CCA Architecture Division
1111 8th Street, San Francisco
The Boardroom

Around the world, political instability, environmental threats, and housing challenges are leading many to turn to the ocean as a new frontier for building communities. This panel discussion, the first in the Buoyant Futures series of conversations hosted by the Architectural Ecologies Lab, will explore ways of living on water, motivations of desire and need, and the ecological potentials and implications of floating architecture.

Greg Delaune is an internationally recognized consultant, teacher, speaker, and writer specializing in sustainable economic development and public-private partnerships (PPPs) for green cities and smart cities. Currently he is a Technology Partner at Blue Frontiers. Blue Frontiers, with the endorsement of the government of French Polynesia, is launching the world's first floating ecosystem of start-ups, laboratories, and homes. They plan to build a sustainable floating islands with unique governing frameworks. The project consists of constructing ecological floating platforms in a lagoon of French Polynesia that could offer a response to the challenges of rising sea levels and sustainable development. 

Maria Finn is an author and journalist who lives on a houseboat in Sausalito, California. She has a native oyster garden. She recently completed a novel, "Sea Legs & Fish Nets" based loosely on her experience working on an all-female fishing boat in Alaska. It was a finalist for the Pen/Bellwether Award. She has had five books published including “The Whole Fish” (TED Books 2012) and “Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home” (Algonquin, 2010). She writes for the Food & Environmental Reporting Network and numerous other publications.

Clare Hacko and Nicholas Scribner are Master of Architecture students at California College of the Arts. In the 2017 Buoyant Ecologies studio they designed a Water Farm which operates as both an infrastructure and an offshore community for citizens of Dhangethi Island in the Maldives, an island nation averaging 1.5 meters above sea level. Climate change poses an imminent threat not only to the low lying and quickly eroding land of the Maldives, but also to its drinking water. They will share their research and innovative strategies for the collection of water at sea.

Will Travis is a consultant, writer, teacher and speaker on sea level rise adaptation. Throughout the decades, he has worked in the fields of architecture, local planning, private consulting, advertising and public relations. From 1973 to 1995 he served in a number of staff positions at the California Coastal Commission. In 1985 he was appointed deputy director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. In 1995 he was appointed executive director of BCDC and under his leadership in 2011 BCDC became the nation’s first state coastal management agency to adopt development regulations for addressing sea level rise.