Road to Resilience

I led design for a groundbreaking plan that reimagines a troubled stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway in Southern California, proposing strategies to extend its life and make it safer for all who use it.

Role Lead Designer, Co-Writer
For Caltrans
Date 2023
Service strategy, research, engagement, spatial design, content

How do you give a troubled road a new lease on life?

There’s nothing like chasing the sunset on the California coast. But the road that takes you there can be deadly if you travel by foot or bike, and it’s crumbling into the ocean at an increasing rate. Caltrans’ quick fixes only delay the inevitable.

Needing a way to tackle both safety and resiliency at once, the agency enlisted my firm, Arup, and our partner Alta, to look at a 7.5-mile stretch of the road in Ventura County and see what we could come up with.

Bridging Minds

Working with our transportation engineers and resiliency specialists, I served as a bridge between minds—drawing inspiration from nature-based design to synthesize all of our work, from analysis to final concept.

I led a team of eight designers to shape the visual language for the report, blending global “best practices” in active mobility and resiliency with a visual style that evokes the experience of traveling the coastline. The goal was for the report to be as inviting and intuitive to use as the future landscape we envisioned.

Setting the Standard

Caltrans was thrilled with our work and recruited us to adapt our process to other areas along the coastline—setting the stage for a new era of resiliency-led coastal planning in California.