Marissa Fabrizio
ARCH-4980.4 | Ted Ngai, Lecturer
AERIAL CITY
MARISSA FABRIZIO
In the deltaic region of Shanghai, rapid urbanization has created “market” driven planning, forcing the relocation of the low and middle class to the outskirts of the city and causing the destruction of the natural elements that have mitigated annual flooding patterns. Each year the Huangpu river floods, causing the center of the city and other locations along the river to become partially submerged and as a result pauses the ground level circulation and movement. In addition to the flooding, Shanghai experiences typhoons during the same season, causing extreme high tides, as well as all other built up spaces to become flooded. With this impending catastrophe and continuation of sea level rise, these conditions are worsening and the current floodwall system will eventually fail and a new system will be needed to replace it.
This proposal looks to accept the flooding that Shanghai experiences by re-organizing the infrastructure and ground level activities above the flood plane, through the investigation of a controlled natural process of calcification to aid as a structural solution to grow the city upwards. As a result, the “new” ground level acts as an extended flood buffer that, through phases, can evolve over time to control, protect, and restructure the urban infrastructure of Shanghai.