Our proposal is searching for softer systems of dynamic change. Today’s economic and environmental issues cannot be solved by an urbanism based on authority, planning and permanence. Instead, a system of speed and flexibility will create a resilient community in Semarang.

The past is part of the vision for the future. The project draws on the coastal culture of Semarang, the waterways, the fisheries, are the basis of the new.

Semarang is not a city in isolation, it is part of a continuous landscape and a wider ecology.

For a coastal ecosystem to survive under the complex shocks and stresses of subsidence and inundation they must build upwards. To do this our proposal reinstates the historic coastal mangroves and reactivates the river which permeates the city centre, softening edges and generating ecological corridors.

This mangrove ecosystem returns the coast to a delta forming natural estuaries, boosting the local fishing culture and generating a resilient economy. The creation of the additional infrastructure and amenity around the existing fish smokery invests in local livelihoods, providing jobs and a highly adaptive architecture that enables locals to live and work within the kampung.

The architecture is a dynamic system that will grow and embrace its surroundings. It builds on and works with the existing urban structures. These residential acupunctural interventions hug conditions typically considered unwanted. The sunken houses are an opportunity. These points, linked with revegetated corridors, form a network of spaces that provide the flexibility for diverse use.

The canal represents the site’s dramatic relationship with floods, both tidal and flash. Coupled with the heritage Goedang Toedjoe warehouse it redefines public space. It is a curated, performative infrastructure. One that responds to the temporality and shifting nature of the context.

The school makes use of this new landscape drawing students into the public realm.  Education becomes fundamentally linked with its context through practical learning.  Straddling the river’s edge, a mobile education is fostered. Learning is extended along the river spine becoming rooted in the local.