of how three places in Rockaway Queens looks in a hundred years in a both utopian and dystopian way to bring up the question: How social, political and environmental impacts will affect the appearances of architecture and human.
Based on the history of Slum Clearance, sea level rise and the fact that the world is running out of sand, the story starts from a presumptive political decision: One day the government gives up the costly sand replenishment of Rockaway Beach and is convinced that the construction of seawall on dunes as infeasible. Instead, they allow the water to submerge the peninsula. However, rather than abandon the existed buildings and relocate, the local residents decide to stay and be adaptive to the new environment by leveraging man’s free will to reshape the social structure and biological culture of the site.
The goal of the adaptation is not to let the “architects”, a symbol of expertise, offer an “impeccable” solution to a specific client but to accumulate multidisciplinary knowledge to design imperfections and self-awakening to embrace the harsh nature and innate humanity. Only by establishing a symbiotic relationship between architecture, human and nature can we find a path toward truly resiliency and sustainability.