Rethinking the Coast in the Face of Climate Change
Helen is an architectural graduate, researcher, and educator. She follows interests in the intersection of natural and cultural landscapes with climate change through drawing, writing, photography, and making.
Helen's current work stems from her M.Arch. thesis (SABE, TU Dublin), which was located in Mulranny in County Mayo. Through its designated Decarbonisation Zone status, the community must reduce Mulranny’s carbon emissions by 51% before 2030. This research-through-design project involves working with historical infrastructure, traditional methods of construction, and emerging nature-based solutions to protect depleting coastal wetlands in the face of climate change. Since 2023 she has continued to work on this project with support from a trans-disciplinary team, stakeholders, and the community.
This project is foundational - she is exploring the future role and contribution of an architect working in / with / for / on the natural, cultural, and legislative landscape.
PhD Developing M.Arch Thesis
The future of our coast is hanging in the balance. It has become culturally and physically estranged. Climate change is pushing wetlands out of sync with old-world infrastructural assemblies. Sea level rise is surpassing the ‘accretion’ levels of saltmarshes and they are ‘drowning’. Wetlands holding 40% of the world’s ecosystems are tumbling. Saltmarshes are turning to mudflats before disappearing below waters of expanding bays. The sea’s weight and force are causing fibrous breakdowns of sub-surfaces, releasing millions of tonnes of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere. Ireland alone has lost 75% of its coastal wetlands- we can lose no more. The wetlands must be realigned. The longer we wait the more difficult it becomes. However, rather than ‘quick fix’ interventions we need instead to ‘build’ to facilitate something further – to balance cultural needs with the objective of creating a thriving biosphere.
Through interdisciplinary lenses such as ecology, geography, history, social-policy, cultural studies, engineering, and architecture I am exploring how ethical design-thinking can be used to intervene in the evolution of landscapes. Building on my M.Arch work I am using research-by-design techniques such as writing, drawing, mapping, modelling, and focus groups/workshops with communities, local governance, engineers and scientists to consider how alternative coastal protections measures could provide new cultural spatial forms and experiences which, in performing their function, would respond to climate change. These studies have prompted explorations into how re-futuring or ‘Climate Registering’ pieces of 'Material Culture' such as the old-world coastal infrastructure assemblies of the past could impact and help meet cultural and decarbonisation objectives of the future. In the context of artifacts of an infrastructural revolution, I wish to shift our focus forward to today’s call for an environmental evolution.
