Underwater Living

Underwater Living imagines a future where communities adapt to environmental collapse by building not above water, but beneath it. Set at the bottom of California’s Salton Sea, a body of water once full of promise and now heavy with decay, the project proposes an underwater society born from the ruins of failed architectural dreams.

In the mid-20th century, the Salton Sea sparked visions of a desert oasis, the "Salton Riviera," a Palm Springs with water. But relentless heat, agricultural runoff, and devastating floods from tropical storms soon turned the dream toxic. Resorts, RV parks, and marinas were abandoned, leaving behind a skeletal landscape of rusted docks and forgotten shoreline.

This project reclaims that abandoned territory, speculating a submerged community that finds resilience and life where others fled. Prefabricated pods retrofitted from remnants of the Salton Riviera's tourism infrastructure are anchored to the sea floor, connected by air shafts to the surface. Within these capsules, everyday life unfolds: kitchens, sleeping quarters, laboratories, and communal baths form a fragile yet vibrant ecosystem.

Living beneath the surface offers both isolation and connection. Shielded from the blistering desert sun and the poisoned landscape above, inhabitants rely on the currents, sediments, and marine life for survival. Their existence is a negotiation with time between decay and reinvention, abandonment and resilience.

Underwater Living explores how architecture might evolve not to conquer hostile environments, but to surrender to them creating a quiet, adaptive way of life in the spaces left behind by failed human ambition.