by Russell Boniface
Associate Editor

Summary: New to this year’s Accent on Architecture gala during last month’s Grassroots conference was the announcement and awarding of the Latrobe Prize, a biennial $100,000 award to support a two-year program of research selected by jury review for its promise to advance professional knowledge in architecture. The 2007 Latrobe Prize was awarded for the proposal, “On the Water, A Model for the Future: A Study of New York and Jersey Upper Bay,” which focuses on New York City’s harbor but can be a model for any waterfront area. College of Fellows Chancellor Frank Lucas, FAIA, presented the award to principal investigator Guy Nordenson.

Central Park on the water
The “On the Water” research project is the first major effort by the new Center for Architecture, Urbanism and Infrastructure at the Princeton University School of Architecture. The plan presents ideas for future waterfront development along the New York and New Jersey Upper Bay, such as parks, while also addressing precautions, such as flooding caused by rising sea levels.

Guy Nordenson, professor, structural engineering, Princeton University School of Architecture and founder of Guy Nordenson and Associates, New York, was delighted to receive the Latrobe Prize. “The appeal of the project to the College of Fellows is the same as its appeal to the team, which is a chance to bring architects, engineers, and others together to think about the possibility of using the challenges associated with climate change as a way to rethink the character of the waterfront, in particular the New York Upper Bay, but also by extension other similar regions around the country.”

According to the proposal, there is an opportunity to recognize the bay as a water-bound “Central Park,” a “common ground that can be a meeting place and cross roads on the water” through greening the land parallel to the water with parks, increasing water-based transit such as ferries, and continuing to develop waterfront residential and commercial building. For many waterfront areas lining the bay, post-industrial damage and transportation hubs have prevented development. The “Central Park” concept proposes a “waterfront reflecting the interplay of the built and natural environment.”

But to conceive this concept, rising sea levels caused by global warming, changes in precipitation, and increasing storms need to be addressed. The weather phenomena, plus global pollutants, will affect the shorelines’ soil, water, vegetation, and wildlife, all in turn affecting future design decisions for livability and recreation.

In the plan, the team proposes to:

• Study the urban ecology of the harbor and its waterways, which includes edges, coastlines, watersheds, geological composition, and tidal variation
• Propose new public transportation infrastructural corridors linking the waterfronts of New York and New Jersey, e.g., water taxis
• Investigate the urban consequences of possible global warming-induced flooding scenarios.

Soft and hard approach to waterfront flooding
“One of the dialectics is between a soft and a hard approach to flooding,” Nordenson explains. “That is what we have seen in the Mississippi region and other places around the world. You can either try to control flooding by building levees and barriers of different kinds, or you can accommodate flooding by allowing wetlands to absorb overflow and make that overflow part of the ecology.”

Nordenson, who is also involved in the New York City Art Commission that reviews projects on city property, cites a promising redevelopment project for an old waterfront Navy base on Staten Island, along the southern end of the harbor. “The design for the waterfront is a combination of wetlands and boardwalks. It’s a good example of where one can take a soft and a hard approach to the [waterfront] edge that is compatible.

“I imagine one of the things we will find is what the characteristics of a water body in a place like that can be, because at the moment it doesn’t really have a strong character.”

Project will serve as a stimulus for more research
AIA College of Fellows Chancellor Frank Lucas, FAIA, enthuses, “The College is truly excited about Guy Nordenson’s winning proposal, ‘On the Water,’ and its potential for major contributions to our urban environs and our waterfront cities. This is exactly the quality of scholarly research envisioned by The College of Fellows in the Latrobe Prize.”

The study also plans urban water systems research, “what if” GIS-based mapping disaster mitigation analyses, intra-coastal waterways studies, ecological studies of migration corridors, and multi-media video works on the New York/New Jersey waterfront history and its current conditions.

What advice does Nordenson have for architects planning to build on the waterfront? “Stay tuned.”