Aquacultural Adaptation

Student work by Brook Boughton

Critic: Alexandra Barker
Co-Critics: Mor Segal, Alex Tahinos, & Luz Wallace

Organized by Alexandra Barker, Aquacultural Adaptation features the work of Alexandra Barker’s 3rd year Masters of Architecture students at Pratt Institute. The exhibit includes a compilation of work from various students from Fall of 2019 to Fall of 2023 . A range of individual, faculty-formulated studios are proposed broadly engaging various aspects of architectural mediums and/or architectural contexts; as drivers of contemporary discourse, research and practice. Students are challenged to apply their individual backgrounds accumulated throughout the core curriculum to increased levels of precision, intensity, focus, independent and creative thought leadership through architectural design.

We are living in a time many people refer to as the Anthropocene. Humans have become the single most influential species on the planet, causing significant global warming and other changes to land, environment, water, organisms and the atmosphere. On May 28th, 2019 scientists voted in favor of classifying the age we live in as a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene, to mark the profound ways in which humans have altered the planet. This term was formally proposed over a decade ago and has been the subject of intense debate ever since. Human activity has affected all ecologic, geologic and biological systems and has eroded the boundary between human and non-human life, between nature and culture. This activity has had catastrophic impacts on the Earth. Global warming and rising sea levels are increasing at a pace that has brought us to a point of climate crisis. The term obscures the fact that the perpetrators of the damage to the environment are western civilizations, while other populations across The globe has suffered the consequences.

Urban centers have historically been places of pollution. Waste associated with development, air and water pollution from manufacturing, and energy expenditures represented by food miles are some of the prime culprits. These investigations seek to reverse these histories. Through adaptively altering abandoned waterfront infrastructure, projects propose combining green manufacturing programs including aquatic farming with publicly accessible waterfront space. Aquaculture, aquaponics, hydroponics, and algae farming processes produce high yields in relatively compact environments without the necessary access to light and space that typical crops require and provide local sources of food for dense urban environments. Aquaculture can also produce oysters to seed reefs critical for the cleansing of New York City’s polluted Waterways. Our test sites for this project are located on Brooklyn’s industrial waterfronts of Red Hook and Sunset Park. Student projects explore the linkages across ecosystems, people, and animals through the lens of an architectural construct—a speculative addition and alteration to abandoned industrial buildings in these neighborhoods.