Caleb Yang

My site is a fishing factory located between the urban coast and a nature reserve in Horta on the island of Faial. This area blocks the connection between the public spaces of the urban coast and at the same time risks being flooded by the sea in the future, hundreds of years from now. My design, therefore, has two objectives depending on time. One is to include more public space within the site between 1 and 100 years, especially green public space, to reinforce the links between the urban coast and the nature reserve and to ensure the integrity of the coastal pedestrian system. Another objective is to split the original large areas of artificial hard paving into small fragments before the site is submerged. This will facilitate the provision of habitat for marine life after sinking into the water.

The scheme also takes different approaches for different spaces. In more built-up blocks, this is done by gradually dismantling the buildings and adding green space to the interior of the buildings. In the more open container yards, holes are cut in the ground by hand and the hard ground is then split outwards through the holes using plant roots and the force of earthquakes. The final process of change from hard to green to wet and finally submerged is completed.