Fixing Lines on a Drifting Coast: Architectural Crystals of Destin, Florida

Abstract

In 2003, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection proposed a beach renourishment project to add 75 feet of public beachfront to a 6.9-mile stretch of hurricane-eroded coastline. Six property owners filed suit for unconstitutional taking of their littoral (beachfront) rights. In the US Supreme Court case that followed, hard-measured lines and legal definitions which attempt to assign fixity to dynamic environments became muddied. A close reading of the legal case is accompanied by critiques of architecture’s crystalline complicity with fixed lines of property law and subsequent land transformations, contemplating how architecture might instead embrace drifting enclosures.