Amphibious Choreography

Studio Pierandrea Angius

Tutors Tina Tsagkaratou, Angel Tenorio

Team Bensu Talay, Cemre Demirci, Sera Su Abac, Minghaou Xian, Shreshtha Mathur

Humans have long been drawn to coastal areas for a variety of reasons, including their abundance of resources, and logistical importance as points of access. An overwhelming bulk of humanity is concentrated along or near coasts and about 40% of the world’s population lives within 100 km of the coastal areas. Given how densely populated coastal areas are at high risk of rising sea levels and that 71% of the Earth's surface is water-covered, above-water settlements present a great potential. By building on water, we can address the pressing issues of climate change, flood, overpopulation, land scarcity, and unplanned urbanizations. 

 Amphibious Choreography introduces a new blueprint for an alternative living oscillating between the land and the water. To adapt, challenge and take advantage of the issues we redefined a living that is hybrid, mobile, space-efficient, and self-sustainable driven by ergonomics and proxemics. Though the settlement can conform to both land and water conditions, the majority of existence will remain above water, with mobility at the core to enable this dynamic life. Besides making possible shifts between the contrasting ground conditions, the mobility feature will aid us in responding to diverse challenges that each environment poses. 

 Embracing a number of predefined notions of urbanism, Amphibious Choreography  comprises of individual units with different functions, forming a reconfigurable hierarchical overall scheme. When the task-specific units are combined through interlocking and merging, a self-sustained and collaborative living system can adapt to the dynamic environments in a twofold manner. 

 All units and constituent parts fit into a modular organization that can reconfigure and unite, forming migratory patterns and performing behavioural switches in response to the variable environmental conditions and necessary functions. The whole system demonstrates a tactical taxonomy of unit genotypes and phenotypes of distinctive behaviours. Amphibious Choreography necessitates a dynamic change of adaptability to the land, the water and the transitionary state in between, which is why most of the units are able to shape-shift and possess hybrid mobility.