Daniel Cutler

The Guild anticipates a future depolderisation of the constructed agricultural land surrounding the island abbey of Mont Saint-Michel. It seeks to reconcile the continued economic and social benefits of these highly productive fields with the environmental pressures they, and the vulnerable fringe of saltmarsh, now face due to climate change and an acute exposure to rising sea levels.

Funded by the French farming guilds, it registers changes within the bay and develops strategies for the gradual transition from agriculture to aquaculture. As a precedent farm, it becomes a focal point of gathering and knowledge transfer with the agenda of investigating new techniques for the cultivation of both soil and sea. It facilitates either the strengthening of sea dykes to further protect land or their dismantlement so as to receive the threatened habitats of the saltmarsh - measures rooted in a negotiation of economy, ensuring the protection of the robust industries operating at the local and global scales.

The elevated deck structure houses gardens of production and research, embracing and enriching ecological systems. Fabricated from materials and craftsmanship local to the bay, the engineered timber and granite structure beds into the certainty of underlying bedrock then ambitiously cantilevers over less assured territories. The Guild converses with the adjacent abbey through scripted views and a strategic elevated positioning which witnesses the transition of the landscape. It enacts an initial breaching of the dyke wall, the threshold between sea and land is recalibrated in an act of controlled flooding.

This is an entirely collaborative project with Charlie Donaldson.