Coastal Assemblages advocates for a transformative approach in turning Crisfield into a flood-adaptive landscape, leveraging its cultural heritage to mitigate environmental risks. Despite facing fragmentation due to rising sea levels, the project aims to maintain unity and promote wealth-building and generational planning, even as contiguous land is fragmented into islands.
Crisfield, a small coastal city of 2,500 residents, stands just 3 feet above sea level on Chesapeake Bay. The city was built on oysters: in the mid-19th century, the oyster industry attracted a boom of industry and residents, and discarded oyster shells became constructed land. With sea levels predicted to rise 3-5 feet by 2100, Crisfield faces the threat of becoming underwater. Inspired by Crisfield’s historic land-building practices, our project reclaims inundated material to use as constructed soil through three key phases: disassembly, reassembly, and grounding. Guided by speculative DEMs, this project envisions Crisfield as an archipelago with a large marsh buffering the remaining contiguous land.
“Disassembly” involves dismantling structures to reclaim materials and facilitating water infiltration into soil through depaving to mitigate flooding. “Reassembly” repurposes reclaimed materials to preserve original architectural details in new configurations. Woven throughout all phases is “Grounding”: bridging both tangible and material cultural heritage through the preservation of traditions and the creation of new industries and lifeways. We demonstrate these strategies across three proposed sites: Somers Island, Quinn Island, and Carter G. Woodson Island. The process of building ground and uncovering marsh allows the landscape to become a main character in Crisfield’s future.
Coastal Assemblages: Anchoring Memories and Materials in the City of Crisfield
Students: Lysette Velázquez, Joyce Fong, Julia MacNelly
University: University of Virginia
Advisors: Bradley Cantrell, Sean Kois
