abstract

Along the shoreline of Prudence Island, on the site of a former United States Naval Base, a series of abandoned bunkers form a cultural infrastructure within a larger ecological network of coastal wetlands. As a dynamic edge, the dissolving terrain of the coast creates a fluid environment in which the nature of resources must be critically examined. By framing this condition, first perceptually and then physically, the edge becomes spatial while continuing to fluctuate as an active condition. Upon closer investigation of this natural coastal process two distinct edge conditions emerge, each with a particular scale of time and space: the tidal edge and the fresh/saltwater edge. This landscape becomes an active field addressing both transitory and bound conditions. In order to defend the cultural and ecological habitats present on site, topographical interventions reinterpret the traces of the Naval Base as a cultural structure to facilitate the framing of edge conditions on multiple scales.