This theme explores the profound transformations of territories at the land–water interface: coastlines, estuaries, deltas, island areas, and low-lying regions characterized by saturable soils and direct exposure to flooding, submersion, coastal erosion, and salinization hazards.
In these environments, water is not an exceptional event but a structural parameter. Whether recurrent or progressive, it durably reshapes conditions of habitability, uses, landscapes, and ecosystems. It transforms the relationship to the ground and affects construction conditions (bearing capacity, settlement, corrosion, capillarity), requiring buildings to be conceived through adaptive logics over time.
Flood-prone lands call for moving beyond a static reading of the site: the territory must be understood as a dynamic process, shaped by water movements and natural transformations. Approaches based solely on protection reach their limits; the challenge is not to freeze environments in place, but to maintain or reconfigure conditions of habitability within a changing context.
Projects must be grounded in a precise analysis of local dynamics: topography, submersion regimes, soil characteristics, shoreline evolution, ecosystems, uses, and social practices. The human, social, and cultural dimension remains central— vulnerabilities, lifestyles, acceptability, and communities’ adaptive capacities.
Whether prospective or experimental, proposals must remain coherent in their principles and credible in the articulation between intent, functioning, and implementation conditions
