River of trees: A floating ecotourism camp in the Atchafalaya basin

The project envisions a houseboat ecotourism community in the Atchafalaya River Swamp of southern Louisiana. A million uninhabited acres, the Atchafalaya is the main floodway for the Mississippi River, receiving overflow from its massive watershed. Thus the swamp is a constantly changing floodscape of rising and falling waters. The thesis deals with the specifics of the swamp's water/landscape, but it is an imagining in a larger context: how do we design for erratic water conditions? And how can designing for such conditions allow us to envision more mutable modes of design? The design installs a system of fixed piers that act on the water flow, slowing the current to facilitate ecological processes. The piers act as a datum, registering the changing water levels against their unchanging structure. At the same time, floating barges move amongst the piers as the water rises and falls, reorganizing the camp seasonally across the site