Re-morphing The Future Provincetown
Harvard GSD Option Studio 2018 Fall
Advisors: Preston Scott Cohen
Urban Model | The New Coast Line For Provincetown
Confronted with the threat of sea level rise in the future, Provincetown needs a new adaptive proposal both for its urban and housing. My strategy is to allow the natural force to influence the form of the new ground responding to the changing topography, and give it the opportunity to morph into an elongated harbor city, which provide a new experience to the town. For the housing, a mixture design of floating and stilt building is introduced as a resilient systematic architectural plan for the new typology building.
Site Study | Continuous linearity of Commercial St and Spatial Experience on Section
Study of the site
We studied the Provincetown, and what I abstract as the most outstanding spatial character for Provincetown is:
)1) Continuous linearity : The Commercial St. goes from East to West that connects the most dense part of the city, and largely determines the fabric of the town.
2)Spatial Experience on Section: Almost the perpendicular axis to the Commercial St, as a seaside town, Provincetown has a section that the ground rises from the Water, Beach to the buildings, then the Street, and the urban again, in which you can constantly look beach and see through the alleys between houses, while sometimes you across.
Coast Diagram | The submerged area and the new proposal
Sea Level Rise and Re-morph the Coast
Based on the 100~150 years prediction of the sea level rise, which is about 10 feet high, we have the total number of the houses that will be submerged by the water, and the number of that will be on the new water front. The shoreline is shaped into new form that one retreated curve attached with some small pockets. In order to relocate those houses impacted by the sea, the new proposal urges us to gain more inhabitable bank from the water.
To allow the natural force to influence the form of the new ground responding to the changing topography, there would be the opportunity to morph into an elongated harbor city, which provide a new experience to the town.
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Composition of the new urban proposal:
The Urban is consists of three primary ideas:
1) The Morph of the shoreline subject to the sea level rise Which also has the preserved houses redistributed.
2) Floating Cell Expansion where houses lost land will need to sit on water.
3) Warf Colossus Accommodation: An alternative solution of different type of housing for families whose houses do not need to be reconstructed or moved. They will be entitled with a property in this condo.
Typical Fragment | Section Condition of The New Urban Proposal
New proposal for houses:
The new type invention is based on two conventional form in houses:
1) Dormers as large as a room and reshape the profile of the roof.
2) The floating house tradition that moved the houses from fishing village to the commercial street.
