2016 ASLA 分析及规划类荣誉奖：曼哈顿BIG U防护性景观规划 Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and P

▲ 同时它也将提升城市公共空间的景观质量，以及相邻街区建筑的价值。

. . . it will also enhance public space and promote community building. Photo Credit: BIG—Bjarke Ingels Group

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy slammed into New York with unprecedented force, resulting in 43 deaths, 90,000 inundated buildings, untenable living conditions for 2 million residents, and approximately $19 billion in damages. The storm radically altered local understanding of the threats of climate change. FEMA’s new flood-risk zones, revised after Sandy, include 10 miles of coastline in Manhattan alone, home to 285 million built square feet, 21,000 businesses, the New York Stock Exchange and Financial District, attractions that draw 57.2 million annual visitors, and 200,000 residents (including 95,000 low-income, elderly, or disabled residents). Through the “Rebuild by Design” competition, City and Federal government challenged the design community to develop innovative approaches to protect the

coast and its inhabitants from future inundation. In Manhattan, the winning idea was the BIG U.

The BIG U wraps the coast of Manhattan from West 54th Street to East 40th in a ribbon of protective landscapes that defend neighborhoods from storms and sea level rise while providing locally-needed cultural, recreational, and socio-economic benefits.

The idea for the BIG U emerged during Mayor Bloomberg’s Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency. Confronted with the need for 14’ high protective barriers and standard, featureless seawall designs, the landscape architect envisioned a different approach: protective infrastructure that enriched, rather than deadened, the waterfront, its habitat, and its relationship to upland communities. The firm sketched a series of innovations: landscaped berms with sea grass and habitat supports, levees that doubled as skate parks and amphitheaters, sea walls that supported pop-up cafés and passive recreation. During Rebuild by Design, the landscape architect teamed with

internationally-renowned architects and engineers to expand these multi-dimensional designs into a vision of hedonistic sustainability that could avert billions of dollars in future climate-change related damages while creating new economic

opportunities, tourist attractions, social service outlets, and recreation spaces for a city that intends to grow into the future. The BIG U comprises a sequence of contiguous compartments that protect a series of topographically discrete flood zones; together these compartments form a shield that will enable New York to thrive in the face of climate change. Protective interventions, design choices, and amenities in each

compartment are tailored to the needs, desires, and character of the coastal neighborhoods protected. Compartmentalization allows for incremental project implementation and financing, and preserves the function of the overall protective system should any individual section fail. For Rebuild by Design, the BIG U focused on three compartments hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy: C1, from 23rd Street through East River Park to Montgomery Street; C2, which encompasses the area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges; and C3, which extends south from the Brooklyn Bridge to The Battery.

In C1, a 15-foot continuous, undulating berm delineates a new topography for East River Park that safeguards the FDR Drive and upland neighbors. New pedestrian circulation routes, a bicycle path, and frequent pedestrian bridges enhance local connection to the waterfront, erasing the barrier of the highway.

Deployable street-end walls preserve traffic flow and protect the 14th Street Con Edison substation. Park programming, guided by stakeholder input, provides amenities tailored to park’s immediate neighbors, while the striking views and variegated landscapes attract visitors. Upland, the landscape architect employs bioswales and rain gardens to enhance local urban experience and create green corridors that lead to park entrances. This portion of the BIG U was awarded $335 million by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and will be built by 2022.

C2 combines a continuous, curvilinear 4-foot bench that spans the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, providing protection during lesser storms, with deployable flood barriers that offer protection against wave action and storm surge. The low-profile bench maintains views to the water and carves out new spaces for recreation, markets, social services, and more. In a longer-range vision for this area, the landscape architect would thread a berm system through presently featureless public housing campuses, turning them into flood-protective landscapes that manage storm water and integrate recreation, agriculture, social services, and economic opportunities. C3 is an area of profound economic and cultural importance to