Coastal Architecture in the age of climate change has become an increasingly precarious proposition. The Ocean Center project is designed to anticipate massive change: both ground and structure modulate natural systems enabling them to flow through in a measured and calculated way. The effect is that these natural forces activate architectural space at varying material intensities replacing the usual modernist paradigm of autonomous occupation with a feedback model relating human activity to environmental conditions. Markets, local shops, an oceanographic museum, apartments, a convention center and playfields are held together as disparate parts with multiple orientations that create the feeling of being within a micro-village with no outside but instead with a profusion of fractional insides that connect us to other places extending the loop of nature’s deep connectivity.

(CAZA Architects)