Contrary to concepts of stability and durability espoused by the United States Army Corps of Engineers’ motto, “Building Strong,” there are alternative, adaptive building processes that better respond to the dynamic realities of coasts exposed to hurricanes and floods. Within and along coastal zones, ancient and new types of structures stand side by side, displaying ingenuity and historical longevity, with admixtures of technique and technology. Constantly readjusting and recalibrating, these alternative techniques adapt to environmental dynamics and seek to capitalize on perpetual ebbs and flows of water, weather and wind, mud, sand, snow and ice. These ‘soft’ construction techniques constantly operate and respond to alternating calendars of climactic and oceanic forces: tides, temperatures, storms, sea levels, and coastline patterns. Whether along the shore or inland waterways, above or below sea level, the array of successful practices in the following folio demonstrate how some flexible and mutable building typologies can be more successful than those based on principles of rigidity and strength. Here, slow systems, soft structures, and weak infrastructures form a collective lexicon of spatial interventions—like dancing on a volcano or surfing a tsunami—across the coasts and the contours of future urbanization. By looking deeply at what is often overlooked, many architects and engineers have learned lessons based on centuries of trial and error rather than theories from yesterday. Seen from and toward the ocean, these forms and formations (sometimes, deformations) reflect the accelerated pace of change occurring across generations, in a revolutionary way. Highly precise yet often barely planned, they are passed down and reconditioned; their adaptations calculated in fraction of inches, often occurring in a matter of seconds, minutes, and hours.

Jacking™

Whether by stilts, piles, or posts—in silt, sand, or mud—the most natural response to rising water and wet ground is to raise a structure above flood level. Like a perch, the jacking of structures (houses, sheds, or plants) enables millions of people around the world to live in landfall regions, swamps and storm basins, lagoons, marshes, and mud flats, or just simply plain muck. In the mud of the Lagos Lagoon lies the largest fishing villages (Makoko) and oldest sawmills (Oko-Baba) in West Africa; on the sandy beaches of Florida’s Gulf Coast stand vacation beach houses; the banks of the Chao Phraya River are home to some of Thailand’s most affluent; and the Palafitos in South America allow the rivers to be densely populated. Raising infrastructure on stilts—like a pipeline, power line, or highway—enables flora and fauna to flourish below. Think of FDR Drive in Manhattan or, a more extreme example, the trans-Alaskan pipeline, which is raised nearly five feet off the ground across its entire 800-mile length to prevent the tundra below from melting as the 120°F crude oil flows through it.

Coastal communities in tropical zones, viewed as slums, often offer cheap, transitory entry points to mega-urban economies. Semipermanent structures on stilts provide cheap and affordable housing platforms for migrants to begin work as fishers, loggers, or dredgers along unregulated coasts, outside of officially-designated, inhabitation zones. Mostly made of hardwoods that resist decay, rot-resistant piles (black locust, mahogany, red mulberry, osage orange, teak, and Pacific yew) are critical materials in tropical climates, while steel or concrete are employed in wealthier regions. Coastal areas in Western temperate zones are mostly populated by wealthy landowners, where views are pricey and private ocean access is for the privileged. With the establishment of new base flood elevations by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the United States, the raising of houses along coasts has become a big business. In some cases, it’s cheaper to elevate than to relocate.

Leaking™

For many Americans that live in floodplains and coastlines, wet is the new dry. In dense, highly concentrated urban areas, the raising of towers, skyscrapers, or roadways above the 100- to 500-year flood line is simply not a solution. Nor is it sometimes even technically possible. Instead, it is simpler and cheaper to succumb to changing water levels by flooding the ground floor and basement of a building. Coming to terms with this wet, coastal reality, building owners are not only accepting flooding, but are also inviting it in. This is the difference between precaution and prevention. Completely inverting the conventional, base dry approach to flood prevention, the solution is simple: basement machine rooms go to the roof, making room for ground floor tenants who won’t go out of business if their furniture and floor gets flooded. Unlike heroic building raising, waterproofing, or building massive barriers, wet proofing minimizes damage during periodic flooding without even attempting to stop it. 

Like both Brooklyn Bridge Park during Hurricane Sandy, and the Yatsuhigata tidal flats in Tokyo during daily high tides, a robust and floodable ground can resist the effects of saturation and wave action while incurring minimal damage. Contrary to common convention, flooding neither destroys land, nor does it prohibit access. For the East River Waterfront Esplanade by SHoP Architects in New York City for example, or the many lagoon restaurants in Venice, the reality of wetness has created a culture accustomed to rain boots and stylish goulashes. Venetian business owners line and rim the floors with marble tiles, keeping essentials out of the wet zone during acqua alta.

The cost of damage repair is far more economical than the cost of insurance protection. In the case of Mies van der Rohe’s famed Farnsworth House in the Fox River watershed, which floods almost annually (an element that Mies incorporated into his original design), a few holes in the house are plugged with caulking, curtains are tied up with plastic garbage bags, carpets are rolled up with twine, and furniture is propped up on milk crates, with doors swung open to let river water run through it. After the flood, a wipe down and simple mop does the job.

Weakening™

In storm basins and seismically active regions, stable ground can suddenly shift and become liquefied. In densely populated coasts, abrupt shaking from earthquakes can destroy buildings and urban-scaled infrastructure in a matter of seconds. Seismic shifting underwater often leads to tsunamis whose giant waves swell and overtake shorelines with narrowing estuaries accelerating and amplifying the speed of sea surges. Along coasts, seismic and subterranean hazards are inseparable from hydrologic and meteorological hazards. 

Since the 1755 earthquake that nearly destroyed the entire city of Lisbon and the 2011 tsunami that dramatically transformed Tohoku and the Sanriku Coast, structural engineers have been forced to rethink the concepts of strength, rigidity, and stiffness associated with large territories. Notions of flexibility and failure have become central, radically contradicting the intractable notion of strength inherent to the conception of strong skyscrapers. To absorb energy, flexible structures allow buildings to move and bend so much (through ductility and base isolation) that steel can stretch like Play-Doh without snapping. Windows may shatter and walls may crack, but a building’s structural integrity remains, allowing occupants to safely evacuate. 

Beyond steel and concrete, dynamic structural systems now include materials like rubber, ball bearings, hydraulic fluids, Teflon, and even compressed air. Thanks to giant rubber gaskets and ball bearings, Parkinson & Parkinson’s Los Angeles City Hall and the KPF-designed Roppongi Hills Mori Tower in Tokyo allow the ground below to move while the structures stay relatively still, absorbing seismic energy. Properly tuned, dampened, and calibrated to just the right amount of flexibility, buildings in California, Japan, and throughout the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire have risen over 50 stories in height. Diffusing incoming wave energy, barrier islands, dunes, mangroves, and underwater seagrass work in very much the same way, across much larger areas, by stabilizing the bottom of the sea. Along filled wetlands of coastal plains or rocky shores, where global companies concentrate power near harbors and airports for global trade and communications, cosmetic destruction and designed deformation are now underlying principles that allow building structures to safely fail.

Slipping™

Life on a houseboat brings with it the freedom of living on water, a space between solid ground and fluid sea, far from picket fences and sidewalks, gates or grass—but in Sausalito, once the home for free radicals and postwar hippies, the free berthing fees and promise of untethered infrastructure have become sought-after, six-figure real estate. From the historic houseboats of Sausalito in the San Francisco Bay, to dock houses on glacial lakes of Northern Ontario, to boat houses on the Chicago river, to temporary pontoon bridges of the Kumbh Mela in India, floatation structures provide temporary, and sometimes permanent ability to dock, berth, and moor structures in fluctuating, unstructured places. Adaptable to deep waters, natural harbors, and even, intertidal regions, floatation facilitates easy and instant docking for military, domestic, or festival purposes in almost any water environment.

One of the most extreme examples is the Kumbh Mela, a mass pilgrimage of Hindus who bathe in one of India’s sacred rivers and who create a temporary metropolis floating over the Ganges River. Erected to house, feed, and service more than 80 million pilgrims during the 55-day festival, a community of steel welders fashion approximately 100 miles of steel-plated roads, 18 pontoon bridges, 340 miles of water pipelines, and 600 miles of electricity wires, all of which are dismantled afterward. Held every 12 years at the Triveni Sangam, named for the confluence of the Yamuna, Ganges, and Saraswati rivers, the festival is believed to be the largest peaceful gathering in the world.

Underlying all floatation structures, are docking and gangway systems that can move upward and downward with water levels and vessel sizes. Much like the mechanical gangway for airplanes, shore-based access systems are vital, flexible, and adaptable to the shifting tidal ranges and water levels during onloading and offloading, docking and disembarking.

Swapping™

All that is fixed can be moved. Buildings are often thought of as fragile and enduring, but when architectural icons like the Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown-designed Lieb House from 1969 can be moved from the shores of New Jersey to Long Island by barge, crib, and truck in just one day, for about $100,000, anything is possible.

Moving and relocating structures is not only simple and straightforward, it’s a surreal spectacle. In the summer of 1996, the moving of the Cape Cod Lighthouse (standing 170 feet tall) in Massachusetts drew more onlookers than it had in the 20 years prior. People were curious to see how a 450-ton lighthouse could be transported. Built in 1797 atop a 500-foot cliff, the lighthouse was in danger—large chunks of the cliff had been steadily dropping away during major blizzards and storms. The 450-foot westward move was accomplished on rails, with a structural girdle wrapped around it, in less than three hours. Its smaller cousin, the Nauset Light, was moved to its new foundation, 300 feet to the west as well, by flatbed truck in less than three days.

Mechanical moves in the industrial West mimic the manual moves of the Global South. The process of minka or ayni (literally translated as “solidarity effort” or “collective work” from Quechua) is a method of building relocation performed in Chile—the techniques employed are roughly the same as those from three centuries ago. The community of farmers and fishers come together to, without charge, move a building to a more fertile location, for better access to resources, or to a safer position. La Mingua is one of many community-driven endeavors—the bayanihan in the Philippines, gotong royong in Indonesia, İmece in Turkey, harambee in east Africa, and barn raising in the American Midwest.

As novel as it may seem, relocations—big or small—are extremely common. Though barely detectable, the process of relocation is rarely documented or considered a legitimate architectural strategy. Although the process of relocating houses usually occurs once a generation or less, it can be prepared in a matter of days or weeks, and can be moved in a matter of hours.