Thesis Highlights

"Alluvial City"

Frank Taylor and Jose Varela Castillo, 2024

“Alluvial City: Port Towns as Catalysts for Regenerative Industrial Landscapes”

This thesis investigates Morgan City, Louisiana, where urban hierarchies have created a built environment maximised for industrial efficiency despite the region's proud connection to its surrounding ecology.

In order to move past the rigid hierarchies that define Morgan City's industrial maximisation, adapted urban conditions are sequentially generated, first by carving the river edge through the dredging of sediment and then by the natural dynamics of the river.

The rescaping results in a blurred gradient of wetlands, elevated industrial zones and recreational structures..

This process ultimately aims to transition Morgan City's past extractivist cultural underpinnings into a site of flattened hierarchies, allowing for symbiotic relationships between community, industry and ecology to evolve.

Faculty Thesis Directors: Cordula Roser Gray and Todd Erlandson

WORK