Rising Habitats is a botanical conservancy and education center located in the Port of Oakland’s Middle Harbor Shoreline Park. The building consists of an on-land museum and a floating research institute that showcases the conditions of local ecologies. The natural environment exists as a system of interdependent forces, between flora, fauna, wind, water, and sun, in which each force utilizes, changes, and constrains one another. These natural systems are more important than ever as global warming and climate change worsen; for flood protection, filtering pollutants, and fostering wildlife.

Over 90% of wetland habitats in the Bay Area have disappeared over the past 150 years due to major industrialization along shorelines, demanding a revitalization of these vulnerable zones. Referencing the work of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the objectives of Save the Bay, Rising Habitats proposes a new way of spatially interfacing with local wetland habitats. The architecture is used as an education tool, through its undulating form and soft boundary conditions, to reveal qualities of these habitats and forces that are otherwise unseen.