Gulf Coast 2050
Workshop and Symposium

The Gulf Coast is alive with motion and tension. Communities face immediate shocks from technological disasters and storms, along with long arcs of sea level rise and land loss. These impacts force migration that exacerbates both rural and urban poverty, intensifies agricultural and industrial waste, and produces vacancy and derelict space. Addressing these complex issues requires innovative frameworks and big ideas that exceed traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Organized by the LSU School of Architecture and the Caribbean Spatial Justice Lab, the ASW is a three-day experiment in collective foresight. It convenes students, faculty, and leading voices in architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, social sciences, humanities, and coastal sciences to visualize possible futures. The event puts a special emphasis on storytellers who can turn evidence into provocative narratives to guide society into the second half of this century.

Using co-production and design thinking, workshop participants will map the relationship between ecological, social, and infrastructure systems in order to analyze current and probable conditions. These interdisciplinary maps function as analytical instruments and creative provocations that frame each team’s designs for future scenarios scenario.

Given the scale of what is at stake, minor adjustments will not do. This is a space for boldness, no grades and no judgement, where risk and experimentation is valued more than incrementalism. Over the course of three days, experts from diverse institutions and practices will guide interdisciplinary teams through an intensive exploration of possibility.

Themes which tie a diverse set of sites in the Gulf Coast together include retreating and receiving communities, regenerative coastal infrastructures, and adaptive ecological networks. The goal is not to predict the future. The goal is to expand it, then design responses as large as the challenges ahead to improve health and well-being and to cultivate long-term Gulf Coast resilience.

 

The workshop will conclude with a public exhibition and symposium where teams present their work to community stakeholders, agency partners, and scholars, opening an honest, yet audacious conversation about our shared future.