Rising Tides Competition results
BAY Arc by SOM - Winning entry
When driving between SFO Airport and San Francisco on the edge of the Bay Area, I have always wondered what would happen when the sea level starts to rise.
Recently, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) organized an ideas competition (open to any professionals, not just architects) to address the sea level rise in the Bay Area, looking for innovative and creative solutions to bring forward a vision of a future estuarine shoreline applicable to the San Francisco Bay and beyond. 130 entries from 18 countries were submitted.
Six teams were announced as the winners, splitting a cash prize of $25,000. Among these entries we find interesting ideas, such as Faulders Studio’s laser light barrier that measures the sea level, powered by tidal energy, Kuth Ranieri Architects’s ventilated levee to balance the sea/bay water levels, or SOM’s smart membrane under the golden gate bridge.
But, as usual in some competitions, the honorable mentions bring more disruptive ideas, embracing a vision on a post-flood city instead of preventing it. There’s also humor among the honorable mentions, “Failure: Bring your boots” or “About Rising Tides: It´s the Delta, you stupid”.
Will our future be amphibious?
All the awarded entries after the break:
Winners
Wright Huaiche Yang + J. Lee Stickles
San Francisco, California
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Derek James Hoeferlin, Architect (co-lead, design + production)
Ian Caine (co-lead, design + production)
Michael Heller (research assistant)
St. Louis, Missouri
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Thom Faulders,
Faulders Studio
Berkeley, California
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DESIGN CONCEPT: SOM
Craig Hartman
DESIGN TEAM
Mark Schwettmann
Leo Chow
Geoffrey Brunn
Alex Cruz
Ross Findly
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING CONCEPT: SOM
Mark Sarkisian
Eric Long
David Shook
MARINE ENGINEERING CONCEPT: MOFFATT & NICHOL MARINE ENGINEERING
Dilip Trivedi
Richard Dornhelm
GRAPHIC DESIGN: SOM
Lonny Israel
Alexander Ng
San Francisco, California
Liz Ranieri + Byron Kuth,
Kuth Ranieri Architects
Project Team:
Byron Kuth, FAIA & LEED AP
Elizabeth Ranieri, AIA & LEED AP
Steve Const, LEED AP
Gretta Tritch
Matt Hutchinson
Mark Stacy, Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering, UC Berkeley
San Francisco, California
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Yumi Lee + Yeon Tae Kim
LANDplus Design
San Francisco, California
Entry #94
Special Thanks to:
EPRI
Giyoung Park / Architect
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Honorable Mentions
Rob Roggema, Cittaideale, concept and design
Erwin Vrensen, vr+’s+, graphic design
The Netherlands
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Perkins+Will, Patrick Vaucheret
Design team: Ben Feldmann, Roberto Vega Peralta, Jing Xiao, Tyrone Marshall, Jaepyo Park
Renderings: Chris Foyd
San Francisco, CA
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MITHUN – architecture and planning
BIONIC- landscape architecture and planning
REGENESIS – regenerative planning
NSI- wetlands planning
San Francisco, CA
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Firm: Royston Hanamoto Alley & Abey
Team members: Aditya Advani, Seth Babb, Masahiro Inoue, Sarah Kassler, Nathan Lozier, John Martin, Simon Schmid, Jordan Zlotoff
San Francisco, California
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Designer: Ghazal Jafari, B.Arch, MUD
Academic adviser: Mason White
Toronto, Canada
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Drew Adams (M.Arch)
Fadi Masoud (MLA)
Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape + Design,
University of Toronto
Toronto, Canada
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Anthony De Mari + Nicolas Norero
DI Mari + Norero Studio
Cambridge, MA
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i prefer the “failure” motives.
however, i will say this: spell check everything. for the love of god. spell check.
As I noted yesterday ( http://structurehub.com/blog/2009/07/rising-tides-competition-winners-announced-promptly-forgotten/ ), the laser-indicated barriers concept seems better for marketing then for addressing the underlying disruptions from higher waters. SOM’s flexible membrane that minimizes extreme water-level changes is the most genius…
SOM’s concept is pure bullshit…an un-maintainable, unrealistic expansion of their “put a curtainwall on it” mentality…Amongst all the entries (which I viewed today at the ferry building) theirs’ was pretty looking, but had nothing conceptually on many others…how do ships pass through…what about fish and whales, etc…the whole thing seems like a bandaid and a last minute reaction…..All of the entries that supposed the SF, CA or Federal gov would intervene with a mega project are stupid…the best entries were on the small scale, oportunistic side…things that reflect the greedy money grubin hedonistic san francisco lifestyle work the best…the people in this town move too fast – they wont wait around for the gov to build a dam for them….blah blah
When I first saw this competition I immediately thought of Vincent Callebaut’s ‘Lilypad’ http://bit.ly/167dXT (although I should really say BIG’s concept http://bit.ly/5iDkp ripped off and then beautifully rendered by Pixelab) … sorry I got side-tracked
Nevertheless there are many interesting ideas among the winners (and honourable mentions). None of them quite took the leap of saying that we float away on the water (like lilypad) – and maintain life in the bay area. The question for me is how much of a sea level rise does it take for none of these solutions to work. Sea levels have risen by over 120m ! (400ft) since the ‘ice age’ 20,000 years ago. That sort of change would certainly count.
1/5/09 BCDC: “The Commission voted to authorize the executive director to enter into a $25,000 (contract) with Meckel Design Consulting to manage an international design competition…” An additional $25,000 from federal tax money went to the awards.
Meckel, CCA Director of Planning and, conflictingly, competition organizer, coordinated the jury, and miraculously half of the “winners,” were 3 backwater CCA instructors, while the competition boasted 18 nations.
The usual are present, like CCA trustee Byron Kuth and instructor T. Faulders. K/R suggests an inane levee for the dynamic, deep waters of the bay which would destroy the existing coastline. Faulders’ lasers draw an ugly path around the bay to show the path of future neanderthal earthen dikes.
At least do some homework pseudo-professors, there already exist sophisticated dike systems in other countries that aren’t like the superficial walls you’ve marketed.
If I were a Tenegae Mutant Ninja Turtle, now I\’d say Kowabunga, dude!
Also, only one of the competition entries suggested that the displaced people move away from the bay area…all the winning entries involved massive public works projects and non-existent technology…really not sure what the ultimate point of this meeting of the minds is…Oh, wait…it’s like most arch competitions – an inbred circle-jerk!
The idea of a competition and the ensuing dialog over this subject makes it relevant and important, however it seems a greater effort should be extended to others outside the architecture/design world for inclusion. I examined this issue since 2007 from an artist, part architect, part ecologist, part cultural dynamicist perspective looking at both resistance and adaptive models that includes areas in SF like Ocean Beach which would be inundated as well – see http://www.johnroloff.com/prometheus_page1.html which shows a preliminary study of the resistance model and a brief abstract of the complete idea which sees this inquiry as only the beginning of examining the issues at stake. A full presentation of this idea was done in a public lecture for the Graduate Fine Arts Program at CCA, San Francisco, CA on April 7, 2007.