What will be the effects of climate change on New York City’s decaying infrastructure? Imagine yourself in Manhattan...standing in water. Sea levels are expected to rise 2 feet by 2080 and New York, once the greatest city on earth, could eventually become our Atlantis. MoMA and PS1 teamed up to address this issue in Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront.
In an architects-in-residence program program at PS1, five interdisciplinary design teams were asked to re-envision the coastlines of New York. Their solutions, including well executed written analysis, videos, models, renderings and drawings, is currently on exhibit at the MoMA. The amount of information conveyed by these materials may be too much for some visitors. A more immersive element may have improved interaction for this group. However, those interested in the project could easily spend an afternoon here.
Imagine wind farms and elevated “solar” roads power our neighborhoods. Your apartment building hangs from an armature over a floating wetland habitat. Rooftops collect rainwater and gradually disperse it to greenspaces where our streets used to be. You travel to work on an aquatic transportation system powered by bio fuel made from algae, farmed in reclaimed oil tankers. You go to lunch in wetland “blue parks” overlooking forests rising from vast trenches -- our first line of defense against flooding. Just off the coast, ocean ecosystems are thriving on retired subway cars and recycled glass reef structures. A planned, underwater oyster habitat off the coast of Brooklyn, named “Oyster-techture”, is used to clean our coastal water. Imagine yourself in Manhattan -- a shining example to the world, of what a city can be.
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