SUDDENLY, AN ISLAND [DIS]APPEARS: STAGING GROUND FOR A FUTURE RUIN

[ARCHITECTURE _HARVARD GSD // FALL 2023]

San Francisco’s Treasure Island suddenly appeared in the center of the Bay in 1937, comprised of the dredged mud and sand from the construction of the two bay bridges. The island was conceived as the stage for a celebration of these engineering feats, producing a small-scale city of temporary structures, that acted as an elaborate set for the Golden Gate International Exposition. At the start of WWII, the US Navy took ownership of the island, and for 60 years the island remained untouched by the urban development of San Francisco, suspended in time and maintained by the unequivocal consistency of the US military. But Treasure Island is not immune to the steady changes of climate and time; due to a persistent rate of land subsidence and rising sea levels, the island will soon be completely consumed. In the face of this impending loss, what if we stopped pretending that such vanishing spaces could be saved? Or that changing climates could be resisted? What if we shifted our thinking from preservation to adaptation and transformation? The island’s inevitable unmaking will be a reversal of its initial conception, leaving behind architectural remnants, markers of time passed. It is here that this thesis finds its setting, performing a theatrical unbuilding of program and site. Using the island as a staging ground for its own ruination, opportunities arise to produce a series of temporary performance spaces to be gradually reclaimed by nature, embracing the ephemerality of changing conditions.