Reimagining New York’s Waterfront

An Interview with Barry Bergdoll

On July 15, Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), will present the 2010 L’Enfant Lecture on City Planning and Design in Chicago. During the program, Bergdoll will speak about MoMA’s new exhibition Rising Currents which invited five interdisciplinary teams of designers to re-envision the coastlines around New York Harbor with adaptive infrastructures that are sympathetic to the needs of a sound ecology. National Building Museum Online spoke with Bergdoll about the exhibition.

Installation shot of the Rising Current exhibition at MoMA which is on display through October 11.

Photo by Jason Mandella, © The Museum of Modern Art.

National Building Museum (NBM) Online: The Rising Currents exhibition investigates the impact of global climate change on the built environment–specifically the threat of sea levels rising on the New York area. What prompted MoMA to address the issue of climate change?
 
Barry Bergdoll: Two years ago, we decided to develop an occasional series of small, focused shows that could deal with pressing contemporary issues with less advance planning than our major loan shows. Climate change was one of these, so we seized the opportunity to expand upon the extraordinary research done by the Latrobe team [a multidisciplinary Princeton University-affiliated group led by Guy Nordenson, structural engineer with Catherine Seavitt, landscape designer and Adam Yarinsky, architect. The group explored the New York/New Jersey Upper Bay region’s need for “soft” ecological solutions to reduce water damage, rather than “hard” systems such as concrete dams] on the impact of climate change on the harbor of New York and the Hudson Estuary. The fact that the research explicitly called for future solutions from the design professionals seemed to call out for a coordinated response.
 
NBM Online: How did you choose the five locations that are featured in the exhibition? What criteria were used?

Matthew Baird Architects’ proposal for the Bayonne Shipping piers includes a land berm for protection, an elevated “solar path” for vehicles and pedestrians, and a new glass recycling facility to produce large “jacks” that can be stacked underwater to create a reef.

Courtesy Matthew Baird Architects.

Bergdoll: The sites were essentially those that had been identified by the Latrobe team study, now published as On the Water: Palisade Bay (Hatje Cantz and MoMA, 2010). Since there was such a considerable amount of important research on these sites included in the book, this gave the teams involved in the MoMA study an enormous head start.  The sites encompass a substantial percentage of the waterfront in lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the New Jersey coastline facing the city. 

Individually, each one has interesting characteristics that make the proposed solutions applicable to other areas in New York and other cities. Taken together, it comprises a new vision of a 21st century New York City region centered on one of its great natural assets: the harbor.

NBM Online: The five teams each took very different and creative approaches to the challenge of rising waters. Did any designs surprise you?

Rendering for SCAPE’s Oyster-tecture which proposes repurposing the Gowanus Canal as an oyster hatchery. The oysters would naturally filter contaminated harbor water, and the oyster netting also slows waves and protects the shoreline.

Courtesy SCAPE.

Bergdoll: I was particularly surprised by Matthew Baird's holistic approach to the problem and his brilliant inclusion of proposals that redefine the city's relationship to waste and recycling, all while creating new landscapes that are at once productive and recreational. Too often these two aspects are seen as mutually exclusive.

Kate Orff and Scape Studio's handling of the Gowanus Canal as a gigantic oyster hatchery or FLUPSY (Fluid Up-Weller System) was also a surprise. Even though the cultivation of oysters has been a popular discussion of late, Scape Studio’s proposal has a very original design approach.
 
NBM Online: What has been the reaction of the public to the exhibition and accompanying blogposts?

Bergdoll: While we had hoped that the web site itself might become a forum for lively public debate to a far greater extent than it has thus far, the public reaction in terms of visitor numbers has been enormously gratifying.

Architecture Research Office and dlandstudio's New Urban Ground transforms Lower Manhattan with an infrastructural ecology.

Courtesy Architecture Research Office and dlandstudio.

NBM Online: Do you have future plans to explore the effects of climate change on the built environment?
 
Bergdoll: We do not have specific plans, but as this exhibition is one of a series of five to explore contemporary issues, I think it would be interesting to expand upon this theme in the future. For the moment, we are contemplating a range of other issues of equal urgency in which we are eager to demonstrate the central role that can be played by the design professions.

The L’Enfant Lecture on City Planning and Design is co-sponsored by the National Building Museum and the American Planning Association.

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