ON SITE r e v i e w
from our original call for articles for this issue: One of the aspects of the ancient infrastructure of the shoreline is as a site of war and trade. Does the human relationship to oceans, rivers, lakes and seas still embody that interstitial condition, commanded by weather, by hinterlands, by tides and maritime vessels. The dock, the pier, the container port, the sandy beach: these are all constructions that mediate between water and land, war and trade. Migratory routes transcend borders, only registering at frontiers: a border crossing is a metaphorical landing site. It can be open or policed, marked by reefs, by walls, by surveillance as humans cross from one state to another, from land to sea; sea to land. These borders are marked by mangrove swamps, seaweed and kelps, reefs of coral and shipwrecks, by crumbling cliffs, by beach encampments. Spaces that do not always cohere; under many kinds of threat, they are as fragmentary and elusive as the camps of Achilles. For On Site review 49 , we wanted to look at the architectures of those watery frontiers This is clearly a wide, global condition with extremely local built infrastructure. Can, for example, one write about a container port in terms of its landscape, its form, its ultimate relationship to the size of its hinterland both on land and ocean? A deciding factor in the WWII turning of the tide were the Allied landings on D-Day across a number of beaches in Normandy: not ports, but seaside towns. Corniches, promenades — these are the fronts of cities: the seawalls that defend from tides and armies. And when flotillas of warships and aircraft amass in strategic seas and gulfs, their close shoreline is the edge of the flight deck. The shoreline, that watery edge, a thin but potent edge condition we must never overlook.
fall 2026 49
Blue humanities: the human relationship with oceans, rivers, lakes and seas. now recognised as one of the important foundations of civilisation. shorelines and watery edges
contributors
contents
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Asher Ghaffar
shorelines , a poem about the Kotogama Maru, Vancouver 1914
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Nezar Alkujok
After the last sky , a proposal for the archiving of a civilisation, Gaza
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Barbara Prezelj
Time on holiday , walking the King Charles III Coastal Path, Norfolk
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Tim Sharp
Watery edges , cutting through Andalucia
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Ian Chodikoff
Edge conditions , the scent of Prince Edward County
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James Moses
Submerged pastures , the agriculture of the oyster, Wellfleet, Cape Cod
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Lebbeus Woods, from the archives
el Malecón , revisiting an idea, Havana
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Andrey Chernykh and Léonard Flot
Operative ground , dredging as a shoreline strategy, Toronto
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Marly Ibrahim
Simulations of the sea , a research laboratory, Port Hardy, BC
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Suzanne Steele
The river, she is on our side , the North Saskatchewan from start to finish
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Stephanie White
Shorelines , crossing the line
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who we are
On Site review 50 call for articles
front: John Constable, Rainstorm over the sea , ca 1824-8. Royal Academy of Arts 03/1390. Mike Red beach, 6 June 1944 . Juno Beach Centre Association back: Shetland . Title sequence, Silverprint Pictures 2018. North Shore Beach, Landudno. ca 1890 , Conway Archives, CP251/41
covers
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on site review 49 :: shorelines
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