Coast Portraits. Research and Strategies in Territorial Architecture

The theme of Dynamics of Periphery as creative spatial, structural, and strategic exploration of European margins, inner and outer peripheries, in the LUH seminar Coast Portraits focuses on coast lines and the development of spatial planning scenarios. They constitute an overlaying and hybrid of cultural shaping and natural forces, of resources and knowledge, in between water and land. As extended field the coastlines comprehend in up to 50 km distance to the sea 50% of Europe‘s people. With a more precise glance, though, the coastlines are not only places of extreme density in activities, meanings, and architecture, but also terrains vagues, places of extreme remoteness, inner peripheries, diffuse cities, resorts, built infrastructures. They are targeted by amenity seeker, migrants, land pioneers, they comprehend high local social and cultural capital, and are spaces of complex traditions, new communities, and economic innovation. The interaction between land and sea, between habitat and nature, in the seminar is addressed by architectural and urbanistic interpretation and strategies, as bases and drivers of spatial shaping and development.