Project Description
The South End of Bridgeport, home of the University of Bridgeport, the Seaside Park, and many industrial sites, is a coastal neighborhood constantly facing the threat of flooding. For a neighborhood whose civic and natural infrastructures are constantly at risk of flooding, a stacked climate library is proposed to lift the civic and natural programs from the ground and to create a new set of territories for the coexistence of humans and nature. From ground to the roof, civic spaces serving the local community stacked up, intersect, and nature takes place in between. Throughout stacking, public spaces of different openness engage with each other, and among the spaces for events are nature collected from the local biodiversity and relocated in the planters, gardens, and on façades. The vertical organization is enabled by the truss system, which holds up not only the public spaces but soil for trees to grow. Essentially, the new vertical library re-activates the fading industrial skyline, provides a new set of civic territories for the community, and retains records of the local environment in response to the challenge posed by the changing climate.