Envision Resilience:
Imagining a Future Waterfront for Portland, Maine
Portland, Maine
Clients
Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Remain, City of Portland, Maine
GSD Faculty
Pamela Conrad, Michael Blier
Teaching Assistant
Shan He
Student Team
Qijia Chen, Garrett Craig-Lucas, Willa DeBoom, Shan He, Sakiko Isomichi, Tim Jia, Alexandra Kupi, Jein Park, Kati Wiese
Completion Date
2024
Size
~100 acres
Download Document Here
Envision Resilience is a semester-long multi-university design studio that calls on students to reimagine coastal communities and propose imaginative solutions to the current and future impact of sea level rise.
In Fall 2024, Pamela Conrad led the Harvard GSD studio in the Envision Resilience Challenge developed by Remain, which connects academia, local leadership and community members, while inspiring coastal communities to envision innovative approaches to the impacts of climate change.
The GSD studio was composed of landscape architecture, architecture, and urban planning graduate students who focused on developing coastal adaptation strategies for Portland, Maine’s working waterfront.
The outcomes were informed by assessing existing conditions, demographics, infrastructure, ecology and future risks due to increasing flooding, temperature increases, and immigration. In addition to meeting with various stakeholders, the students curated a pop-up event at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in October 2024 to hear from the community directly.
Based on this feedback, the studio developed potential adaptation strategies and a toolkit of various techniques that can be implemented over time.
Image Credit: Shan He
Image Credit: Shan He
Image Credit: Harvard GSD
Image Credit: Harvard GSD
Image Credit: Harvard GSD
Image Credit: Harvard GSD
Image Credit: Michael Blier
Image Credit: Michael Blier
Image Credit: Shan He
Image Credit: Shan He
Image Credit: Sakiko Isomichi
Image Credit: Sakiko Isomichi
Image Credit: Alexandra Kupi
Image Credit: Alexandra Kupi
Image Credit: Willa DeBoom
Image Credit: Willa Deboom
