Regrowing Providencia aims to develop an architectural typology that would improve Caribbean communities’ resilience against the increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events caused by anthropogenic climate change. The regrowth of the Caribbean’s mangrove forests is put forward as a solution for improving the resilience of coastal settlements against hurricanes. The integration of an architectural typology into this regrowth strategy ensures that this process occurs from the bottom-up, avoiding the exploitative climate colonialism prevalent in global development initiatives.

The project investigates these aims by developing architectural solutions for the Raizal community of Providencia Island, Colombia, which is recovering from 2020’s Hurricane Iota. A sensitive response to materiality and localised cultural context is combined with novel scripting methodologies to reveal a new digital context produced by the specificities of the overlapping ecosystems of the site. Mediated through this complex adaptive system, a data-driven vernacular that is symbiotic with the development of its local environment is generated.