2014 LSU/Chevron: The Reimagined Shorebase

Team

• Ursula Emery-McClure – Professor of Architecture
• Architecture graduate students

www.symbioticshorebase.com

In this new graduate studio course design, architecture students are investigating symbiotic design queries in the unique Louisiana condition, including developing new schematic designs for the Chevron Shorebase in Venice, Louisiana allowing it to create a symbiotic relationship with its environment.

Louisiana has the greatest concentration of crude oil refineries, natural gas processing plants, and petrochemical production facilities in the western hemisphere. The industry must occupy the coast for its shoreline and off-shore components, and it employs thousands of people who need to live along the coast to access their work environment. The bases provide the necessary link between land and sea, humankind and livelihood, country and economy, supply and distribution. They are also located in a dynamic and eroding coastal condition and paradoxically demand a place of permanence. While industry has eroded the coast, it is also part of humans’ means of existence. This studio demands that industry be the third symbiont in the symbiotic relationship: INDUSTRY + HUMANS + COAST = Symbiotic Environment.