With global warming and rapidly rising sea levels, drowning marshes have become a global issue. With its long coastal lines, the state of  Rhode Island, in particular, has been supporting marsh migration for the past decades. Marsh migration in Rhode Island has been supported mostly by methods related to water filtering and management, sediment building, land forming, and the creation of porous conditions.

Based on the studies and integration of these effective methods, the straw clay technique was chosen as the primary construction method for the design exploration due to its flexibility and ability to achieve a large range of permeability.

Using a combination of straw clay with wattle frames, and dug channels as the main design language, this thesis investigates its application in Tillinghast Place, a coastal system in Barrington, Rhode Island, that shows a typical drowning marsh with a surrounding forest fringe.