The global ramifications of sea level rise are much greater than merely changing coastlines. The rising seas will not only require populations to retreat but will cause ecosystems to shift, storm proofing to change, constructed landscapes to go to ruin and/or require remediation, and coastal building sites to be addressed. It is also important to remember that with the sea comes salt, which will require structures to resist corrosion and that settlements’ notions of permanent ground will have to change. Historically and currently, humankind has inhabited the coastal environments of the Earth (39% as of 2010).¹ Sea level rise and global climate shifts continue to exert changes upon these environments. These conditions all demand a rethinking of how one builds, environmentally, structurally, systematically, and architecturally. 

In order to construct the building, the site required modifications. The existing conditions of the ground were not conducive to building such a large structure (75,000 sq. ft. [6.968 m²]). The community of Cocodrie is located on two overlapping deltaic lobes, the most recent being the Lafourche lobe which formed 2,500 to 500 years ago (a delta lobe is the formation of sediment deposits at the terminus of a river where their current slows and sediment particles drop to the bottom).⁹ The newness of the site’s ground is documented in the soil borings taken prior to the building’s construction. The borings (Fig. 2) indicated that between the depths of 0 to 50 ft. [15 m] the ground consisted mostly of clay, silt, and some organic soils, which are described as very soft to soft.¹⁰ There were also fragments of wood, which were found but primarily the ground, was clay. The British Soil Classification System¹¹ classifies soil types “consisting of grains (mineral grains, rock fragments, etc.) with water and air in the voids between grains.” The soil types are distinguished according to size, the groups are then further divided into course, medium, and fine sub-groups. According to these classifications, clay is classified as the finest soil, followed by silt. Clay soils are flaky and have a high surface value that can carry a small negative electrical charge that attracts water molecules. Possessing this characteristic means clay soils tend to expand and contract with the swelling and contracting of water.¹² This dynamic unstable ground is where LUMCON’s occupancy originated and its evolving condition is extremely relevant to the facility’s future. 

To negotiate the 1980’s found ground condition, multiple strategies were employed. First, eight hundred 120 ft. long [36,6 m] steel piles were driven to provide a stable foundation for the building. This foundation work was coupled with a cut and fill topographic manipulation in order to complete the necessary harbor for the marine research fleet. The harbor was dredged to a depth of -15 ft. [-4,6 m] mean sea level (MSL) to accommodate the vessels. The dredge spoil stabilized the bulkhead around the harbor wall also was used throughout the site to provide elevated compact fill and level site conditions for the construction of the building. The third strategy towards site development and stabilization was the creation of a 5 ft. [1,6 m] high spoil levee around the perimeter of the building site. This site work, completed in stages, created a new, constructed ground for the facility’s site. 

A gravel road leads off Route 56 and onto the LUMCON site. The building truly sticks out from the surrounding landscape of mostly natural marshlands and elevated fishing camps. The facility now sits outside of post Katrina/Rita/Ike/Gustav infrastructure, outside the wall and gates installed to protect the northern side from storms. Here water and land have a complicated relationship. It is difficult to decipher where the land ends and the water begins. This is blatantly apparent as everything built in this environment is built in consideration for the water. Even on the LUMCON site, there are ponds around the building, marsh, and a navigable channel for research vessels. 

The site now is comprised of the elevated main building and large fiber-glass containers scattered around the property. These containers hold water and fish that researchers utilize for outside experiments. The maintenance building located southeast of the main building near the harbor, houses much of the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing components for the main building and the maintenance facility for the marine research vessels. Much of this equipment is elevated. Also evident on the site is the presence of a large amount of laboratory equipment and the equipment needed to sustain a functional building. Couple this with a parking lot and harbor full of boats (there are more boats on the site than cars) and it is clear water is omnipresent (Fig. 4). 

“The SEA Is Coming” LSU School of Architecture Studio’s purpose, as requested by the Executive Director Craig McClain, was to create a design environment that would truly think beyond limits to reimagine the future and adaptive reuse of an existent building fundamentally transformed by climate change. The director also asked, as it is part of his five-year master plan,¹⁷ to expand the facility to address the growing demand for marine research space at the facility. This design research studio was envisioned (by the author) to challenge the students in a multi-disciplinary environment in the fields of architecture, preservation, landscape architecture, conservation, engineering and other cross-disciplines, and to rethink the adaptive reuse condition at the climate change condition instead of the program typology. The studio asked the students to preserve and interpret the extant facility and environmental fabric and to re-imagine the site as a relevant research and educational destination. Design research encouraged the exploration of issues of access, the relationship between adaptive reuse and design (both architectural, structural, and landscape), off-grid energy consumption, changing climate patterns, water management, land use, and habitat protection. Participants investigated how the transformative ability of a building site can provoke a profound rethinking of our current conventions about coastal change and occupancy, design, community, the environment, and where buildings can be.

Three strategies were employed to begin “The SEA Is Coming” studio, and to engage the students’ imagination and give them a platform to approach the design challenge. The first strategy was the provision of questions (see the section The Changing Coast and LUMCON above) and occupational requisites for them to address in their design resolutions, which read as follows: 

Requisites for a Future Continuum

1.The major components of the program can and should be combined uniquely.

2.A position regarding “building in water” must be determined.

3.The multiple occupancies/programs that occur on the site will demand thresholds/transition points: between types, between scales, between actions, between amounts of action. This is a design opportunity. 

4.The relation between land and sea and sea and land is a critical juncture. It is at the foundation of this project. 

5.Tectonics that provide resistance to salt must be applied. The building’s structure must be modified to resist the corrosion of changing salt levels. 

6. All facilities must be off the grid. This includes the lodging and any spaces for the research.

7.All additions to the site must be able to handle storm systems and surge. 

8.All lodging spaces must have direct access to the exterior. 

9.Lodging/Research can be a component of any other part of the program. 

10.All facilities must do no harm to the nature of the site and its surroundings.

11.All facilities must adapt to the Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines (ADAAG). 

12.The Public Dock should be close to the facility’s dock areas but not interfere with facility operations. 

13.The entire site must be designated. This includes but is not limited to under building areas, nature experiences, designated planting areas, etc.

14.How will land dwellers and students engage the site in conjunction with researchers? A visit to LUMCON will change if the ocean surrounds the facility. How the facility receives visitors, educates, and engages them in their environment must be questioned. Now visitors arrive by car, walk around, and leave land to get into boats. How does those activities happen in the future? 

The second strategy employed “world building” and amphibious constructions. To initiate this strategy, students watched ten environmentally specific science fiction films and were instructed to focus on the films’ contextual environs. The films included The Lorax (1972), Dune (2000 - Sci Fi series), Alphaville (1965), The Matrix (1999), Silent Running (1972), Mad Max 2 (1981), Waterworld (1995), The Road (2009), Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and Blade Runner (1982). Then, to begin the process of designing in water, they had to investigate amphibious constructions, plants, machines, animals, etc. The goal of this investigation was to gain a composite understanding of the workings that allow the amphibious to move between land and water successfully and to look at different precedents that acted as the future facility demands. Amphibians were also selected because of their relationship to environmental change.

“Amphibians are considered ecological indicators, as they are sensitive to pollutions and environmental changes. The global population of amphibians has seen a dramatic decline with many species becoming critically endangered or even extinct. A lot of local populations have also vanished and the situation is similar all over the world. Scientists are not sure as to the reason for this dramatic decline, but according to the main hypothesis water pollution is the worse culprit. Other reasons for the dramatic decline in amphibian populations around the world are habitat loss, climate change, invasive species, over exploitation, disease and the destruction of the ozone layer.” ¹⁸

The assignment brief instructed them to troll the world of the amphibious and analyze their selections for the salient characteristics that enable it to act amphibiously. What is it made of, how does it stand up, what are the parts, what is the whole, what is the assembly? How does it hold on to land, to water? What is its temporal occupancy, and is it seasonal? How does it negotiate the environment? What does it mean, what does it do? Does it transform, and can one document that? Does it operate differently depending on its location? What are its defenses? What are its weaknesses? 

Once this research analysis was completed, each student had to compose the salient characteristics into a new Amphibious Construction. They had to use two and three-dimensional collage methods, and the constructions created had to be occupiable and illustrate systems of assembly (parts, components, joints, etc.) and materiality (Fig. 6). They also had to illustrate an occupancy of both land and water. To achieve this the author instructed the students in the design act of “world building.” World building is the process of constructing an imaginary world, sometimes associated with a completely fictional universe.¹⁹ The term “world building” appeared as early as 1965 in science fiction criticism, and is used in relation to science-fiction or fantasy stories and games.²⁰ The resulting world may be called a constructed world. Developing an imaginary setting with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers. World building often involves the creation of maps, a backstory, and people for the world. Constructed worlds can enrich the backstory and history of fictional works, and it is common for authors to revise their constructed worlds while completing its associated work.²¹

The third strategy employed to enable the students was site immersion. In the first part of the semester, the studio engaged in a continuous seven-day field excursion into all of Louisiana’s coastal ecosystems: the purpose to immerse fully into LUMCON’s immediate site and expanded research field. They began with an extended stay at the facility where they occupied the facility the same way the marine researchers do, toured the facility, interviewed various users and the director, and conducted a visual site catalogue. From LUMCON, which lies in the center of the state’s coast, the studio then travelled from the western border to the eastern border and then back to the center (ending at Grand Isle.) The field excursion, guided by the closest parallel east-west coastal road, took every access, dirt, gravel, mud, or asphalt, to the coast (Fig. 8). The route travelled passes through three distinct landscapes: the East Gulf Coastal Plain (the Florida parishes) the Mississippi Alluvial Plain (deltaic plain), and the West Gulf Coastal Plain (Chenier plain). The roads traversed and the environments experienced stayed in the 0 to 5 ft. [1,5 m] above sea level topography which characterizes 90% of the natural lands below Interstate 10. Even though the topography is relative between the plains, the environmental conditions vary greatly and is discernable through physical engagement. The relationships between land and water consistently change at each stop, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically, and the linear and continuous excursion makes these changes more apparent and relevant to the observer. At each stop, the students engaged and then documented the ecosystem, physically experiencing both land and water conditions. Sometimes that was with their bare feet, sometimes with their tongue (tasting water for varying salinity levels), and always with their eyes, ears, and noses. 

At Holly Beach, the students experience a gulf shore community constructed immediately on the narrow strip of plain that has been covered with sand. To the south is the wide expanse of the Gulf of Mexico, to the north, four parallel roads lined with houses on stilts 20 ft. [6 m] in the air followed by subsiding wetlands. It is so flat that there is salt water from the sea puddling on the roads and seeping into the wetlands. Some 50 ft. [15 m] from the Gulf shoreline, marching like soldiers east to west, lie constructed breakwaters, identical in form, shape, and position. There are no wetlands to protect this exposed condition. Primary observation: flatness and the sea is treacherous for humans and requires elevation (Fig. 10).

Following the initial investigations, analyses, and research, the studio moved forward with the actualization of the initial work into design constructions. This included not only the future of the building facility but also the future of the site and how LUMCON would operate as it moved toward and into the future. Since this was an integrative design studio, defined by the National Architecture Accrediting Board as the “ability to make design decisions within a complex architectural project while demonstrating broad integration and consideration of environmental stewardship, technical documentation, accessibility, site conditions, life safety, environmental systems, structural systems, and building envelope systems and assemblies,” ²² the students’ final projects had to present a developed architectural response. This pedagogical combination of the imaginings this challenge necessitated and the realities a complex architectural project demands led to innovative solutions and suggestions for LUMCON.

The course concluded with the students presenting their design research to a critical panel including the Executive Director. Each student also prepared a self-authored book of his or her research development. These comprehensive books were written throughout the entire semester as their designs developed and they record all the data, investigations, analyses, etc. that support their design decisions. They all conclude with their final project determinations. These books are now part of the LUMCON library and the Director and his team plan to utilize the student’s work, especially the graphic investigations, as they move forward with LUMCON’s development. 

This is not a polite gesture. Since the studio completed in May of 2017, the author has had to present the findings of the research studio to Grapple. Grapple²³ is LUMCON’s Growth & Planning Panel and is composed of coastal scientists, planners, engineers, state politicians, designers, levee administrators, building maintenance, and emergency responders. Just as it was for the students, it is difficult for the panel to look far into the future and thusly the inclusion of “The SEA Is Coming” studio research. The studio acts as the bridge between the highly conceptual and the practical and serves as a think-tank for the facility’s planning future. At Grapple’s May 23 opening meeting, the agenda began with three presentations, a politician, a sea level scientist, and a designer (the author). As stated on the agenda, “the presentations are to facilitate discussion […] to help us understand what we need to think about as we plan for sea level rise, how changes in the operation of LUMCON’s Marine Center may impact you, and how we can utilize the changing landscape as an opportunity to expand our operations.” ²⁴ For the panel, one of the first responses to this discussion was flight; for LUMCON to abandon its current location and facility and move inland, behind the flood wall as far away as Houma (31 mi. [50 km] north), the closest city. This is the practical, unimaginative, and non-adaptive response. The studio findings presented three alternate responses. In summation, LUMCON could develop in the following ways (Fig.12):

2.Elevate.
Because of the structural system and the resistance the elevated facility has already presented, a portion of the students added vertically to LUMCON and proposed new programming strategies that allowed for LUMCON to continue operations as it and the sea rises. These schemes saw the vertical development as a staged procedure, a slow creep, and imagined the ways current operations would also creep up, opening the ground and the original level of the facility to the changes in the surrounding environment. Most of these students built worlds where the seasurrounded the facility but the facility maintained its position (Fig. 14).

These responses came from the students’ work. As the studio finalized and the author prepared the presentation for the Grapple panel, the students’ design projects and their closing observations dictated the aforementioned classification terms. It is the author’s observation that these responses were heavily influenced by the studios’ amphibian analysis and the field excursion experience. The constructed analysis of how amphibians negotiate both land and water and the experiential catalogue of how humans engage the coastal edges provided precedents (both successful and not) for the students to incorporate. The coastal occupations and the amphibians clearly presented mobility, augmentation, and elevation strategies of adaptation. As the students consistently documented their design research and process throughout the course, their constant analysis of what they were doing and why it was responsive to the issues, made it easy for the author to codify the responses. 

The genesis of these responses were also instilled with the student’s access and interaction with the original designers, researchers, maintenance staff, and leaders of the facility. These scientists, boat pilots, architects, engineers, and wetland specialists, etc. not only imparted valuable data and statistics, but in their presentations of current issues they face currently and their future thoughts, they collectively presented the need for a future to be developed. They did not articulate, in any way, specific building ideas, but they did speak to continued operations, adaptation, and resiliency, which directly influenced the methods of investigation the student had pursued. At a minimum, their appreciation of both physical structure and the institutional objective guided the overall studio’s desire to find ways to persist. 

The presentation of these findings to the panel at the beginning of the first meeting has initiated the same effect that the aforementioned studio strategies did for the students. The convincing analyses and research coupled with the graphic resolutions that portray the future of the building and its world, propelled the discussion away from the problem-solving focus and towards a more imaginative and opportunistic potentiality. As so often, the discussions of the changes coastal environments face are despairing and seemingly hopeless, it inspires the author that in a conference room sitting above the rising tides, an organization looks to the future differently. There is a clear understanding that the values and challenges that the ocean offers (especially in ecotone sites) must be constantly investigated for and presented to human populations for if not, as humans generally occupy the land, the ocean and all its relevance to humankinds’ survival can be forgotten or seem remote. The students, Grapple, LUMCON and “The SEA Is Coming” Integrative-Design studio hopefully can provoke a profound rethinking of current conventions about coastal change and occupancy, design, community, the environment, and where buildings can (and should) be.