Planning For Sea Level Rise: NY

As rising sea levels become more inescapable every day, some designers are planning for the future and creating concepts for how we might ultimately be forced to live. Turkish architects Sinan Gunay and Mustafa Bulgur, who have accepted our watery fate, say forget trying to hold the seas back, and just build higher. City(e)scape is their proposal for a new landscape built 70 meters above the water and attached to existing skyscrapers, creating a new ground plane.

When sea levels rise, the ground in parts of NYC will be swallowed up, leaving skyscrapers as pillars in the water. City(e)scape proposes to hook into these buildings at a higher level above the sea and create catwalks and a series of cubic structures strung between buildings. New streets would look something like the Highline Park, elevated above the water with vegetation as well as areas for growing food.

Building the new plane high enough would also allow for an increase in the sea levels, while a series of structures and connectors would lead towards the water for sea access. Some of the cubic structures would also be specifically designed for food production and water storage.