Working with Water

Coastal cities respond to the threat of rising sea levels with diverse design strategies at multiple scales.
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From Architectural Record
Michael Cockram

Learning from New Orleans

No single weather event can be tied directly to climate change. But the Gulf Coast is a sobering reminder of what can go wrong in a catastrophic storm. Since the devastation of Katrina, New Orleans−based architects Waggonner & Ball have been grounded in projects that respond to the issues of water management. But instead of solely considering holding the water back, the firm advocates a diverse approach that adds to the experience of the city. "The challenge is to find the balance between safety and beauty," says president David Waggonner. "And safety is not just levees. Any reasonable risk-reduction strategy deals with internal water and where it goes."

Waggonner & Ball's water-management scheme for one section of New Orleans includes reviving the long-ago filled and abandoned Carondelet Canal, which once connected a turning basin near the French Quarter and the Bayou St. John. The plan also incorporates a host of strategies intended to relieve the city's overburdened drainage network.

Image: Courtesy Waggonner & Ball

 

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Waggonner & Ball's proposal for reviving the Carondelet Canal and reinvigorating the Lafitte Greenway depends on techniques that treat water as a resource and help absorb, slow, and direct its flow.

Images: Courtesy Waggonner & Ball

The firm has worked on several planning projects, including a proposal to reestablish a water identity for the Lafitte Greenway, where the historic Carondelet Canal once connected a turning basin at the French Quarter to the Bayou St. John and Lake Ponchartrain beyond. The plan is one option New Orleans officials are considering. The scheme incorporates diverse strategies at different scales to absorb, slow, and direct water, such as wide parklike areas along the canal that act as water shock absorbers and bioswales - landscape elements that can remove silt and pollution from surface runoff. The intent is to keep water out of the city's overtaxed underground storm system by allowing it to evapotranspire through plantings, infiltrate the soil to replenish groundwater, or gradually flow into the canal. The plan could lessen the reliance on the mammoth pumps that not only remove storm water but also lower the natural water table of the area. This decrease in the water table is a major contributor to land subsidence - New Orleans, like Venice, is sinking.

Waggonner says that in a city that has traditionally tried to keep water out, it's hard to convince people there are times when it's better to let it in. But he adds that the Dutch have inspired many of his strategies, and they have shown that it's possible to live on land below sea level.

With centuries of experience in coastal engineering, the Netherlands provides a well-tested model of water management. The nation operates the busiest port in Europe and generates 70 percent of its gross domestic product on land that lies below sea level. In 2001 and again in 2007, the Dutch government appointed a panel of scientists and engineers called the Delta Committee to make recommendations to respond to increased risks. The committee laid out an ambitious set of projects - literally shoring up coastal areas by extending shorelines outward up to several kilometers. They also proposed adding more mechanical controls like the colossal waterway surge gates at Maeslantkering, which close during threats of surges and extremely high tides.

The Dutch are also implementing a somewhat controversial plan to breach a few inland dikes and allow water back into some of the polders - land reclaimed from the sea and protected by dikes. Climate scientists believe that some higher latitudes in northern Europe may experience increased rainfall and flooding. Hence, the Netherlands could be under increased threat from land-based flooding from rivers like the Rhine that drain a substantial part of Northern Europe. Allowing water back into some polders could provide a kind of relief valve that takes pressure off lower-lying areas.

The Dutch firm Waterstudio is spearheading one experimental project in flooding polders in Naaldwijk called New Water, which includes half land-anchored and half floating buildings. One piece of the development, a floating complex of 60 residential units known as the Citadel, is slated for completion in 2012. Waterstudio has made a specialty of buoyant architecture, having completed a flotilla of "watervillas" as well as a large floating prison docked near Amsterdam. Waterstudio principal Koen Olthuis sees his work as part of a trend for cities to move onto the water instead of away from it and envisions floating platforms, 600 feet square, acting as armatures for the urban fabric.

 

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Originally published in Architectural Record
Originally published in March 2011

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