The Island of Enchantment

Re-Envisioning Infrastructure on the Front Line of the Climate Crisis
 
Puerto Rico, the ‘Island of Enchantment’, is among the world’s most vulnerable regions to the effects of climate change due to its topographical, climatic conditions, and conventional infrastructural practices that underscore the island's susceptibility to flooding, and so it is not surprising that it is at the front line of the climate crisis.
 
The studio will work in collaboration with local communities, agencies, and institutions to explore the possibility of shifting away from a conventional notion of infrastructure as a fixed form of singular purpose to re-envision the design and agency of a dynamic infrastructural ‘environment’ capable of intertwining multiple functions, values, and qualitative attributes to support resilience and flood risk reduction for the coastline and river systems and empower the community with an agency to determine their own future and protect the ecology on which the Island of Enchantment thrives.