The Dry Edge

The main driver of the proposal is “How do we protect a city against surging flood water without simply building a giant wall?” This is an innovative and radical approach to readdressing the levee on the Pontchartrain Lake front and reconnecting the citizens of New Orleans back to their major defining asset, the lake front.

The typologies that are being developed will transform the visual and physical connection of the city to the lake. The urban infrastructural barrier incorporates public space with the high-water barrier doubling as parks, seating, bicycle shelters or skateboard ramps. Embankments add green areas and spaces beneath elevated roadways are built out with pavilions for public use.

The proposal combines natural and fortified solutions to facilitate more resilient forms of inhabitation in the places most at risk from severe storms. It also asserts that it is possible to live and work along the lakefront with an incremental and integrative approach that restores the environment, strengthens connectivity, enhances the regional economy, reduces long-term risk, and restores the Lake Pontchartrain as one of the city’s identities. In this way, New Orleans Parish can become a model for other coastal cities that are under high risk of storm surges or floods.