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“Even if, during a transitional period, we temporarily accept a rigid division between zones of work and residence, we should at least envisage a third sphere: that of life itself (the sphere of freedom, of leisure – the truth of life). Unitary urbanism acknowledges no boundaries; it aims to form a unitary human milieu in which separations such as work/leisure or public/private will finally be dissolved.”
– Guy Debord, 1966
 (From left to right) 01/ ArkGIS. Ship Traffic Lines in 2012. 2012. Drawing. Arctic Ocean. 02/ K, Timothy. Pond Inlet. 2011. Photograph. Pond Inlet, Nunavut, Canada. 03/ Labonte, Danielle. Pond Inlet. 2009. Photograph. Pond Inlet, Nunavut, Canada.
What
The thesis envisions the feasibility of aquatic boundary urbanization of shipping ports. To engage with the maximum potentials of ambiguous architecture, possible sites are growing Arctic ports such as Pond Inlet, Resolute and Arctic Bay in Nunavut, Canada [01/02]. Situating in between cold and warm, freeze and thew, accessible and inaccessible, dark and light, their contradicting site characteristics open up massive imagination on adaptive and responsive future urban design.
Today, these unique dynamic settlements have been undergoing drastic transformation because of extreme climatic, social and economic influences. Climate change has brought new opportunities with disappearing Arctic sea ice, the once impassable Northwest Passage is now unlocked to commercial shipping through Nunavut, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago[02]. While ice melts in summers and freezes in winters, resilient design strategy has to be adopted to the seasonal coastal and shipping behaviors. These organic peripheral fabrics provide future concept on autonomous interaction between people, architecture and environment. Their spatial qualities of physical elasticity and uncertain mobility trigger expansion and regeneration of the thesis on urban living along water boundaries [03].
The project challenges rigid separation of our urban milieu through mapping the fluidity and ambiguity of climatic, socio-cultural changes and their transborder programmes. With a young and increasing population, not only shipping activities are enhanced, the project may stretch on diffusing other public programmes such as educational infrastructures or tourism.
 (From Left to Right) 01/ Tange, Kenzo. Tokyo Bay. 1960. 02/ Kikutake, Kiyonori. Marine City. 1959. 03/ Defacto Architecture & Urbanism, H2O Wonen. 2011. Zeewolde, The Netherlands. By Anne Loes Nillesen. Amphibious Housing in the Netherlands. NAi Publishers, 2011. 86. Print.
Why
Although aquatic urbanism originates from humble vernacular architecture, architects have revisited the ideas over various periods. Famous examples were visioned in metabolism movement in 1960s, such as the linear projection of city in Tokyo Bay by Kenzo Tange[01], and the floating metropolis with cylindrical towers in Marine City by Kiyonori Kikutake[02]. These massive utopia proposals encouraged organic growths and self-sustainability through modular alternative living typologies.
With technological advancement, contemporary floating buildings has been designed and constructed in coastal cities especially those which are under flood risks. While floating dwellings spreads along the Netherlands’ waterfront, urban concepts on water cities are imagined yet unbuilt[03]. While we face urban congestion and climate change, floating community is no longer an utopia, yet a foreseeable plan to be realized.
Masterpieces in the discipline although may celebrate mobility, they usually involve stationary mega infrastructures which isolate themselves to the shores. The thesis transforms water surface into an ambiguous volume through emphasizing architectural fluidity and resilience. Designing on extreme and unstable sites, architectural dynamics happen in between land and water, mobile transport and floating collectives. They offer local residence and shipping traders an adaptive way of living and visit in an unitary urbanism which acknowledges no boundaries. It embraces the permeation of substantial transient objects, and dissolves various programmes in blurring borders of the new urban community.
 (From left to right) 01/ Simpson, Deane. The Villages of Florida, Map Detail. Young-Old. Lars Muller Publishers, 2015. 160-163. Print. 02/ Lau, Anthony. Floating City 2030: Thames Estuary Aquatic Urbanism. 2010 03/ Lateral Office, Liquid Commons Unit: Mobile Arctic School. 2010. Axonometric.
How
The first step involves intensive mapping of site’s changing data climatically on sea ice seasonal concentration; socially on the young population and accessibility; and economically on shipping and sustaining activities. It defines the mobility of the site over the course of time, and predicts future urban ecological programmes such as shipping, education and tourism. Through investigating autonomous processes of proposed activities and their mobile relation to aquatic boundaries, the thesis imagines a new ambiguous aquatic urbanization which is uniquely adaptive to the ever-changing site. Fixed infrastructures interacts with flexible ephemeral spaces to provide an organic system responding different time phrases. A specific elastic moment will be focused to explore how the proposed programmes are adopted between architecture and environment.
Step01: Site mapping of processes, fixed and dynamic data over time
Step02: Ambiguous urban concept with proposed programmes
Step03: A focused area on adaptive architectural design
Step04: Refine and test on final areas in details
Bibliography
1 Theory: Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrects, 1967. Print.
Banham, Reyner. Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past. New York: Harper and Row, 1976. Print.
Olthuis, Koen & Keuning David. Float!. Amsterdam: Frame Publisher. 2010. Print
Ibañez, Daniel & Katsikis Nikos. Grounding Metabolism, Cambridge: Harvard University GSD, 2014. Print.
2 Techniques: Solomon, Jonathon & Wang, Clara. Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guidebook. Hong Kong: Oro Editions, 2012. Print.
Simpson, Deane. Young-Old. Zurich: Lars Muller Publishers, 2015. Print.
3 Projects: Nieuwenhuys, Constant. Labyrinth-Ladder for New Babylon, 1959. Unbuilt.
Lateral Office, Liquid Commons Unit: Mobile Arctic School. 2010. Unbuilt.
Lau, Anthony. Floating City 2030: Thames Estuary Aquatic Urbanism. 2010. Thesis project.
Loes Nillesen, Anne & Singelenberg Jeroen. Amphibious Housing in the Netherlands. Rotterdam: NAi Publisher, 2011. Prin
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