HELEN FIALKOWSKI

Resilient Coasts

How to Dismantle a Mansion
Stuff-ed
Diff-use
Charred House
Convivencia
Palimpsest
Clyde Dive
Warhol-es
Facets
Splitting Hairs
Entropy
Lab-yrinth

MISC.

LIVING PRECARIOUSLY

public domain and its structural deployment dismantles coastal mansions in Fairfield, CT

Princeton University M.Arch Thesis
Advisor Guy Nordenson

Spring 2021

2020 has been characterized as a moment in which the impact of the climate crisis and the unequal distribution of wealth have never converged in so explicit of a way before. These two issues come together at a scale where architecture can intervene in housing developments on the coast. Not only do they accidentally come together here, they come together in a way that reveals the specifically architectural contribution to their convergence because bigger and bigger houses displace more and more people and contribute to the acceleration of coastal erosion. This project proposes to dismantle, re-distribute, and retrofit the McMansions of Fairfield Beach, Connecticut into smaller, more affordable and environmentally restorative units. The ambiguity of property laws and land-use regulations at the shore will be exploited to create a more inclusive and less vulnerable coastal community, ultimately democratizing the shoreline and curtailing the rapid coastal degradation at place.

property risk continuing at this trajectory is not only infeasible but heading towards financial ruin, with nearly 2 million properties at risk from Sea Level Rise in the united states by twenty-one-hundred, most of which being secondary seasonal investment properties where inland taxpayers and the state will be carrying the burden

social inequality The reservation of the shoreline by the wealthy has allowed for vast margins of inequality shown here in the darkest - lining the shore, so I chose to locate this project in Fairfield County, Connecticut named the nations most unequal.

The eradication of the coast leaves the opportunity to make it a more inclusive and sustainable community while in transition to nature. Hard armoring and seawalls are torn up, a small walking surface is added at the ground level, and some mansions, in black now, are bought out by the government and transferred to local non profit entities seeking space, who lease it for a small fee of utility and trash collection. They will use, maintain and co-manage the space and the natural preserve, a benefit for the government who now does not have to pay for costly demolition or as far reaching natural management.

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