This design studio explores how architecture can support the formation of resilient and sustainable coastal cities in an age of escalating climate disruption. It focuses on the spatial dynamics of disasters, considering conditions before, during, and after an event. The studio investigates three typologies to establish adaptive urban spaces as future-fit strategies: the island, the float, and the stilt.
Each typology embodies a distinct adaptive logic. The island suggests the formation of new grounds that serve as a stable base for the city. The float embraces synchronized movement with liquid grounds. The stilt offers elevation above floating grounds. Together, they form a framework for rethinking vulnerable urban environments not as repair, but as reconfiguration.
Students work across urban and architectural scales to develop spatial strategies that respond to climate risk, infrastructural fragility, and ecological interdependence. Using a transscalar approach, the studio encourages reimagining architecture as a component of the urban ecosystem, engaging with both human and non-human users. Projects will explore multi-species corridors that support adaptive life systems in shifting coastal environments.
METHODS
The studio uses a generative design approach that merges human and artificial intelligence to co-develop future-fit typologies for coastal adaptation. Students explore spatial and ecological scenarios with AI tools, while grounding their work in local knowledge through community dialogue. A participatory process runs throughout the semester, involving interviews, focus groups, and co-creation to ensure designs reflect lived experience and site-specific needs. Architecture is treated as a platform for negotiation and transformation.
OUTPUT
Students will work in teams to develop innovative architectural projects that contribute to a co-created masterplan for the Corpus Christi Downtown Marina. Each proposal will include an adaptive addition that engages the shoreline and water’s edge by introducing either a new island, a floating structure, or a stilt-based intervention. These additions must integrate with a central urban plaza, forming a public landscape that connects with the existing marina. The final output combines architectural design and spatial systems thinking, producing future-fit typologies that reimagine the marina as a civic, ecological, and infrastructural anchor for a resilient coastal city.
QUESTION
How can architectural typologies increase the performance of the city before, during, and after a storm event?
