Designing Healthy Coral Reefs

In fall 2023 I joined a transdisciplinary team of faculty in architecture, design and biology at Arizona State University. Together with our graduate students in design and architecture we traveled to Oahu, Hawaii, with the goal of exploring how these professional disciplines could help conserve and rehabilitate coral reefs. We interviewed engineering firms that pioneered the construction of artificial reefs, visited marine biology labs that focused on raising resilient species of corals for transplantation, paced the urbanized headwaters of streams to identify sources of runoff that polluted reefs in nearshore waters, sunk up to our knees in marine mud to help restore an ancient Hawaiian fish pond and snorkeled some of the reefs ourselves to understand how to prevent reef damage from tourists.

The environmental news that fall was filled with one dire story after another about the plight of planet’s reefs so the work of the studio was not only challenging but also urgent. I am just as proud of the students’ unrelenting emotional courage in the face of such discouraging news as I am of their ingenious and thoughtful designs. Read more about their projects.