Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
SCAPE has completed work on the $111 million Living Breakwater coastal resiliency project in Staten Island, New York three years after the start of construction in the borough's Tottenville neighborhood. Per SCAPE: "The project consists primarily of 2,400 linear feet of near-shore... View full entry
Lloyd Wright’s Wayfarers Chapel closed its doors to the public abruptly last week due to the threat of landslides that have afflicted the Los Angeles area and its site in Rancho Palos Verdes. In a statement posted to the Chapel’s website, the ministry responsible for its stewardship cited... View full entry
Almost all of China's medium and large cities are now susceptible to floods. And [Kongjian] Yu says 60% of them experience flooding every year. Extreme weather from climate change is exacerbating the problem.
So Yu has been evangelizing a solution he calls "sponge cities." That is, urban landscapes that are softer and purposely designed to absorb more water.
Gareth Doherty, an associate professor of landscape architecture at Harvard University, says the concept is revolutionary.
— NPR
The contributions of Turenscape founder Kongjian Yu to the development of the so-called “Sponge City” concept date to the mid-90s, stemming from a near-death experience in his childhood home of Jinhua. He says that by the end of the decade, roughly 80% of Chinese cities will now be adequately... View full entry
In addition to overall wetter conditions, the study predicts increasingly intense bursts of heavy rain during storms — up to two-thirds wetter by the end of the century — the type of brief torrents that can easily overwhelm sewer systems, swamp cars and cause significant property damage and even loss of life, said Michael Mak, a Pathways water resources engineer. — KQED
Mayor London Breed announced a $369 million Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loan a month before the report was made public courtesy of KQED’s public records request. The report indicates a 37% increase in stormwater by the end of the century. Meanwhile, the city’s... View full entry
[Through a national competition by the Department of Housing and Urban Development,] The money would be used to help fortify a stretch of shoreline from Montgomery Street on the Lower East Side to the northern tip of Battery Park City. Specific measures have not yet been determined, but could include adding sea walls and temporary flood walls that could be deployed before a storm, and building grass berms that could double as recreational areas. — The New York Times
Not to be confused with the Rebuild By Design competition-winning proposal, "The BIG U", from 2014.More on Archinect:2015 Solar Decathlon winner Stevens Institute of Technology addresses post-Sandy resiliency with the SURE HOUSEWhen the next disaster strikes, how resilient would future-proof... View full entry
I looked back on resilience work designed for a Museum of Modern Art exhibition two years ago, called “Rising Currents.” It now seems prophetic.
Among the proposals by Susannah Drake of Dlandstudio and Stephen Cassell of Architecture Research Office was the “Sponge Slip,” which would have replaced a Lower Manhattan parking lot with a sunken park. The idea was to guide floodwaters into the park basin and away from the subway tunnels and electrical infrastructure that Sandy crippled.
— bloomberg.com
