Project description

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.

Collaborators
Fold, Drift and Sediment

From the dam to Mont Saint-Michel, the shadowscape, derived from Córdoba, as the Vessel, drives the outline of the whole landscape along the Couesnon river. After several stages such as scoring and compressing, shadowscape is compressed into a delicate, complex, organic and mysterious landscape construct. This large landscape has been dismantled by the impact of the sea and the acting forces of sedimentation, and has drifted to dykes on the edge of saltmarsh.

Mapping
Fraying
Depolderisation

The dyke fragments would evolved into a series of narrow stone fjords and ditches, as transitional gates, guiding the mud and sand to corrode towards the field in the future, creating a unique silt landscape prior to secondary dykes. By fraying the sea dyke, it 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.

Depolderisation
Dyke Collections - 1 expand
Dyke Collections - 1
Dyke Collections - 2 expand
Dyke Collections - 2
Exploded Isometric expand
Exploded Isometric
Roof Plan expand
Roof Plan
Overall
Sectional Perspective
Sectional Perspective
Sectional Perspective 2 expand
Exhibition Table expand
Exhibition Table
Table Field Drawing expand
Table
Model expand
Model
Model Last Semester
Exhibition Shelf
Les Nuages: Cloud-drifts on the Couesnon

Academic Year: Year 2, Semester 1

Collaborator: Jiamin Zhong

Guadalquivir: The Stewardship of a River

Academic Year: Year 2, Semester 2

Collaborator: Jiamin Zhong

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Architecture - MArch

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