Nature-Inclusive Waterfront for East Side Coastal Resiliency
2023-2025
Waterfront Design: Armor units, tidal pools, and ecological piles
Project Team: AKRF, Siteworks, Posillico
The Goal
The East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) Project is a coastal protection initiative, jointly funded by the City of New York and the federal government originally under the Rebuild by Design process, aimed at reducing flood risk due to coastal storms and sea level rise on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
The Challenge
Spanning 2.4 miles, the project design integrates flood protection while improving waterfront open spaces and access. ECOncrete worked with the project design team (AKRF and Siteworks) to create and engineer waterfront elements that provide structural reinforcement AND habitat for marine biodiversity, to support local ecosystem services.
How We Built It
The nature inclusive design elements helped the project to receive an “Envision Gold Award“ for sustainability from the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI), as well as “Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines” (WEDG®) Verification from the Waterfront Alliance. These certifications celebrate the projects cohesive and comprehensive response to climate resiliency goals, community engagement, quality of public access areas, waterfront greenway connectivity, and inventive design.
Construction on the East Side Coastal Resiliency project began in Fall 2020 and will continue through 2026 with the installation of the ECOncrete components.
Learn more about the project on the New York government website and the New York Parks and Recreation website and in this article from the Waterfront Alliance.
Some of our other New York Projects: South Battery Park Resiliency , Brooklyn Bridge Park, Living Breakwaters, Gansevoort Peninsula, Huron Street
Architectural 3D renders: BIG
Tidepool with growth: Vincent Gaglio
Armor Blocks with growth: Bloomberg
