Edge Operations: Resanctifying the Coast of Rabat

Orly Sacke, Design Stream

Laura Miller, Advisor

Generosity is designing for ecological resilience within the cultural contingency of place and projected environmental change. Within the continual fluctuation of coastal phenomena, it is acknowledging the edge as more than a periphery: an ecotone between land and water, a destination and preserve for life in all its forms. This thesis operates on the coastline of Rabat, Morocco, subjecting the 11-kilometre stretch to a series of edge operations designed to increase ecological resilience against rising sea levels and seasonal stormwater pulses, while ultimately returning naturally filtered water to the Atlantic Ocean in support of marine life. By way of three operations — Designate, Restore, Filter — my work advocates for the re-sanctification of Rabat’s edge into an estuarine landscape, currently overtaken by luxury developments designed to augment the city’s global status. Reimagining the entire edge as a site of natural water purification, Edge Operations ultimately seeks to increase the absorbency of this littoral zone, encouraging less of a boundary and more of a seam, stitching together land and water through a highly visible process of water filtration. As the climate emergency progresses, we must rethink the notion of the edge not as a hard line but a rolling easement, a coastal setback, a gradient, and conveyor of biotic and abiotic factors that transcends us and completes us.