The breach is no longer an anomaly, but rather a common occurrence, and is forcing us to rethink the built environment’s relationship with water. This is the situation of the rising: water is breaching established thresholds and invading the city, architecture, and constructed landscape.
For the first moment in earth’s history, sea level rise is encountering a densely developed edge condition, putting millions of lives, thousands of buildings, and hundreds of cities at risk. We humans are the third, and somewhat awkward, participants in this environmental dance.
What is urgent for us today is that water is approaching major centers of population and capital. “Shorelines have moved landward or seaward tens of miles as a result.” Rising water level is not a recent phenomenon it has been an unceasing operation over the history of the earth. This dance entails a constant oscillation between ocean levels and frozen water deposited in the glaciers-a give-and-take ballet that has instigated fluctuations in water level by more than 500 feet (150 m). Drift City: Architecture’s Reaction to Sea Level Riseįor the last 2.5 million years, the earth has participated in an ecological dance with the massive continental ice sheets covering the northern hemisphere.
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