Axonometric drawing of the buildings’ performance within different weather conditions throughout the year.
Coastal Rhythms: Floating architecture that nurtures climate adaptation and coastal continuity
Master’s Degree Project
2026
Rising sea levels threaten not only coastal infrastructure but the culture embedded within it. Coastal Rhythms proposes a floating structure in Varberg's harbour that rises and falls with the tides, teaching inhabitants to coexist with water by making its fluctuations visible, inhabitable and shared. Tradition and innovation meet through a social core, market, exhibition space and aquaculture research center. Where most flooding strategies push people away from water, this one draws them closer. A social anchor sustaining a way of life and nurtures the adaptation needed along an ever-changing coastline.
Rising sea levels and intensifying storm events threaten not only coastal infrastructure but the rituals and social practices embedded within it, values that define the identity of communities like Varberg on Sweden’s west coast.
Current adaptation strategies respond to this threat defensively by elevating land and constructing barriers, treating water as a problem to exclude. This thesis argues that architecture should adapt with water rather than against it and that this adaptation can itself become a site of collective learning.
The project proposes a floating public space in Varberg’s former industrial harbour basin, a structure that rises and falls with the water, making fluctuations visible, inhabitable and educationally productive.
Situated adjacent to the Västerport development where static elevation strategies are being implemented, the project aims to bridge the gap between the elevated land and the sea and make that transition accessible.
Deriving from the discourse of urgent pedagogy and the phenomenology of water, the building combines a public promenade, aquaculture production, educational spaces, market, exhibition and a community hub, proposing that climate adaptation and coastal rituals can mutually reinforce one another. The project positions the harbour basin as a laboratory for climate literacy, produced through direct, sensory and social engagement with a coastline in transformation.
Site section showing the connected spaces from the old pier into the new development.
Groundfloor and first floor
Cross sections of the four key spaces; social core, water utility, mixer hub and research center.
Scale model 1:250 and visualizations of arriving at work/school, enjoying seafood immersed within the water and learning from the observation tower.
Varberg +3, +12, +25m water level. In the future, the city will transform into small islands, can the project deploy to active and connect the different parts?
