Credit: Team OMA
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, spurred by the devastation that storm wrought last year, has collaborated with New York University's Institute for Public Knowledge to host the Rebuild by Design competition. Earlier this week, 10 teams each presented various projects to improve the infrastructure of the New York area and make the region less vulnerable to the next natural disaster.
The teams feature experts from various disciplines, from landscape architecture to arts and cultural planning. From August to October, each team researched and developed three to five design concepts. To get the full scope of what residents and local business owners had to deal with during Sandy, the team members went out into the field. Their proposed design concepts address issues caused by Sandy in New Jersey, Connecticut, and the New York metropolitan area.
For example, Team OMA's Comprehensive Strategy plan aims to implement more hard infrastructure and soft landscape in Hoboken, N.J. to protect the city from storm surges, and a circuit of pumps to assist with drainage. Another of OMA's proposals focuses on improved communications during natural disasters, including repurposing billboards in Times Square in case of an emergency.
Team PennDesign/OLIN wants to bolster the eastern edge of Staten Island. Neighborhoods such as New Dorp Beach and Midland Beach were inundated with 16 feet of water during Sandy's peak storm surge. The team wants to reshape low ground and creeks beds along the five-mile coastal plain and elevate new homes and recreational spaces on strategically placed mounds.
A jury of infrastructure experts will whittle down all the design ideas and pick one concept for each of the 10 teams to undertake. The announcement comes in November, and from there the teams have until March to refine their concepts into implementable, fundable plans of action. Those proposals will be judged again in April, and the winners have the chance to carry out their plans with grants from the federal government as well as private and public funding. We'll keep you updated once the winners are announced.
