Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Christian Ayala Lopez, Rob Holmes, Daniel Meyer, Elizabeth Farrell Garcia & Rusty Smith
The Gulf Coast’s ecological diversity, economic productivity, and cultural heritage compel us to ensure its resilience for the next generation. Each successive storm, coupled with rising sea levels and accelerated coastal erosion, necessitates a substantial investment of capital and resources to repair damaged infrastructure and homes. This effort occurs within an intentional system of environmental and social inequity amplified by disinvestment. Steven Jackson positioned “repair” in a layered world that bridges past inadequacies with aspirations for a desirable future . Auburn University’s Landscape Infrastructure Design Lab (LIDL) and Rural Studio’s Front Porch Initiative are working to actively undo, adapt, and replace these existing flawed systems. We are operating not only with objects but within interdependent systems that stretch from an expansive Gulf Coast estuary to individual homes in a rural “working coast” fishing community. In Perdido Bay, on the Alabama-Florida border, LIDL’s study for the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineering With Nature program demonstrated how natural infrastructure might be deployed to reduce coastal storm risks and reestab¬lish an ecological economy centered on the bay’s biological productivity. On Barataria Bayou in coastal Louisiana, Rural Studio’s partnership with a New Orleans Habitat for Humanity (NOAHH) developed a housing replacement pilot program focused on resilient, affordable, high-performing homes. This paper unpacks these two applied research initiatives and places them in conversation to understand how working across scales can better address complex challenges on the rural working coast. By considering them together, we 1) contextualize the issues arising from climate change relative to environmental injustice, economic impact, and cultural significance; 2) highlight our collaborative methods, which synthesize on-the-ground fieldwork and community engagement with academic research; 3) detail performance-driven resilient and adaptive strategies through two case studies; and 4) illuminate the invisible barriers, differences, and shared lessons of implementation in hard-to-serve coastal areas.
https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.113.89
Volume Editors
Sara Jensen Carr & Rubén García Rubio
ISBN
978-1-944214-48-7
