After Hurricane Sandy, rebuilding by design
Worldwide call for submissions sees two design projects target Asbury
For the past few months, two teams involved in a competition that seeks to award funds for projects that promote innovative and resilient designs in coastal regions affected by Hurricane Sandy have been on the ground gathering data in Asbury Park.
The teams are a part of the Rebuild by Design competition created by members of President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Task Force. By the end of the competition, the top design teams will be given Community Development Block Grant Disaster Relief funds to put their ideas into action, according to Henk Ovink, the former Dutch Director General and Senior Advisor to Secretary Shaun Donovan of Housing and Urban Development [HUD].
Over 140 interdisciplinary teams of architects, engineers and scientists from all over the world submitted project proposals for Sandy affected areas that stretched from New Jersey to Connecticut, according to Ovink, but have since been pared down to ten.
Asbury Park’s unique urban landscape on the shore coupled with its three coastal lakes was what attracted the teams to select the area for their projects, according to Jerome Chou, a special project manager from the Rebuild be Design competition.
Chou and representatives from two of the design teams made a presentation to the Asbury Park City Council on Wednesday night, as it will require the work of getting stakeholders in the area on board to bring their designs to fruition if they are selected as one of the winners of the competition.
The two teams, Sasaki/Rutgers/Arup, and HR&A Advisors, Inc. with Cooper, Robertson & Partners, have been talking to stakeholders in the area and gathering data for proposals they will submit to HUD at the end of March, Chou said.
“Of all the places we looked at in different areas, Asbury Park offers a diverse array of conditions that could serve as prototypes other coastal communities in need of resilient design,” said Earl Jackson, an architect for Cooper Robertson.
His team is focused on commercial corridors that are valuable to the region, he said.
“They are the lifeblood of the community, and they are places where people are going to gather and come back to first [after major storms],” he said.
Designer Brie Hensold’s team, made up of researchers from Massachusetts-based design firm Sasaki Associates, Rutgers University and ARUP consulting engineer and design team, which holds offices in New Hyde Park, are focused on flood protection, recreation, other community benefits beyond community protection.
“We are trying to come up with project and design solutions that contribute both to flood protection from the ocean side as well as from upper parts of the watershed in terms of flooding,” she said.
The two teams will be giving public presentation of the specifics of their projects in the coming months, Henshold said.
Chou will also be holding public events through the “Scale it Up,” arm of the Rebuild be Design competition, he said. Scale it Up’s intention is to highlight some of the best ideas coming out of the competition along with the scale of the initiative, the underlying goal being to make the general public aware that the challenges they face during this period of post-Sandy recovery are common throughout the region.
Scale it Up is working with local residents and nonprofits to organize a walking tour that would bring people from around Asbury Park together to showcase some of the design opportunities the teams are proposing.
On March 27 and 28 an exhibition for the entire Rebuild by Design competition will be on view for the public. Whether it will be located in New Jersey or New York is not currently known at this time, Henshold said.
Ovink was born and raised in the Netherlands where he worked as the director of special planning and water affairs.
“It’s something the Dutch are very good at, engineering and design when it comes to water,” he said.
After Hurricane Sandy, Ovink said the federal government “responded quickly and smart” in allocating Sandy relief funds to start the process of rebuilding and getting people back in their businesses and their homes.
In treating Sandy “not just as an an incident but as a part of a changing climate” they brought on Ovink to help rethink the future of the shore, so he helped initiate the Rebuild by Design competition.
“It is my conviction that innovation does not start or flourish in little rooms with scientists, it starts out on the ground,” he said.
The Rebuild by Design competition is an initiative of the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, with advice from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in collaboration with the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University, Municipal Art Society of New York, Regional Plan Association and Van Alen Institute.
[Correction: A previous version of this article identified the two teams as Sasaki and Rutgers/ARUP. The two teams are Sasaki/Rutgers/Arup and HR&A Advisors, Inc. with Cooper, Robertson & Partners. It also incorrectly identified Earl Jackson as a member of the Sasaki/Rutgers/ARUP team.]
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