Thursday, March 25, 2010

Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City has a new exhibit of keen interest to everyone in the adaptation business (March 24 through October 11): MoMA and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center joined forces to address one of the most urgent challenges facing the nation’s largest city: sea-level rise resulting from global climate change. Though the national debate on infrastructure is currently focused on “shovel-ready” projects that will stimulate the economy, we now have an important opportunity to foster new research and fresh thinking about the use of New York City's harbor and coastline. As in past economic recessions, construction has slowed dramatically in New York, and much of the city’s remarkable pool of architectural talent is available to focus on innovation.

An architects-in-residence program at P.S.1 (November 16, 2009–January 8, 2010) brings together five interdisciplinary teams, including Architecture Research Office (ARO), to re-envision the coastlines of New York and New Jersey around New York Harbor and to imagine new ways to occupy the harbor itself with adaptive “soft” infrastructures that are sympathetic to the needs of a sound ecology. These creative solutions are intended to dramatically change our relationship to one of the city’s great open spaces.

This installation presents the proposals developed during the architects-in-residence program, including a wide array of models, drawings, and analytical materials.

Sunset over New York City. In "Flug und Wolken" (Flight and Clouds), Manfred Curry, Verlag F. Bruckmann, München (Munich), 1932. Image from United States Coast and Geodetic Survey

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