Naomi Punnett

Year 2 MArch

The Fenland Board

Denver Complex
The Fens, UK

The Fenlands are at high risk of flooding due to the climate crisis, necessitating radical infrastructural strategies to be developed with limited time and resources. Collaboration with all Fenland stakeholders is vital to generate a flood-resilient physical, social, and ecologically resilient landscape.

The Fenland Board is a proposal for a proving ground to develop the best flood management strategy while building community resilience and imparting readiness and knowledge of dynamic shifts ahead. Through the concept of play and gamification, the project seeks to overcome the challenges of community engagement and conventional hierarchical decision-making paradigms, aiding in communicating complex topics to make climate adaptation decisions tangible and accessible to all.

The board is a scale model representing a section of the Fenlands. Unlike conventional testing facilities, the board is entirely reprogrammable, enabling engineers and community members to explore spatial strategies collaboratively. Reconfigurations can be tested over the course of a day or week and simulated under various climatic scenarios to understand their viability. The adjoining landscape and buildings mediate the board's undulating topography and voxel edge. Through the structural expression of the geometry, the proposal aims to be a welcoming and playful site of co-produced knowledge while addressing the severe reality of the fragile Fenland’s existence.