THE BIG U: BIG'S VISION OF "REBUILD BY DESIGN" FOR NEW YORK CITY

Nine different teams, including BIG, OMA, and WXY, participated in the competition called “Rebuild by Design,” which presented innovative designs sensitive to local needs aimed at increasing the resilience of coastal communities. The conditions of the competition required that the proposals be flexible, incrementally implementable, and integrable with ongoing projects. Henk Ovink, the lead of the “Rebuild by Design” project and an advisor to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), stated, “Rebuild by Design is more about changing culture.” The winners will be announced this spring.

The BIG U, proposed by BIG, is based on the firm’s concepts of social infrastructure and “hedonistic sustainability.” The project envisions a protective system of approximately 16 kilometers (10 miles) surrounding Manhattan. This system not only protects the city from floods and storm waters but also creates social and environmental spaces suitable for the needs of the city’s different neighborhoods. Bjarke Ingels says:

“We asked ourselves: What if we imagine the resilience infrastructure for Lower Manhattan not as a wall that separates the city from water, but as a series of ‘pearls’ that offer social and environmental opportunities unique to each neighborhood? And what if this structure also protects these neighborhoods from flooding? Understanding social infrastructure as a large strategy rooted in local communities.”

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