Fading Foundations

Fall 2024- Scott Wall

Set in the haunting and flood-prone landscape of New Orleans, this project envisions architecture as a living presence shaped by time, water, and weather. Built on a wharf, the structure accepts flooding and decay as integral to its life rather than as forces to resist.

Over time, water seeps into its foundations, softening edges and blurring boundaries between the built and the natural. Aquatic plants take root in cracks, moss spreads across concrete, and marine life clings to steel pilings.

What begins as erosion becomes a slow act of transformation. The structure is overtaken yet renewed, its surfaces marked by both beauty and damage.

Each flood leaves a trace, a stain, a layer of silt, or a bloom of algae, turning the building into a living archive of its own impermanence. This is an architecture that finds grace in surrender, where ruin and renewal coexist in the same tide.