Archinect - News

NYC completes work on East Side Coastal Resiliency project's first phase, Stuyvesant Cove Park in Manhattan

2023-06-02T17:57:00-04:00

This Wednesday marked the long-awaited opening of BIG’s planned Stuyvesant Cove Park in Manhattan, marking an end to what was for some a contentious process that drew ire from various community groups on the two-year path towards its eventual completion.

Commissioned to be a first-line response to the damage caused to the city during 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, the park becomes the second completed phase of the $1.45 billion East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) project and will be joined later in the summer by an additional segment between East 18th and East 20th Streets.

The city’s Deputy Mayor of Operations, Meera Joshi, said: “Preserving and enhancing public spaces with waterfront views, must be an objective for all coastal resiliency projects. The opening of this phase of ESCR comes at a time when residents will benefit from its design the most, and not just because it’s the start of hurricane season, but also because the warm weather is here.”

Image courtesy NYC Department of Design...

BIG's 'Humanhattan 2050' promotes resilient design for NYC waterfront at the Venice Architecture Biennale

2018-06-20T14:40:00-04:00

Lower Manhattan could be the first to test out an innovative system that is being proposed as a way to protect cities from rising sea levels and future storms. Called “Humanhattan 2050,” a visionary idea from Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) that’s on view in the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, the project not only proposes new infrastructure to safeguard the waterfront for the next hundred years, it will also make these spaces more accessible and enjoyable.

Image via @BIGstertweets/Twitter.

Avid Archinect readers will remember the "Humanhattan 2050" scheme from its initial iteration, BIG's 2014 Rebuild by Design competition-winning proposal "The BIG U" in response to the most devastating storm ever to hit New York, Hurricane Sandy, and the need for resilient, disaster-prepared city planning.

Image via @BIGstertweets/Twitter.

"The 'Humanhattan 2050' exhibit for the Venice Architecture Biennale is a vision that expands upon BIG’s winning idea by enlarging the boundaries of Lower Manhattan with a building development created on an extension of land it cleverly calls MOMA, which is short for MOre MAnhattan," writes Paul Laster for the Observer.

How Rebuild By Design influenced disaster planning in U.S. cities

2017-01-23T17:25:00-05:00

[Henk] Ovink’s approach called for a systematic rethinking of American traditional disaster response: to simply rebuild whatever was destroyed...In the US, the Rebuild By Design competition represents a dramatic shift in disaster planning, adopting a more comprehensive and collaborative research and design approach to address complex problems and improve resiliency...The competition was widely hailed as a success, but there was room for improvement before its approach could be replicated.

What's next for Rebuild By Design? Following the success of its 2013 competition, Rebuild By Design — now its own organization — is already working to continue helping U.S. cities prepare for climate change and potential natural disasters. In the article, the group looks back at how their approach has evolved and talks about their upcoming Resilient By Design competition for the SF Bay Area.

Designing around sea-level rise in New York

2016-07-05T17:56:00-04:00

Building walls around a city is an idea that is as old as cities themselves. In the Middle Ages, walls were built to keep out invading armies. Now they are built to keep out Mother Nature. [...] As far as walls go, the Big U is designed to be a nice one ("a wall with benefits," as one urban designer puts it). It was one of the winning proposals in Rebuild by Design, a $930 million competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development...

The article describes New York as having more at stake when it comes to sea-level rise than any other city in the world. A bunch of islands in a coastal estuary, New York is uniquely at risk. And, as the largest financial hub in the world with some of the most expensive real estate in the country, the costs of losing entire neighborhoods, such as that around Wall St., are unfathomable.

For more responses to the risks posed by sea-level rise to New York, check out these links:

Rebuild by Design Wins Innovation Award

2015-06-09T13:37:00-04:00

Each year, the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) bestows its Walter Gellhorn Innovation Award to a federal agency with the best model practice that can be adopted government-wide. Today, ACUS announced that the 2015 Walter Gellhorn Innovation Award is being presented to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Rebuild by Design Competition.

There's something of a mise-en-abyme quality to a competition winning an award, but it's a good occasion to remember the Rebuild by Design was, after all, not quite your regular competition. Organized in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and funded primarily by the US Department of Housing and Development and the Rockefeller Foundation, the competition gathered some of the brightest names in architecture and the six winning proposals will actually be implemented.

Harriet Tregoning, HUD's Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development, states, "We're absolutely thrilled to receive this recognition on behalf of the many partners who came together to think of new ways to consider the challenge of how we prepare for natural disasters."

Take a look at winning projects here.

Relocation or Adaptation: Creating resilience against natural disaster

2014-06-23T15:34:00-04:00

U.S. disaster rebuilding has traditionally focused on merely replacing what has been lost. But a little-noticed federal design competition, Rebuild by Design, has done something different: engage communities to develop a more porous relationship between land and water that recognizes the dynamism of rising seas and more violent storms...

Relocation or Adaptation: Preparing for Global Warming

2014-06-19T13:11:00-04:00

"...just as planning for response to an industrial accident doesn’t make an industrial accident more likely, so too planning for relocations should not make them more likely... It is .... likely that the slow-onset effects of climate change will lead many to voluntarily migrate in anticipation that conditions will worsen. Those who are left behind – and who will need government assistance to relocate – thus may be particularly vulnerable."

The pressure to start preparing for inevitable relocations due to global warming and the resultant rise in sea levels is growing for many communities around the world. For some, the time for preparation is already running out and the time for action is now. In the United States, the first "climate refugees" are in the largely-native communities along Alaska's coastline. Many of the small island nations of Oceania are beginning to ask their neighbors for asylum preemptively. This will certainly present one of the most challenging realities facing architects in the future as the global refugee population begins to increase. An important strategy will be to learn from existing "refugee cities" such as Zaatari in Lebanon, currently the country's fourth largest city. Populated by people fleeing the violence in neighboring Syria, a current water shortage crisis proves that, today, nearly every situation is in some ways affected by environmental conditions.

For places without as drastic a d...

A closer look into “The BIG U”, BIG’s winning proposal for Rebuild By Design

2014-06-03T19:22:00-04:00

From yesterday's announcement of the Rebuild By Design winners by the U.S. Department of HUD, we've got more details behind "The BIG U" by the BIG Team, who had one of the six winning propoals. The BIG-led consortium was awarded $335 million to implement their proposal for New York's Lower Manhattan, with the goal to increase the neighborhood's resiliency to future storm disasters. And with a name like "The BIG U", one can only be curious to find out more.

Read more about the proposal on Bustler.

U.S. Department of HUD announces the Rebuild By Design winners

2014-06-02T20:40:00-04:00

The winners of the Rebuild By Design competition were finally revealed! The global competition sought out the best local and resilient design solutions that would help rebuild the Eastern Seaboard cities affected by Hurricane Sandy...Out of the 10 invited multidisciplinary teams, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) selected the six winners, who were announced today by Secretary Shaun Donovan.

BIG U by the BIG Team for New York, New York

Living with the Bay: A Comprehensive Regional Resiliency Plan for Nassau County’s South Shore by the Interboro Team for Long Island, New York

New Meadowlands: Productive City + Regional Park by MIT CAU + ZUS + URBANISTEN for The Meadowlands, New Jersey

Resist, Delay, Store, Discharge: A Comprehensive Strategy for Hoboken by OMA for Hoboken, New Jersey

Hunts Point Lifelines by PennDesign/OLIN for Bronx, New York

LIVING BREAKWATERS by SCAPE / Landscape Architecture for Staten Island, New York

Winning design solutions will be implemented through CDBG-DR funding in addition to other public and private-sector funding sources.

Find out more on Bustler.

The final proposals of the 10 shortlisted Rebuild by Design teams

2014-04-08T17:18:00-04:00

The ten Rebuild by Design finalist teams spent the past eight months doing intensive research and engaging with local communities to find local and resilient solutions to rebuild the Eastern Seaboard cities affected by Hurricane Sandy...Each team presented their final proposals to the public at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, NJ late last week. Secretary Shaun Donovan of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will announce the winning projects later this spring.

BIG, WXY + West 8, OMA, Sasaki Associates, Interboro Partners, and notable universities are only a few of the multidisciplinary team leaders in this global group of finalists.

While we wait for the winning results, check out the final proposals below.

BIG U by the BIG team
Location: New York, New York

The Commercial Corridor Resiliency Project by HR&A Advisors, Inc. with Cooper, Robertson & Partners
Location: Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York; Far Rockaway, Queens, New York; Asbury Park, New Jersey

Living with the Bay: A Comprehensive Regional Resiliency Plan for Nassau County’s South Shore by the Interboro team
Location: Long Island, New York

New Meadowlands: Productive City + Regional Park by MIT CAU + ZUS + URBANISTEN
Location: The Meadowlands, New Jersey

Resist, Delay, Store, Discharge: A Comprehensive Strategy for Hoboken
by OMA
Location: Hoboken, New Jersey

Hunts Point Lifelines by PennDesign/OLIN
Location: Hunts Point, Bronx, NY

RESILIENCE + THE BEACH by Sasaki/Rutgers/Arup
Location: Jersey Shor...

Rebuild by Design - The Ten Stage One Finalist Teams

2013-08-14T14:20:00-04:00

In a post yesterday, we already featured one of the ten submissions which emerged as Stage One Nominees in the Rebuild by Design competition. Here's now also the complete list of the shortlisted design teams as recently announced by the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force.

Office of Metropolitan Architecture with Royal Haskoning DHV; Balmori Associaties; R/GA; and HR&A Advisors.
Bjarke Ingels Group with One Architecture; Starr Whitehouse; James Lima Planning & Development; Green Shield Ecology; Buro Happold; AEA Consulting; and Project Projects.
Sasaki Associates with Rutgers University and ARUP.
Interboro Partners with the New Jersey Institute of Technology Infrastructure Planning Program; TU Delft; Project Projects; RFA Investments; IMG Rebel; Center for Urban Pedagogy; David Rusk; Apex; Deltares; Bosch Slabbers; H+N+S; and Palmbout Urban Landscapes.
PennDesign/OLIN with PennPraxis, Buro Happold, HR&A Advisors, and E-Design Dynamics.
WXY architecture + urban design / West 8 Urban Design & Landscape Architecture with ARCADIS Engineering and the Stevens Institute of Technology, Rutgers University; Maxine Griffith; Parsons the New School for Design; Duke University; BJH Advisors; and Mary Edna Fraser.
HR&A Advisors with Coope...

WXY+West 8 to participate in Rebuild by Design competition

2013-08-13T16:19:00-04:00

The New York-Netherlands team, WXY + West 8, was shortlisted to advance to the Analysis and Design stages for the "Rebuild by Design" competition on August 9. Rebuild by Design is a four-stage regional competition to find locally contextual and resilient solutions to rebuild the Eastern Seaboard communities affected by Hurricane Sandy.

The nine other world-class teams shortlisted are: OMA, BIG, Sasaki, PennDesign/OLIN, HR&A, Interboro Partners, MIT/CAU + Dutch Delta Collective, SCAPE, and unabridged.

UPDATE: Rebuild by Design - The Ten Stage One Finalist Teams