PHASE 1_Morphield

Yan Chen, Yushan Chen, Meysam Ehsanian Mofrad, Yanran Lu

The flood risk is a major issue for the city of London and the probability of flooding is increasing with climate change. Thames has a large tidal range: more than 7 metres on spring tides. River walls have been steadily built up since Roman times to give increasing levels of flood protection and to enable urban development. However, climate change has a major impact on the tidal flooding threat and the rising sea level steadily reduces the level of protection. Wapping area is located in a high-risk flood zone, the flood itself becomes one of the key elements to be considered for any future development in this site. To respond to this environment, a generative and agent-based design motivates the links between the Wapping area and Thames River which generate a spatial organisational urban pattern and a master form proposal based on the traces of the flood on a flexible and diverse topography. Moreover, the interaction between the urban grid, the landscape and the flood, the relationship of this force in the motion of water on land and the resistance of earth to water as a continual generative process bring to the project the character of fluidity, erosion and porosity.