The North Sea region faces many 21st-century challenges, including the need for an industrial and energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables while protecting its sensitive ecologies and biodiversity. Looming climate change threats and Brexit-related regulatory differences between the UK and EU North Sea nations compound these challenges. At the same time, the cities of the North Sea are experiencing major urban transformations, particularly along its coast. Market pressures are pushing harbour cities to upscale their post-industrial sites under prevailing contemporary development models, which can destroy their industrial heritage and put extra pressure on littoral ecologies.
This practice-based research will address these challenges by engaging in multiple design projects at various spatial scales and exploring replicable innovative industries that seamlessly blend with existing infrastructure, honour historical industrial remnants, harmonise with natural ecosystems, and adapt to rising sea level projections in the design process. Finally, it will examine the intra-national interplays between contemporary resonances of the region’s old Hanseatic League of countries/city-states, and build networks of city governance and practice with architects, planners, ecologists, sociologists, and other experts in North Sea harbour cities.