The complete guide to planning and design for water sustainability, as well as flooding and natural disasters.
Architects, urban planners, and urban designers, as well as water resources engineers and landscape architects will discover that Design for Flooding presents the best practices and lessons to create buildings and communities that are more resilient in the face of severe weather, climate change, and the prospect of rising sea level.
Design for Flooding covers technical and institutional issues - along with new design and business opportunities - built upon:
- Fundamentals of climate and weather, stormwater and floodplain management
- Best practices of flood-resistant design and adaption to sea level rise
- Multidisciplinary design that integrates sound ecological and engineering principles
- Innovative design and construction to protect and improve water security
From the Foreword by Daniel E. Williams, FAIA
Design for Flooding defines the need and opportunity for planners, architects, landscape architects, engineers, and conservation biologists to work together to develop the mix of inland and coastal flooding solutions required for a comprehensive response to climate change.
From the Foreword by Carol Franklin, FASLA
Design for Flooding should be a major tool for the design professions, for public agencies, and for civic activists, indeed for everyone who wishes to bring a genuinely 'intelligent' design for water to their communities. It is a call to action and demonstrates that we have the knowledge, the tools, and the capability to better manage the water system on which we depend.
A portfolio of award-winning designs illustrates practical and visionary projects to prepare for a resilient future, including:
- A case study of Climate's Long-term Impacts on Metro Boston (CLIMB) analyzes four alternatives to prepare for climate change
- A design charrette sponsored by The Regional Plan Association of New York illustrates creative concepts for waterfront revitalization and flood protection
- Lessons from the Netherlands, Japan, and the United States indicate the effectiveness of long-term preparedness planning combined with phased mitigation and renewal projects
- Examples include renovations and small buildings, showing how every project at any scale is a design opportunity to increase the sustainability and resilience of our communities, water, and ecosystem services
From the Preface
The ideas presented in this book combine many voices, over many years of conversation and professional endeavor. The concept of resilience has emerged in the past decade in both international and national responses to severe climatic impacts. The fact that those climatic impacts are in part explained by how we build on the land—the enterprise of the design and construction professions—reverses what many of us spend careers in teaching and practicing: to desin with climate, building informed by biochimatic design principles. This conception has been part of architecture writing and theory since Vitruvius wrote of climate, Sun, and wind influences within the art and science of “building well.” In early twentieth century, Frank Lloyd Wright promoted a poetic and philosophic conception of "organic architecture" in recognition of the inspiration of nature in his work. The "green thread" continued to be expressed in the 1 920s and 1930s work of Bauhaus architects, Finnish master architect Alvar Aalto, and American works of Mary Colter, Richard Neutra, the Keck Brothers, and the collaboration of Maria Telkes and Eleanor Raymond, among many others.
Now climate is influenced by design, a reversal of the vector of influence. As viewed in this book, every building project, large or small, contributes to climatic moderation or extremity in some way as part of a watershed, floodplain, or coastal environment. The line that the designer draws has global consequence.
This book thus follows an evolving approach to architecture that the Olgyay brothers defined in the 1950s as "bioclimatic design," subsequently defined by Ian McHarg as "environmental design," by Malcomb Wells as "gentle architecture," followed by "passive solar design" in the 1 970s, "regenerative design" by landscape architect John T. Lyle, and "sustainable design" after the Rio Earth Summit in the early 1990s. Each of these terms and their variations attempt some nuance to a deeply felt response of architecture and landscape architecture to the world.
This book grows out of these conversations. The challenge to define a comprehensive vision of sustainable communities evolves from formative discussions of the AlA Committee on the Environment with Bob Berkebile, Randolph Croxton, Susan Maxman, Bill McDonough, Gail Lindsay, Richard Rittelmann, Carol and Cohn Franklin, Harry Gordon, Sharon Sutton, and Pliny Fisk and Gail Vittori, to name only a brief few. The preeminence of water as formative element in design was the focus of a “watershed” symposium, Water + Design, sponsored by EPA/AlA in 2006, led by Daniel Williams and Vivian Loftness. The symposium brought together international experts around the topic of water. It demonstrated the power of collaboration of disparate fields from conservation biology sciences to civil engineering design integrated into community, landscape and building design, adding the "blue stream" to the green thread. This collaboration is central to the agenda for resilient design.
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments. Foreword (Carol Franklin, RLA, FASLA). Foreword (Daniel E. Williams, FAIA). Introduction.
Part 1: Nature of Water. Chapter 1: Weather. Chapter 2: Land and Water. Chapter 3: Flooding.
Part 2: Design with Water. Chapter 4: The Natural Landscape. Chapter 5: The Altered Landscape. Chapter 6: Design for Inland Flooding.
Part 3: Flood-Resistant Design. Chapter 7: Flood Design Analysis. Chapter 8: The Coast. Chapter 9: Flood Design Practices for Buildings.
Part 4: Design for Resilience. Chapter 10: Flood-Resistant Design for Sites and Communities. Chapter 11: Sea Level Rise. Chapter 12: Design for Resilience. Epilogue. Glossary. Index.
About the Authors
Donald Watson FAIA an architect and planner, is former chair of the Yale School of Architecture Environmental Design Program, and former professor and dean of the School of Architecture, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He received the 2002 ACSA Distinguished Professor Award and the 2005 AARC Haecker Leadership Award for Architectural Research. His publications include Climatic Building Design, winner in the Architecture and Urban Planning category of the American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence.
Michele Adams PE a water resources engineer, is principal and founder of Meliora Environmental Design in Kimberton, Pennsylvania. Her work encompasses environmentally sensitive site design and sustainable water resources engineering.
