7 Architects On How To Design For Disaster

A year after Hurricane Sandy struck the United States, destroying houses and public infrastructure along the Eastern Seaboard, we reached out to several architects and posed two questions: What did you learn from Sandy? And how can architects prepare for the next storm? Their responses, edited and condensed, are below.––Eds

One of the obvious things architects can do is design their buildings that are within the flood zones to withstand the flood. We're doing a project for Duke University, which is in flood areas, on the coast. We placed the building almost 30 feet above sea level, and the whole building is designed to withstand winds of 140 mph. Buildings on the coast need a lot of structural resistance to the wind itself. And of course, water is a big issue. We placed the science building at Duke very high above sea level and are allowing the first–floor spaces to get destroyed––the first floor is programmed such that it wouldn't be a disaster if it got wiped out.––As told to Carey Dunne

In the 25 years since, our practice advocates a multidisciplinary approach to shaping sites and engaging infrastructures. At our newly completed park at Hunter's Point South, 88% of the shoreline is now soft, which means that it is designed to absorb a severe influx of water. The roof of the park pavilion is designed and constructed to resist hurricane–force winds. This park now represents a first line of defense for the surrounding community, which sat four feet underwater a year ago during Hurricane Sandy.

Infrastructure is often incorrectly perceived as hard and inflexible. These same considerations apply for landlocked sites as well. At the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, our rain gardens and 10,000–square–foot green roof are able to absorb a substantial amount of water without damaging the new structure or this historic site. In this way, we can rely on soft infrastructure that acts as a giant sponge to collect and gradually release large quantities of water over time, instead of all at once. It is our belief that it is now time to design alternate strategies that support resilient and pliable sites capable of absorbing cycles of extreme, unpredictable events.––As told to Suzanne LaBarre

It is important to look at small–scale solutions and legislative guidelines to help prevent loss of life and property. The grand and sometimes epic conceptual thinking is useful, but it should be balanced with immediacy. Simple flood protection can easily be implemented in building construction to ensure their contents are protected better. Beyond this, we must focus on landscape design that augments the natural needs of shorelines and basins where flooding may occur. Educating people who live in flood–prone zones should be more extensive than simply posting evacuation plans. In some places, there are credits given to those who design and inhabit shoreline conditions responsibly, measured by their inclusion of environmentally sensitive planning. ––As told to Belinda Lanks

Architects need to learn about those soft systems, and landscape architects who do know about them need to develop a richer language and more varieties of nature–based systems. Architects pay little attention to sources of energy, and to where they are placed. Both are issues that have moved to the head of the list and cannot be treated as something the mechanical engineers alone will place in the buildings architects design.––As told to Sammy Medina

One of the most basic things architects can do is look at the levels of buildings and start building more resilient structures, asking questions about various scenarios. What's going to happen when it floods? What about when the power goes out? Can you open the windows? Is there a place to plug in? And we need to look at the specific effects of Sandy on every type of residential building, so that our rebuilding efforts are not just based on theory but on actual data.––As told to Carey Dunne

As landscape architects, we are trained to think about larger systems and networks that go beyond project boundaries. This is especially important when considering how to make a project resilient. In addition to raising key infrastructure and utilities and developing hard systems (floodwalls, revetments, levees, and bulkheads), there are a number of soft systems (wetlands, beaches, dunes, and parklands) that can be integrated into projects to help absorb storm and flood events while also enriching biodiversity and open–space amenities. Edges between land and water are where these resilient systems need to be developed, avoiding singular "walls" where possible and seeking instead to thicken thresholds, margins, and intertidal zones.––As told to Suzanne LaBarre

[Belinda Lanks, Carey Dunne, and Sammy Medina contributed reporting]