BACKGROUND
The Climate Crisis is a global challenge, (re)shaping the natural, cultural, and built environment. While it is a complex problem at the systems scale, climate change is often most visible on the city- or community-scale, as individuals perceive macro-level impacts on the micro-level more easily. Therefore, local action is a viable strategy to understand, mitigate, and adapt to environmental challenges and to ground future risk assessments within a specific place. Architecture and urban design are crucial tools to develop future cities that are both capable to adapt and resilient in their response to change.
PROJECT BRIEF
Both alpine and coastal regions experience climate change impacts at a rapid paste. This studio investigates climate adaptation as a contextual task: bottom-up from two specific sites embedded into two distinct territories: one alpine and the other coastal. Students form groups of two, to collaboratively develop a sustainable urban design proposal along the waterfronts of Innsbruck, Austria (Alpine), and Corpus Christi, Texas (Coastal). The projects aim to develop a typological hybrid, merging a plaza, market hall, and housing units into an adaptive typology.
