Best Practice

Introduction

Bjarke Ingels states: "We asked ourselves: What if we could envision the resilience infrastructure for Lower Manhattan in a way that wouldn’t be like a wall between the city and the water, but rather a string of pearls of social and environmental amenities tailored to their specific neighborhoods, that also happens to shield their various communities from flooding. Social infrastructure understood as a big overall strategy rooted in the local communities.”

In 3rd April, 2014, Yesterday BIG, along with 9 other teams including OMA and WXY, unveiled their proposals for "Rebuild by Design," a competition which tasks teams with improving the resiliency of waterfront communities through locally-responsive, innovative design. Each proposal was required to be "flexible, easily phased, and able to integrate with existing projects in progress." As Henk Ovink, the Principal of "Rebuild by Design" as well as the Senior Advisor to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan, stated: "Rebuild by Design is not about making a plan, but about changing a culture."

Reason to Be Selected

The BIG U, is rooted in the firm's signature concepts of social infrastructure and hedonistic sustainability. It envisions a 10-mile protective system that encircles Manhattan, protecting the city from floods and storm water while simultaneously providing public realms specific to the needs of the city's diverse communities. Bjarke Ingels states: "We asked ourselves: What if we could envision the resilience infrastructure for Lower Manhattan in a way that wouldn’t be like a wall between the city and the water, but rather a string of pearls of social and environmental amenities tailored to their specific neighborhoods, that also happens to shield their various communities from flooding. Social infrastructure understood as a big overall strategy rooted in the local communities.”

Highlights:

social infrastructure

working with the community

three customized compartments

green infrastructure

Details

SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTUR:

The BIG Team proposes to rethink infrastructure as an amenity. The team calls it social infrastructure. Infrastructure in the United States, as traditionally conceived, has not been civic, accessible, designed with interaction with the public in mind; rather, it has been imposed from without on our cities on a large scale, sometimes with terrible consequences for the urban experience. The Big U combines the mandate to create large-scale protective infrastructure with a commitment to meaningful community engagement. It fuses ‘Robert Moses’ hard infrastructure with ‘Jane Jacobs’ locally-based, community-driven sensitivity. The Big U’s flood protection will not look like a wall, and it will not separate the community from the waterfront. Rather, the very structures that protect us from the elements will become attractive centers of social and recreational activity that enhance the city and lay a positive groundwork for its future.

WORKING WITH THE COMMUNITY:

To better understand the needs of the communities in Lower Manhattan, the BIG Team analyzed earlier, non-flood-related projects in the area, projects such as the East River Esplanade, The People’s Plan (a reaction to the Esplanade), and the East River Blueway Plan. Since the community was actively involved in the design of these projects, the projects tell the story of what the community finds important. In addition, many elements of these plans are already under way.

THREE CUSTOMIZED COMPARTMENTS:

The resulting Phase 3 proposal is for three compartments that, while linked together, function independently in terms of flood protection. Each is a particular solution to the problems posed by a particular portion of the city, and each responds to the needs and wishes of the particular communities concerned.

GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE:

Green infrastructure in all three compartments contributes to both flood protection and social amenities in the Big U. Climate-change models predict more frequent heavy-precipitation events, leading to even more street flooding and combined sewer overflows (CSO) than we have already experienced in our largely water impervious city.

Conclusions

The Big U is a protective system around Manhattan, driven by the needs and concerns of its communities. Stretching from West 57th street south to The Battery and up to East 42th street, the Big U protects 10 continuous miles of low-lying geography that comprise an incredibly dense, vibrant, and vulnerable urban area. The proposed system not only shields the city against floods and stormwater; it provides social and environmental benefits to the community, an improved public realm.