What if buildings could move, mend ecosystems, and help coastal cultures remain rooted as shorelines shift?  

Barrier islands are never still. Sand migrates, tides redraw edges, and storms reshape the landscapes that shelter mainland communities. With climate pressures and tourism growth accelerating change, Clemson University’s School of Architecture used an LS3P Foundation grant to ask how architecture might evolve with the coast instead of trying to hold it in place.  

A Coastline Under Multiple Pressures  

From North Carolina to Florida, Southeastern barrier islands reduce storm surge, sustain habitat, and hold layered cultural histories. Gullah Geechee communities established self-sufficient settlements on many islands during Jim Crow; later, bridge access brought resort development, new infrastructure, and rising land pressures. Clemson’s inquiry linked environmental change with social and economic realities, treating flooding as one part of a broader resilience challenge.  

“The coast does not need another fixed answer. It needs ways of living, building, and adapting that can change with the landscape.”  

The Studio as a Testing Ground  

The initiative, “Architecture, Climate Change and Tourism on the Southeastern Barrier Islands,” combined scholarship, teaching, public presentation, and speculative design. It began with co-principal investigators Andreea Mihalache, PhD and David Franco, PhD and collaborators Ulrike Heine and Amy Trick, AIA. After Franco moved to the University of Texas at Arlington, Heine became co-principal investigator and lecturer Rayshad Dorsey joined the team.  

A fall 2024 graduate studio taught by Heine, Trick, and Dorsey served as the design laboratory. Students studied Ocracoke Island, Hatteras Island, St. Helena Island, and McClellanville, developing proposals that paired technical rigor with purposeful speculation. Buildings became adaptive infrastructure, ecological partners, and support structures for cultural continuity through floating systems, regenerative materials, elevated circulation, civic utilities, and new housing models.