The cultural theorist Bill Ashcroft has described “the horizon as a plane on which the sublime vastness is set out in all its fluidity and possibility.” Given its relentless horizontality, what can be more vast, beautiful, or terrifying than the ocean? For architecture, such as condition represents the impossibility of built form. Ours is a hydrophobic profession. We put water underground, we devise complex systems to remove it, and we attempt to overcome its elemental power by means of elaborate public works. We do everything we can to separate ourselves from this uncontrollable entity that seeps into, and unsettles the permanency of, the structures we build. From the human perspective, water functions as an uninhabitable frontier that we are nonetheless compelled to control. This folly aims to reverse the paradigm. Rather than repudiating fluidity, Cassie: Ocean Bathhouse, set off Crane Beach near Ipswich, Massachusetts, embraces the energy of the waves to enact its program. The folly interacts with the dynamic character of the ocean as well as frame both shoreline and open water as a visual panorama enlisting the horizontal sublime as its aesthetic orientation.
The folly refuses to tame the wild Atlantic by turning to precedents that are both architectural and mythological. Where architecture and its social relationship to water are concerned, this project touches on the global iconography of the houseboat-from the archetypal Old Testament account of Noah's Ark to those "floating palaces" resulting from the British Imperial conversion, in the early twentieth- century, of the traditional Doonga boat. The houseboat has functioned throughout time as an adaptive refuge from a world overcome by water, which makes it a relevant typology in the face of the sea level rise we are experiencing. The need to occupy water persists as we confront the challenges of climate change. Where myth and its local expression are concerned, the waters of Cape Ann were home to a great sea serpent lurking beneath the ocean surface. Repeatedly witnessed in Gloucester Harbor between 1817 and 1819 by awe-struck residents, Cassie is always depicted as slithering near shore, her scales undulating in formal echo with the waves. This legend ties the folly to the fantastical history of the site.
The project provides a new Cassie for us to experience. The folly is sited off a point approximately one mile east of Castle Hill in the waters of Ipswich Bay. As the bathymetry of Crane Beach makes clear, dunes are ever-shifting and the shoreline of the peninsula is always mutating, meaning that the folly's proximity to shore will constantly oscillate. The folly is placed in deep enough water for a mechanism to capture energy from the waves without establishing too much distance from the beach (about 120 yards away at high tide). Three reservoirs are positioned on the north end of the folly to generate electricity with the overtopping technology of the Wave Dragon, which comes from a long line of wave energy converters (commonly known as WECs). As Erik Friis-Madsen, the inventor of this device, explains: "The basic idea of the Wave Dragon wave energy converter is to use well-known and well-proven principles from traditional hydro power plants in an offshore floating platform. It is really very simple: The Wave Dragon overtopping device elevates ocean waves to a reservoir above sea level where water is let out through a number of turbines and in this way transformed into electricity." Generated power can be used to filter and heat ocean water so as to distribute it to the various spaces in the folly. Occupants can experience this action from different places in the structure. The machine constantly displays itself for everyone to see. The form and the program of the folly thus create a direct experience of the waves, with both aspects drawing attention to the sensuality of water as well as to its potential relationship with sustainable technology.
Cassie: Ocean Bathhouse promotes human engagement with the sea in three distinct ways. First, the beach area of the folly folds down into the water, allowing for an extensive north-facing public space that opens onto the incoming waves. Users can occupy this viewing space to interact directly with the ocean just as they would on Crane Beach. Second, the bathhouse pavilion provides a sheltered experience in which one is submerged in filtered water. The baths provide a safe, immersive environment in which so touch and feel the sea. Third, interior spaces promote observation at a distance, framing views of the Atlantic alongside the Wave Dragon that serves as the metaphoric belly of the beast. This functional area is purposefully open to all, allowing for interaction with the mechanical aspect supporting the various elements of the program.
The form of the folly is inspired by sea creatures, monsters, boats, machines, and breakwaters. Cassie: Ocean Bathhouse deploys viewing platforms and access ramps to mimic the back-and-forth motion of the ocean, with some spaces inviting water in and others holding it back. Bookended by two public pavilions, the folly is part bath and part steam room with each element facing the "beach" of the structure. The folly creates an architectural setting through which the rhythmic movement of the sea and the technological enlistment of the waves can be experienced from different perspectives. Loosely tethered to the ocean floor, the folly floats in the water as well as rises and falls with the tides. Within the folly, two vantages are operative: the vast horizontal sublime of the sea is experienced from one side while looking back at the shoreline from the other moors us to land. Each side of the folly offers a different relationship to the ocean: one measured and human (the beach) and the other lawless and non-human (the ocean). The folly is boat and breakwater all at once, a fundamental ambiguity that encourages us to question its identity. Cassie: Ocean Bathhouse thus appears alternately as a large, foreboding mass and as a transparent, light entity. The folly swells and curves, creating specific apertures and points of transparency throughout. I consider the folly to be something monstrous yet also respectful of the obvious power of its site. It exemplifies the wild nature of the ocean that Herman Melville describes in Moby Dick (1851): "I stand alone here upon an open sea, with two oceans and a whole continent between me and the law."
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