MATTHIJS BOUW
‘Climate change
is forcing us to learn how to deal with complexity.’
Photo: One Architecture
For Lower Manhattan, Matthijs Bouw of One Architecture is working on a flood protection system that will also become an attractive public space. “We need a major overhaul of the urban infrastructure and we cannot avoid correcting what we have done wrong in the past.”
FIDI (FINANCIAL DISTRICT) SEAPORT CLIMATE RESILIENCE MASTER PLAN, NEW YORK, USA IMAGE: ONE ARCHITECTURE
Suddenly things are moving fast. The first section of the flood barrier for protecting the Lower East Side of Manhattan is almost complete. The concrete dam, with a woven pattern to break up its visual massiveness, is waiting wrapped in plastic to hinder the inevitable graffiti. Small sports fields are already available for children to play in. Walk a little further, past an old-fashioned red-brick power station, and you can see excavators going back and forth to create a raised park where most of the dam foundations will be sunk. This is where the full extent of the project's ambitions becomes evident. Its dimensions are immense, and if you think of grass, trees and paths instead of all that sand, you can imagine everything a park could offer: jogging, sports, strolling, lazing, picnics and barbecues.
More than a decade ago, in 2012, Hurricane Sandy claimed many lives and caused immense damage in Lower Manhattan. In the aftermath of the hurricane, the Rockefeller Foundation and other philanthropic organizations funded a competition under the name Rebuild by Design, aimed at directing recovery dollars from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development into resilience projects for the region. In this competition, the jury awarded the vision for the protection of Lower Manhattan developed by One Architecture and BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), the BIG U, with 335 million dollars.
A flood barrier that would be developed as a public space, tailored to the needs and desires of neighbouring communities, based on consultations with these communities and multidisciplinary research. In the vision plan, the public water barrier surrounds Lower Manhattan like a giant U. Hence the name “The Big U” given to it by One Architecture and BIG. It consists of several compartments, each of which independently protects a part of Lower Manhattan and can be closed in the event of a disaster.
Because of its size, each compartment will be developed, funded and contracted separately. The first compartment to be implemented is the East Side Coastal Resiliency. One Architecture, BIG and other partners bid for and won the contract to design it. “This project represents a real paradigm shift, especially in the US context,” explains Matthijs Bouw, founder of One Architecture, from his office in Manhattan. “In the US, emergency management as a response to disasters, with reconstruction of damaged assets, is central. The thinking is that disasters just happen, and you insure yourself against the damage they cause. But disasters like Hurricane Sandy are going to happen more often in the future, so you need to prepare and limit the damage as much as possible in advance rather than after the fact. In this new situation caused by climate change, prevention is after all much cheaper than repair. Through the Rebuild by Design process, the government has now realised that flood defence infrastructure can have multiple functions. As a result, it is no longer just a matter for engineers, but also for designers. This is how One Architecture continued to be involved. In the competition, we and our partners asked ourselves how flood defences could strengthen the social infrastructure and create a connection between neighbourhood communities and the water. We saw the Big U as a series of local solutions that needed to be developed locally. It is an extremely complex project, so many interests are involved, and so much is already filled in - only by breaking it down into ‘Small U's’ would it be possible to make it happen. The first compartment is nearing completion, the second is in preparation. We hope that with the completion of the first compartment, the funding for a third will be forthcoming.”
LOWER MANHATTAN RESILIENCY PROJECTS, NEW YORK, USA IMAGE: ONE ARCHITECTURE
An important element of the plan you have developed is consultation with local communities. How did you go about this in the first phase and what was the outcome?
“The consultation has taken place in several ways. There were workshops and public events, but also regular consultations with local community representatives and with the Community Advisory Group of East Side Coastal Resiliency, which consists of about 30 organisations. The area of Lower Manhattan is home to some of the most marginalized communities, with incomes a tenth of the Manhattan average. For a productive discussion, we needed to build up trust and etiquette to keep the dialogue going at all stages of the process. We also drew on sociological insights and research into the existing social infrastructure. For example, it became clear that it was important for East Side residents to have access to the water and for the park to have features that they would actually use. It was to become more of a residential park, not just for jogging and sports, but also for relaxing, hanging out, picnicking and grilling. It is also a premise that it will not be commercialised in any way. All the space is and will remain freely accessible, and there will be no privatisation of public functions, which would inevitably lead to exclusivity. For other needs, there are other solutions each of which responds in a refined way to the local situation. As another example, where the highway is built on pillars, the barrier underneath consists of flaps that can be folded up to stop the water in the event of a heavy storm. With benches and fitness equipment, we make the space under the highway as attractive as possible.”
The sense of urgency for protecting Manhattan from water must have been considerable in the immediate aftermath of Sandy. How do you ensure that the project maintains support over the years?
“Life in this country is anything but easy. People often work multiple jobs and are consumed by day-to-day worries about things like expensive health insurance premiums, high housing prices and childcare. This leaves little room to think about what might happen in the future. So you need to address the impacts of climate change and sea level rise as an issue of the here and now, as something that is relevant in the present moment. This means being open to the social context in which you operate. For this part of the Big U, that context is defined by a history of marginalisation and systemic discrimination against communities. If you show these groups that the project will improve their lives, if you actually deliver, you will get them on board. But the effects of climate change will be felt for many decades to come, if not much longer. Through educational projects and events, we are therefore working on what we call capacity building, so that the community will be able to cope with these impacts in the future and will continue to have a strong voice in adaptation.”
'We also drew on sociological insights and research into the existing social infrastructure'
BIG U, NEW YORK, USA IMAGE: BIG & ONE ARCHITECTURE
FIDI (FINANCIAL DISTRICT) SEAPORT CLIMATE RESILIENCE MASTER PLAN, NEW YORK, USA IMAGE: ONE ARCHITECTURE
BMCR (BROOKLYN BRIDGE - MONTGOMERY COASTAL RESILIENCY). NEW YORK, USA IMAGES: AECOM NYC LANDSCAPE STUDIO
The needs of Lower Manhattan's marginal communities are taken into account as much as possible, but the project as a whole is aimed at protecting an extraordinarily wealthy urban community. There are critics who believe that such expensive projects boost inequality. Is that a valid criticism?
“The problem is that if you give up the earning power of a country or a city, you have even less money to invest in climate resilience. The same is true of the Netherlands, with its protection of the cities that make up the Randstad conurbation. If you let go of that protection, the Randstad will go under economically within 50 years and you will no longer be able to pay for adaptation. How to move from one model to another, and how to make that transition, is a complicated puzzle. You can't wait, but at the same time there are negative effects of adapting too quickly.”
As an architect, you were trained traditionally with a focus on design. In light of the climate crisis, could you argue that the design-oriented profession has lost its relevance and that a different approach is consequently needed?
"Design hasn’t disappeared from my practice, and I’m happy to say that I still draw a lot. But there is something painful about the way architecture has recently developed. When I was growing up, architecture was mainly that of a public project. Since the turn of the millennium, in particular, it has degenerated into architecture at the service of real estate. As a result, architecture has become part of commercial strategies to make money from real estate, with little investment in the public sphere. But it is this public dimension of architecture that has always driven me when I worked mainly in the Netherlands and now, in the projects we are doing, we go around the world helping cities and communities to protect themselves from, or adapt to, the effects of the climate crisis. The fact that our firm has developed strongly in this area, and has become a global leader in urban climate adaptation, is a result of this wide interest in the public. In my view, it is only through this broadening that architecture will remain relevant. Climate change requires us to think in terms of radical difference about how we work as architects.”
ESCR (EAST SIDE COASTAL RESILIENCY). NEW YORK, USA PHOTO: LUUK KRAMER
ESCR (EAST SIDE COASTAL RESILIENCY). NEW YORK, USA . PHOTO: ONE ARCHITECTURE
ESCR (EAST SIDE COASTAL RESILIENCY). NEW YORK, USA IMAGE: ONE ARCHITECTURE
ESCR (EAST SIDE COASTAL RESILIENCY). NEW YORK, USA PHOTO: ONE ARCHITECTURE
ESCR (EAST SIDE COASTAL RESILIENCY). NEW YORK, USA IMAGE: BIG (BJARKE INGELS GROUP)
What must architects learn if they hope to continue delivering relevant work in this changing climate?
“Before the climate crisis, the environment in which people built was relatively stable. Change was slow at best, and it was still possible to respond to it. But the changes are accelerating and it is uncertain where this will lead us. It also seems that the way we have built cities is no longer sustainable. In our hubris, we thought we could go on forever using steel, concrete and fossil fuels, and that we could predict what infrastructure would be appropriate to achieve a given level of performance. But we need to radically rethink urban infrastructure and we cannot avoid correcting what we have done wrong in the past. From now on, nature will have to be involved in the design, new climate adaptation infrastructure will have to be social infrastructure, and special attention will have to be paid to marginalised groups that are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. The bottom line is that the control perspective in urban planning and architecture has disappeared. We have to learn to deal with complexity and, as architects, to see ourselves as participants in a dynamic and uncontrollable system. I have been dealing with this complexity since the beginning of my professional practice. I am not a specialist, but I have thought a lot about complex issues and I see myself more as spanning a boundary, as someone who brings together different fields of expertise.”
That sounds as if a designer hardly plays a significant role any more in the complex process of climate adaptation. But what is the role of design in this process?
“To me, design is not something that comes at the end of the process, but has a broader application. You use design to illustrate complex issues and make them negotiable. You use design to communicate with different actors who have an impact on it, for example because they own land or because they live there and are marginalised. The conversation is easy to have with a design. It creates a space for that conversation to take place, so that we can work together towards a solution that is satisfactory to all parties - and you use design to layer and integrate multiple functions and benefits in a project.”
'Design is not something that comes at the end of the process, but has a broader application.'
WATER AS LEVERAGE: SEMARANG, SEMARANG, INDONESIA IMAGE: ONE ARCHITECTURE
Outside the US, One Architecture has in recent years completed projects in India, the Philippines, Panama and the Netherlands. More than in East Side Coastal Resiliency, nature is involved in some of the projects. The book “Building with Nature. Creating, implementing and upscaling Nature-based Solutions”, published by NAI 010 Publishers, which Matthijs Bouw compiled with Erik van Eekelen, is in the same vein. How does this interest in building with nature relate to what is being created in Lower Manhattan?
“The cost of what we do to protect urban areas like Manhattan or Boston from water is immense. Obviously, this kind of infrastructure cannot be achieved just anywhere in the world.
That is why I became interested in nature-based solutions early on, and started working with Deltares, the Dutch research institute for soil and water, and EcoShape, a Dutch collective of engineering firms, knowledge institutes and non-profit organisations working on building with nature. The starting point is the question of how natural processes can be used to implement hydrological infrastructure projects, such as coastal reinforcement. The question we need to ask ourselves as designers is, if we can influence climate on a large scale, can we also overcome its adverse effects on the same scale? It's not that we already can, but I think we should at least dare to think about the problems we've created on that scale. Traditional urban tools are too limited. Because of climate change and declining biodiversity, we will have to develop nature-based solutions at scale.”