Housing 2
Provincetown, MA

---

The studio projects into a real future scenario in which rising sea levels present a dramatic condition of morphological reconfiguration in Provincetown. The linear, arcing form of the city, itself a product of the termination of Cape Cod’s spiraling landform, provides a baseline condition from which intruding tides force a reconsideration of the shape of the town. Due to the relatively hilly topography, the coastline transgresses deep into certain areas of the town while remaining static in others, instigating the exploration of how to reconstitute the lost residential and commercial space.

The proposal consists of sixteen towers, each demarcating a breach of the towns public thoroughfare. Connecting each set of towers is a pedestrian bridge, re-establishing the linear continuity of the city while allowing the tide to pass below, allowing new intraurban beaches to begin to shape a new coastline. While these beaches are allowed to intrude into the city, a hard edge, an articulated bulkhead, protects the areas of the city which are less vulnerable to surging seas, due to their higher elevation, resulting in a kind of hard/soft reading of the edge condition which memorializes the historical patterns of habitation as well as reacting to the changes in elevation along the coastline.