Project by Scarlett Hu
This project asks whether a typical housing block in Manhattan’s East Village could double as legible stormwater infrastructure. Here, municipal systems need not stay buried as pipes and pumps. While runoff mapping shows that the site is not a current flooding or ponding hotspot, it sits along a surface-flow path where runoff from higher streets converges before entering the combined sewer. Under future extremes—higher East River levels and heavier storms—streets act as overflow channels and water can back up and linger. This project encodes these dynamic conditions through three moves: a central floating water garden that exposes and holds floodwater; new housing bands that give each unit a yard overlooking the garden; and a continuous sectional circulation stitching apartments to shared space and the water’s edge where a new civic layer temporarily yields to water during flooding.
