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Edgeless: Seeking a New Choreography of Georgetown's Landscape

Kallicharan, Rachel
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0051-6560
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1592904027988774

Abstract Details

2020, MARCH, University of Cincinnati, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture.
Infrastructure is the skeleton that gives a city shape, function and order. It includes structures, networks, services and facilities that support the growth of a city. Georgetown, Guyana is a coastal city that operates with the same infrastructure today that was established by the Dutch upon colonization in the early 17th century. With a coastal elevation below sea level, the city is at risk of suffering severe impacts of climate change. The critical systems that currently protect the city from the sea include the sea wall, canals, sluices, and a massive water conservancy. Although this network previously sufficed to protect the city, it is no longer an appropriate strategy in the battle against rising sea levels. This proposal re-choreographs the urban fabric of Georgetown through a series of inhabitable infrastructures. This network of interventions operates to promote a denser, ever-evolving and sociable Georgetown. With the introduction of a new typology of infrastructure, this proposal will redefine the way that the city responds to the effects of rising sea levels. In the pursuit of an intervention that sufficiently protects the city from inundation, strategies will include the exploration of several scenarios that aim to respond to one or more pressures. The most successful explorations included one driven by canals, another reintroducing mangroves a third which elevates the street-scape thus connecting the city via bridges. The design drivers deemed most critical to address include: flooding, culture, infrastructure, ecosystem, and energy. The scenarios will be pushed to their illogical conclusions in an attempt to exhaust their ability to resolve their respective pressures. The ultimate intervention will be a purposeful combination of the three; its effectiveness will be measured by how much it addresses the five pressures. The resulting proposal consists of infrastructural elements lined and fortified by urban spaces designed to embrace and absorb water as opposed to the existing that attempts to reject water. As evident in urban centers all around the world, the strategy of resisting the sea is a decreasingly substantial solution moving forward. Consequently, the new city is a collage of negotiated moments rather than hard edges.
Michael McInturf, M.Arch. (Committee Chair)
Thomas Bible, M.C.E. (Committee Member)
122 p.
Architecture
rising sea levels; infrastructure; guyana; water; flooding; urbanism

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Kallicharan, R. (2020). Edgeless: Seeking a New Choreography of Georgetown's Landscape [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1592904027988774

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Kallicharan, Rachel. Edgeless: Seeking a New Choreography of Georgetown's Landscape. 2020. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1592904027988774.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Kallicharan, Rachel. "Edgeless: Seeking a New Choreography of Georgetown's Landscape." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1592904027988774

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1592904027988774
75
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This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.