ARO and dlandstudio, section showing green infiltration streets.

We move through New York City largely unconscious of the bodies of water that surround us. Our neighborhoods turn inward, onto streets and parks. Even when we’re on the waterfront our rivers and inlets remain lovely backdrops; we don’t fully understand the forces that move them and the life they support.
     In fact the city’s sea level is rising due to global warming, and could be nearly two feet higher fifty years from now. This would endanger much of the city’s existing waterfront, overloading sewers and eroding foundations. The curators of Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront, on display now at MoMA through October 11, selected five regions of the waterfront that are particularly vulnerable and asked five local design teams for their solutions.
     Their vivid proposals all highlight “soft infrastructure”, that is, broadly-based ecological interventions rather than purely structural ones. So instead of wrapping the shorelines in a concrete super-wall, the teams employ inventive planning, planting, and building to meet the challenge.
     Somewhat audaciously, three of the five schemes continue building the city out over the water. ARO and dlandstudio extend the tightly-woven fabric of downtown Manhattan outward, building porous streets from an engineered mesh of concrete and seawater plants.