The Allegory of Site and the Resettling of Smith Cove

Abstract

This thesis takes a magical realist approach to unpack today's challenges and to inspire a subjective relationship to these matters. The primary motivation is to add to the dialogues of our times and to enhance architecture's normative approach for a-historical, pragmatic, short-term problem solving. Interbay is the industrial switching yard of Seattle with strong historical echoes. Formerly a waterway, in 1911, the land was capped by asphalt., a 56-acre parking lot remains. The site is an engineered landscape, a relic of Seattle's past. Early settlers played high-stakes by building a railyard on waterways and overlaid notions of risk-taking and engineering onto the landscape. Considering global warming and rising sea levels, the seawater will inevitably return. An imagined resettlement of Smith Cove is proposed and the persona of the settler is developed as two characters: the gambler and the engineer, based on notions of manipulating the landscape through chance and opportunity.