ABSTRACT

Chapter 8: Going with the Flow: Strategies for Adapting Buildings and Structures for Rising Sea Levels, the focus of this chapter is to provide preservation practitioners recommendations for protecting historic buildings from threats of water inundation. Using the wisdom of the ancients to inform forward preservation planning, we looked to what was done historically regarding how this might be approached. The Chinese philosopher, Lao-Tzu (fifth century bce) and founder of Taoism, proposes an intriguing theory of “wu wei” in his work, Tao Te Ching; which can be roughly conceptualized as “going with the flow” (Laozi and Mitchell 1988). Today, communities of houseboats can be found across Asia, along river systems and coastal port cities, and they are relatively resilient to fluctuations in water levels (Kim 2016). Can this philosophy of heritage construction be applied elsewhere? How might this be applied to extant historic buildings in addition to new construction? The premise of this approach is that tried and tested heritage construction techniques on addressing flooding resiliency can better inform future plans preserving historic buildings.