Tag: Architecture

The temple of Khun Samut Chin

This aerial photograph taken on June 14, 2023 shows the Buddhist temple called Samut Trawat of Ban Khun Samut Chin, a coastal village 10 km south of Bangkok, as seen in the background. At Samut Chin, the ocean has approached by 2 kilometers in the past 60 years. While all other buildings were abandoned and the population settled about a kilometer further inland, the monks lifted the building by two meters and it is now only reachable by way of a small wooden footbridge.
The religious site and the monks caring for it and protecting it against the rising sea level has become emblematic of the situation in the Bangkok Bay. Here’s another foto from 2015 that shows the inside of the temple. You can clearly see how the floor of the room was raised and the water marks on the cement walls.

I have already posted several other images of inundated religious sites across Asia here and here. The most famous one maybe being the Wal Adhuna mosque just outside the sea wall in North-Jakarta. Temples and Mosques have a special value as safe spaces and centers of communities, it is thus no surprise that they become focus points of imagining and expressing our ecological fears.

Here are two articles from 2015 and 2023 about the fate of Ban Khun Samut Chin with more background information.

“Let Venice sink.”

In a 1971 special edition of Architectural Review devoted to the lagoon city author Jan Morris proposes to simply let the city sink. It’s a polemical claim, but one that takes the ambivalences and dilemmata of historic heritage seriously. A different, longer version of the text was printed in the New York Times on July 20, 1975. It is a wonderful piece of polemic and speculative journalism on the city that, according to the words of Jan Morris, “for a thousand years has occupied a unique position in the imagination, the affection and the distaste of all the nations.”
Both version of the text are online here (1971) and here (1975). And in 2023 Catherine Bennett wrote a nice piece for Wired magazine to review Jan Morris original position, which is also online.

Cover from the 1971 special edition of Architectural Review.

Designing cities below sea level: Paraty, Brazil

Paraty is a small town and tourist location on Brazil’s Costa Verde, between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Rising as high as 1,300 meters behind the town are tropical forests and mountains. The village was founded in 1597 and established formally as a town by Portuguese colonists in 1667. The region was populated by the Guaianás Indians. Paraty’s historic center has cobbled streets and buildings dating to its time as a port, during the Brazilian Gold Rush around 1700. Since it is located below-sea-level, the streets flood every full-moon at high tide. Instead of keeping the sea water out, the city planners built a sea wall with special openings to let the water flow in and clean the cobble stone streets.

The following excerpt is from an article by Jose Barbedo et al. Full text can be found here.

“The leading Brazilian urban planner Lucio Costa has described Paraty as the city where the ways of the sea and the paths of the earth meet and interlock. This short description synthesizes the unique landscape that surrounds one of the most valuable colonial settlements in South America.

When the first Portuguese settled in this site in the 16th century, the area was composed of wetlands, which were since progressively drained for the construction of the colonial town. The remnants of the floodplain which were not urbanized have been converted for agricultural use, serving as a buffer zone between the city and the mountains. The two river systems flowing into the urban area (Mateus Nunes and Perequê Açu) have steep gradients, bringing rapid discharges of large volumes of storm water onto the floodplain.

The original settlement was planned to cope with regular high tides and common flooding events; the streets were deliberately designed in a “V” shape, sloping down from the curbs towards the center, in order to keep the houses dry while the streets turned into canals. Today, this fragile balance between the city and its natural environment is threatened by unplanned urban expansion, which in turn may also be aggravated by more frequent extreme rainfall events as registered in recent times.”

Sunken City Deep Dive Dubai

“Take the plunge and explore an abandoned and flooded city, an incredible 60 meters underwater. Experience Deep Dive Dubai – a world of exciting and unique scuba and freediving opportunities,” reads the website of Deep Dive Dubai, a newly opened diving resort. The resort is said to be conveniently located “– 15 minutes from Downtown Dubai and 25 minutes from Dubai International Airport –” and sets the world record for the deepest artificial diving pool, featuring artificial ruins for the divers to explore.

Of course, Deep Dive Dubai, cashes in on the uncanny of a dive among ruins in a city that according to studies from 2010 could very likely be submerged by 2100. Dubai ranks high among the coastal cities most at risk from sea level rise.
The “sunken city” appears to be such a vital marketing element, it even has it’s own icon on all webpages of the company, as you can see below:

Artificial ruins are not a new idea. They were already once the rage among landscape architects in the period of romanticism in the 19. century all over Europe. For more info on the cult of ruins, you can read online the publication by Anne Eriksen enticingly titled “The Murmur of Ruins” or check out the wikipedia entry on ruins with images of the garden of the castle Schönbrunn in Vienna.

Cancho Rano – a city to mourn lost home

Cancho Roano is a Spanish archaeological site located in the Extremadura, about 150 kilometers north-west of Cordoba. The architectural structure dates from 550 BC and appears to be some kind of extended ceremonial site, but it’s function and purpose remain unclear. The late archeologist Richard Freund from Hartford University in Connecticut according to Wikipedia “theorizes that Cancho Roano was a ‘memorial city’ designed to serve as a ceremonial representation of the lost city of Tartessos, which, in Freund’s theory, was also Atlantis. Freund argued that a stele found at Cancho Roano displayed an image with concentric circles that matches Plato’s description of Atlantis.”

In the documentary “Finding Atlantis” (2011) Freund explains that the Atlantian refugees essentially built a miniature version of their home city to mourn it’s loss. If Freund was right, the site would be an ancient example of a rather unusual architectural memorial, a memorial for a city lost. I don’t know of any other historic example of a ritual site to mourn a lost city. It would also imply that the community stayed together after the destruction of Atlantis and resettled, something very uncommon at least in Greek antiquity according to historian Holger Sonnabend. In the documentary, Freund is also quoted saying, that there were several similar structures in the Extremadura, all commemorating either the same or several lost cities.

No matter the scientific plausibility, it’s an inspiring thought, that an exiled urban community would build a ceremonial model of their former home in their new settlement.

Are floating cities a remedy for over-crowded coastal cities, land subsidence and rising sea level?


As this documentary from German TV from 2022 clearly shows, designing floating cities is one thing, wanting to live there is quite another. I guess instinctively we all prefer “stability over floating flexibility”, as director Kristin Siebert says, land over sea, grounded houses over floating houses. As desirable living by the sea might be, living on it, is a different matter.


The film does a fine job connecting and juxtaposing places and communities from the global south and global north, sharing similar fate and trying out similar solutions.


If floating cities are a real future option for communities challenged by climate change like Malé, the capital of the Maledives, we need to look at the socio-cultural and emotional aspects of what makes people feel at home. And that might be essentially the same in the Pacific as in Germany or Holland. Breaking with a culture of habitation of several thousand years is no easy task!

(thanks to Janina Kriszeo for the lead!)

Click on image for video link!

Torres de Ofir

In the north of Portugal, sea lvel rise causes masssive land loss along the Atlantic coast. The building that has become the most emblematic for the situation along Portugal’s coast are the Torres de Ofir, three towers set between the Cavado river and the ocean front in Esposende, about an hour north of Porto. The Portuguese hydrobiologist and researcher at the Abel Salazar Institute Adriano Bordalo e Sá made the following statement which has become much quoted by the press: ” “Se vivêssemos num país a sério, as torres de Ofir há muito teriam sido demolidas / If we were a serious country, the towers would have been demolished long ago.”

Depending on how the photo is taken, the three towers appear more or less vulnerable to the ocean. Some photo journalists have even opted for a tilted perspective, making the scene appear a bit more dramatic. Here is a selection of recent and historic photos. Clearly the Torres de Ofir are an infamous and much publicized example of the kind of problematic coastal architecture in times of rising sea level.

Interview with Sumet Jumsai

The famous Thai architect and artist Sumet Jumsai speaks about solutions for building houses with and not against nature. Here is an excerpt:

Our built environment evolved with nature, not against it. Our national trait is marked by resilience, inventiveness, flexibility and ad hoc programmes to problem-solving. In the central plain, it meant living in amphibious homes or houses on stilts. This is a cultural heritage that has been ignored at a cost.

Please read the full article here.

Lighthouse Retreat

In 2019 this 120 year old lighthouse on the Denish coast had to be moved 70 meters back

The 23-meter-high lighthouse is located on a cliff about 60 meters above sea level. When it was put into operation, the cliff was about 200 meters from the sea. In the end, it was only six meters to the cliffs.

What seems like a looney idea from a Uncle Scrooge comic, is happening all over the world. (see my post on comics here) We will see many more cultural heritage sites on wheels like this in the years to come.

To read more about the Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse, go here.

There’s a whole series of images from similar buildings here.

The Sea Wall in the shape of a Bird

Image may contain Outdoors Nature Land Shoreline Water Ocean Sea Scenery Landscape Coast and Aerial View

While Jakarta has serious evacuation plans, there are apparently also plans to build a new and unique sea wall. Quote from an article from 2016:
“The National Capital Integrated Coastal Development consortium will build a new set of barrier islands and a sea wall that will guard the city from waves and storm surges. The extensive project will take the shape of the Garuda, a mythical bird and symbol of Indonesia. While construction is already under way (the first pile was planted in October 2014), KuiperCompagnons, the Dutch firm behind much of the design, estimates that the project will take 30 to 40 years to complete.”

Read the full article here.
And more info here and here:

And this is Garuda:

Quote from wikipedia:
“Garuda is described as the king of the birds and a  kite-like figure. He is shown either in a zoomorphic form (a giant bird with partially open wings) or an anthropomorphic form (a man with wings and some ornithic features). Garuda is generally portrayed as a protector with the power to swiftly travel anywhere, ever vigilant and an enemy of every serpent. Garuda is a part of state insignia of India, Indonesia and Thailand. The Indonesian official coat of arms is centered on the Garuda and the national emblem of Indonesia is called Garuda Pancasila.”

Thanks to Johanna Fischer for the lead!