Augmented Tides

2015

Collaboration with Jared Clifton

AIA COTE Top Ten Award Winner 2016

Augmented Tides is a spatial strategy for urbanism at the edge—an architectural response to the threshold between land and water. Along Oakland’s Middle Harbor Shoreline, it proposes a research and education center for intertidal ecologies, using form to negotiate the edge condition of the shoreline.

Shaped by the daily rise and fall of the tide, the design draws on the adaptive logic of marshlands—turning fluctuation into structure and uncertainty into opportunity.

A modular system of fiber-reinforced polymer containers, suspended at varying heights, maps five tidal zones. These volumes act as vessels and markers—spatializing life cycles that typically remain hidden just beyond the urban frame. Their standardized design allows the system to scale, offering a decentralized, adaptable framework for engaging with life at the edge.

Classrooms include large flex spaces at water level that expand at low tide and contract back into the enclosure at high tide. These tidal classrooms are meant to encourage awareness of the way tides change through the day.