Some of the best minds in architecture, landscape architecture, planning, engineering and allied fields have are coming together to develop innovative approaches to taming and adapting to sea-level rise and other potential disasters threatening the Bay Area through the Resilient by Design/Bay Area Challenge. Most of the teams pair local firms and/or institutions with leading firms based elsewhere, including abroad. Then there's the All Bay Collective, which touts that all its members are locally based but globally experienced.
Below are profiles of each of the 10 interdisciplinary teams working on the Challenge, with excerpts from their proposals. Some arrive on the scene with tons of expertise but no preconceived notion of how to approach "this greatest 21st century challenge," as one group puts it. At least one firm, Public Sediment, has a solution in mind — as the name implies, it will have something to do with mud. The teams' creative titles hint at the creative ideas already percolating in the minds of the members. The links below take you to pages where you can read more, and watch video clips describing each team's philosophy and approach.
BIG + ONE + SHERWOOD
BIG + ONE + Sherwood is big — with the most members of any design team, they bring significant international experience designing for climate change in Denmark, the Netherlands, and the Bay Area. This Design Team’s approach is centered around a collective commitment to embrace the interconnected, rich and diverse set of human and non-human ecosystems that comprise the Bay Area and proactively design the links between nature and culture, between people, and their environment.
Design Team Members: BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group; ONE; Sherwood; Moffatt & Nichol; Nelson Nygaard; Strategic Economics; Dutra Group
Design Team URL: www.resilientbayarea.org/big-one-sherwood
BionicTeam
BionicTeam was assembled around the need to accelerate the response to sea level rise and create resilience at Bay Area sites most in need. With deep Bay Area roots, this Design Team has deep local knowledge and is already ingrained in our communities. In addition, BionicTeam’s internationally recognized designers also have expertise in policy and legal framework design, and equity promotion, as well as cross-disciplinary research and creating resilient infrastructure.
Design Team Members: Bionic Landscape; WXY; PennDesign; Michael Yarne; Enterprise; Moffatt & Nichol; WRA; RMA; Romberg Tiburon Center, SFSU; BAYCAT; Studio for Urban Projects; Ball + Winter; Keyser Marston Associates
Design Team URL: www.resilientbayarea.org/bionic-team
Common Ground
Rooted in the Bay Area but with deep experience working around the world, Common Ground brings a global perspective to the Bay Area Challenge. This design team stood out because of their unique approach to exploring the Pacific. Specifically, Common Ground’s work centers around the dual dynamic and risk of flooding through incremental sea level rise and instantaneous seismic activity.
Design Team Members: TLS Landscape Architecture; Exploratorium; Guy Nordenson & Assoc; Michael Maltzan Arch; HR&A Advisors; Sitelab Urban Studio; Moffatt & Nichol; Lotus Water, Rana Creek, UC Berkeley
Design Team URL: www.resilientbayarea.org/common-ground
HASSELL+
HASSELL+ hails from Australia and the Netherlands and comes to the Challenge with an essential background: they understand water. By partnering with local experts, this Design Team centers their expertise around three core disciplines: Design & Places, Hydrology & Ecology, and Social Impact & Technology. Their mission is to enhance the lives of Bay Area communities by designing and delivering places and systems that improve the physical and social resilience of the Bay Area while performing vital daily and emergency functions.
Design Team Members: HASSELL; MVRDV; Deltares; Lotus Water; frog design; Originate; Civic Edge Consulting; James Lima; Goudappel; Page & Turnbull
Design Team URL: www.resilientbayarea.org/hassell
Permaculture + Social Equity (P+SET)
Permaculture + Social Equity (P+SET) centers their approach around placemaking — connecting people to places where they live and play to create mutual interdependent relationships amongst residents and their environment. This design team comes to the Challenge with decades of experience in engaging communities in ideation, assessment, and implementation – but P+SET also designs as members of this particular community themselves. This Design Team includes longtime locals who are deeply familiar with the social and ecological challenges facing the Bay Area.
Design Team Members: Base Landscape Architecture; Communitecture; Pandora Thomas; Antonio Roman-Alcala; Urban Permaculture Institute; Ross Martin Design
Design Team URL: www.resilientbayarea.org/permaculture-social-equity
Public Sediment
Public Sediment makes a simple pronouncement, “we design with mud,” but comes to the Bay Area Challenge with a deeply unique approach that believes in ecological infrastructure and its protective value as the underpinning of an approach to resiliency. The multidisciplinary design team brings landscape architects, researchers, designers, ecologists and academics from UC Davis together and will focus on making sediment the building block of resilience in their quest to protect hundreds of thousands of Bay Area residents.
Design Team Members: SCAPE Landscape Architecture; Arcadis; Dredge Research Collaborative; UC Davis: Department of Human Ecology + Design and Center for Watershed Sciences; Buoyant Ecologies Lab; TS Studio
Design Team URL: www.resilientbayarea.org/public-sediment
The All Bay Collective
The All Bay Collective (ABC) comes to the Bay Area Challenge rooted in academic discovery and research. They bring a focus of not just now, but a promise to deliver a lasting educational legacy of well‐trained students who will become the next generation of planning and design professionals with a strong foundation in resilience. This Design Team is comprised of locally based but globally experienced professionals, academics, students, and policy makers.
Team Members: AECOM, CMG Landscape Architecture; University of California, Berkeley- College of Environmental Design, Berkeley Center for New Media, The Terner Center; California College of the Arts; IDEO; in association with Silvestrum, SKEO, and Moll de Monchaux
Team URL: www.resilientbayarea.org/the-all-bay-collective
The Field Operations Team
The Field Operations Team brings a bold and optimistic vision for how the Bay Area can better adapt to climate change, rising sea levels and related environmental stresses in the coming decades. Formed under the banner of ‘ONE BAY, MANY COMMUNITIES, MANY SOLUTIONS,’ this design team of locally-based designers, engineers, ecologists, urban strategists and communication specialists hopes to see the Challenge contribute to the larger global effort to increase resilience.
Design Team Members: James Corner Field Operations; Moffatt & Nichol; Magnusson Klemencic Associates; SF BAY National Estuarine Research Reserve, Romberg-Tiburon Center, SFSF; Andrea Baker Consulting
Team URL: www.resilientbayarea.org/the-field-operations-team
The Home Team
The Home Team was assembled to explore affordability as a driver of deep transformation, and to leverage multiple benefits that can emerge when a design approach is co-created through the lens of home. Their approach stands out as a strong collaboration of recognized urban designers, architects already entwined with Bay Area-based community development corporations – bringing a multi-layered understanding of issues resiliency, community planning, affordability and social strife. This design team seeks to heal divisions and cultivate solutions, based on shared values, assets and vulnerabilities.
Design Team Members: Mithun, First Community Housing; Chinatown Community Development Center; ISEEED/Streetwyze; BioHabitats; ARUP; HR&A Advisors; Moffat & Nichol; ALTA Planning; Urban Biofilters; Resiliency Design Institute
Design Team URL: www.resilientbayarea.org/the-home-team
Team UPLIFT
Team UPLIFT brings a diverse, far reaching design team to the Challenge – combining decades of urban planning, design, architectural experience and global engineering chops with public policy expertise, data visualization skills and sustainability expertise. Yet their perspective is clear — this design team makes no presumption to know the answers in advance and instead has outlined an approach for engaging with and listening to community. Team UPLIFT knows that the foundation we create today is the one that our shared community will depend on in the future.
Design Team Members: Gensler; ARUP; Margie Ruddick Landscape (MRL); HR&A Advisors; Stamen Design; UCLA Institute of Environment and Sustainability; Stanford Sustainable Urban Systems Initiative
Design Team URL: www.resilientbayarea.org/team-uplift