Design Competition Offers Creative Solutions to Sea Level Rise

Written by Gail Schickele Saturday, 01 August 2009 00:31

Folding water levees, laser beam markers, and an inflatable submerged “bladder” are among winning designs to mitigate sea level rise in the Bay Area and beyond in the Rising Tides international ideas competition that garnered 131 entries from 18 countries.

The “Folding Water” infrastructure holds water back with water, explained competition juror Marcel Stive, scientific director of the Water Research Centre in Holland, of the ventilated levee design by Kuth-Ranieri Architects.

The temporary laser light system of “RAYdikes” marks virtual dikes around the Bay to raise public awareness, political capital, and instigate action for tidal zone land reclamation.

The inflatable “BayArc”’s submerged, cable-reinforced membrane anchored to the seabed uses an inflatable bladder fastened to the top edge at the sea surface to prevent extreme tide events and permit a more natural tidal exchange between the ocean and the Bay.

“We’re going for poetry,” noted Will Travis about the designs. Travis is executive director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (or BCDC, the state agency responsible for protecting San Francisco Bay), which hosted the competition sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to solicit ideas to preserve and plan for coastal resources and development.

BCDC’s illustrative maps show sea level rise from warming oceans may be 1.4 meters over the next 100 years, with water levels that could flood 82,000 acres of residential development around the Bay.

The Pacific Institute research organization reports that an estimated $62 billion worth of public and private shoreline development, affecting more than a quarter million people, could be threatened with inundation in the Bay Area alone.

Challenges addressed by the competition include:

• Re-thinking how to build communities in areas susceptible to future inundation;
• Retrofitting valuable public shoreline infrastructure such as shipping ports, highways, airports, and wastewater treatment plants;
• Protecting existing communities from flooding and extreme storms;
• Protecting wetlands; and
• Anticipating shoreline configurations.

Entries were judged on their ability to solve a meaningful sea level rise problem while being environmentally smart, simply designed, and transferable to estuaries beyond the San Francisco Bay, often integrating “green building” principles.

“San Francisco is not the place for a single idea,” stated jury panelist Walter Hood. “Taken as a whole, the six winning entries begin to tell a story about adaptation to sea level rise.”

The international jury of professionals in the fields of landscape architecture, geomorphology, architecture, engineering, and journalism selected the six winners who shared a $25,000 award. Seven additional entries won in an honorable mention category with no prize money.

“We felt that it was critical to address the cause of sea rise as much as the consequence,” explained Patrick Vaucheret of Perkins+Will, whose entry “Embracing the Rise” received honorable mention. “Our concept of ‘embracing the rise’ is to turn the rise into a positive force to over time heal filled shorelines and transform waterfront urban areas into self-sustained communities.”

The winners are Thom Faulders of Berkeley with “RAYdike,” Derek Hoeferlin of St. Louis with “The 100-Year Plan,” Yumi Lee of San Francisco with “Evolutionary Recovery,” Elizabeth Ranieri and Byron Kuth of San Francisco with “Folding Water: A Ventilated Levee for a Living Estuary,” Pam Raymond of San Francisco with “BayARC,” and Wright Huaiche Yang of San Francisco with “Topographical Shifts at the Urban Waterfront.”

“San Francisco Bay is unique on this earth because the estuary provides options,” said Stive. “Since the Bay is not fully urbanized, the Bay Area community has the opportunity to recalibrate it in a way that can accommodate sea level rise. It is a very important moment in the evolution of coastal processes,” he said.

The six winning and seven honorable mention entries may be viewed online at www.risingtidescompetition.com.