In Flood-Prone New Orleans, an Architect Makes Water His Ally

As these photographs and illustrations show, architect David Waggonner has decided that the best way to protect low-lying New Orleans is to think about water in an entirely different way.

Photo Essay

In Flood-Prone New Orleans, an
Architect Makes Water His Ally


New Orleans Photo Essay
Dutch Dialogues II
Water storage is fundamental in New Orleans. This vision of Felicity Street uses vegetation and stormwater catchment basins to mitigate runoff.
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No city in the United States faces as grave a threat from flooding, hurricanes, and rising seas as New Orleans, part of which lies below sea level. But New Orleans architect David Waggonner and his associates, learning lessons from the Dutch, have proposed a revolutionary vision for New Orleans that seeks to make an asset of the water that surrounds the city, remaking unsightly canals into an important and scenic part of the landscape and mimicking nature to store rainfall. Waggoner’s firm has been chosen to help develop a Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan, a first step in what could be a multi-billion dollar project to redesign the ways in which the region co-exists with water. “To sustain the city in this difficult site in an era of rising seas and more extreme weather, we must convert our necessities into niceties, into desirable places that connect with people and culture,” Waggonner told Yale Environment 360.



10 Feb 2014


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