For four thousand years the image of civilization has been the city. Uruk, Troy, Jicheng, Rome, Lisbon and Tenochtitlan. And over those thousands of years each of these cities has seen near destitution. Uruk and Troy were destroyed, Rome and Seville nearly leveled by natural disasters or civic disengagement, Jicheng and Tenochtitlan became something new: Beijing and Mexico City. 

​

This project intends to focus on the city, the city's voracious need of food (think of Chicago's stockyards) clean water and electricity. It intends you to think of the beauty but also the precarity of theirs designs. Also the benefits and dangers of living in a large city--from a structural point of view. 

​

The first possibility is to create a model of Tenochtitlan that seeks to demonstrate the possibilities of flood--as it flooded in 1501.  

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

A model of Tenochtitlan 

​

​

​

Another possibility would be to chose a conurbation and (again focusing on water systems) make a model that demonstrates the built environment in relation to possible climate disasters. One example might be the proposed Harbor berm in climate-change threatened Lower Manhattan. (Pictured below) 

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

It could be the "Ike Dike" proposed for inlets into the Houston Ship Channel and represented by dike gates.

​

It could also be a model of water technology in cities already below sea level (think of Amsterdam) or even theoretical cities in fiction. Any choice you make you have to envision (1) the importance of water in the system and (2) the possibility of flood associated with climate change.