Fraying the Sea Dyke develops in relation to current thinking towards the depolderisation of certain areas of the north French coastline as a possible response to rising sea levels. The proposal explores a possible new form of aquaculture that intervenes into the expansive fabric of the nineteenth century polder landscape of the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel in the form of a series of constructed landscape seams. Each of these seams act as transitional gates and breach the outer sea dyke to choreograph the ingress of the tides. In so doing, they flood certain areas to form an extension to the salt marsh habitats held by a secondary inner dyke and feed a series of pools that expand the local rich economy of aquaculture – specifically the cultivation of oysters for which the region is renowned. The pools and their associated laboratories and storehouses, the architectural forms of which reinforce the seam, provide the sequence of nursery beds and desalination pools required prior to and following the four year exposure of the oysters to the deeper tidal zones through elevated baskets arrayed out beyond the marsh.
This frayed landscape forms a disturbance sea dyke’s path – a slowing of the pilgrimage route from the Chapelle Saint-Anne-de-la-Grève in the west to Mont-Saint-Michel along the ridge of the dyke. At this level, the new landscape provides an elevated public realm of repose, refreshment and bathing pools at once witnessing the extraordinary cultivation of the sea and exposing views towards the abbey island beyond.
