When you think of landscape architecture, you may think of urban parks, gardens, golf courses, and other small-scale recreational spaces. MacArthur Genius Award winner Kate Orff has a grander, greener and more ambitious vision.
Orff, director of Columbia University's Urban Design Program, said architects not only create beautiful spaces, but also work with nature to create resilient living environments that connect human communities and protect them from the ravages of climate. I believe it is necessary to create. change.
SCAPE, a New York City-based design firm that Orff founded in 2007, is currently working on a project in Louisiana to combat sea level rise and land loss in the Mississippi River Delta. SCAPE also partnered with the Atlanta Regional Commission to build 125 miles of trails and greenways along the Chattahoochee River. It aims to unite racially diverse communities along the riverbanks around a common love for the river.
In an interview with Yale University Environment 360, Orff said it is not enough to restore natural systems to their previous state. “There is no such thing as unspoiled ‘pure nature’ somewhere in the hills outside of us,” she says. “We have made the world what it already is, and now we need to be very powerful in remaking it. …A large part of climate adaptation is simply building what we have already built. It might be demolished.”
Yale University Environment 360: What is the role of landscape architecture in the era of climate change?
Kate Orff: Since I started school in 1997, the world has fundamentally changed, and so has the way we think about what is necessary and important. So what I did was utilize the tools I learned as a qualified professional landscape architect, including horticulture, grading and drainage, and ground and earth formation. But I've been using them for completely different purposes.
One of my goals is to think of landscape architecture as a community-driven way to have more voices heard, rather than thinking of it as a top-down thing where you impose your own vision. The second goal is to focus on the impacts of climate change and shift the entire profession to large-scale climate adaptation projects.
e360:So you launched SCAPE to work on ecological projects like this.
Orff: That is correct. SCAPE is a private design firm, so while we have traditional projects like waterfront parks and gardens, we also do large-scale resilience and adaptation planning in practice.
As an example, we worked with the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority on a large-scale plan that essentially looked at the state and helped guide investments and projects in coastal areas.
Louisiana has lost approximately 2,000 square miles of land to sea level rise and other human factors. We have helped develop a master plan for coastal restoration and risk mitigation that combines wetland creation and bottomland reforestation, sediment diversion, and associated landscape restoration and job creation strategies. .
„What we're trying to do is integrate a lot of local projects into a larger systemic approach, a larger resilience plan.“
e360: So you're basically looking at this large area and suggesting what should be done in different parts of it?
Orff: Yes, so that everything comes together. Often we only respond piecemeal. System breakdowns are occurring, but we are dealing with them here and there in single, limited projects. What we're trying to do is integrate a lot of local projects into a larger systemic approach, a larger resilience plan.
e360:Please tell us about the Living Breakwater Project. What stage are you at? What are your goals there?
Orff: After Superstorm Sandy hit in October 2012, the New York City Department of Housing and Urban Development launched this project called Rebuild by Design. We worked with them to develop the Staten Island Living Breakwater Project. This is essentially an oyster-seeded stone breakwater, a structure that takes that harmful wave action out of the equation and helps rebuild the beach. We are also restoring important intertidal marine ecosystems to devastated urban landscapes. Oyster farming is scheduled to begin next year.
e360: Oysters were once an important species in New York Harbor.
Orff: Well, it was a keystone species until it collapsed around 1900. We zeroed in on a harbor that was probably 20% oyster reef. It was a serious physical change. Oysters filter water, specifically removing excess nitrogen, so we essentially went from slow, clean water to faster, dirtier water. It has destroyed much of our marine life.
The Living Breakwater Project is under construction off the coast of Staten Island, New York, in 2022. Oyster farming at this location is scheduled to begin next year.
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e360: A project like this requires a new way of thinking about landscape architecture. You're not just designing a physical landscape. You are also actively working on the design of biological environments.
Orff: Now, 6th extinction, we need to think fundamentally differently about what we mean by infrastructure. We need to understand that living landscapes are a form of infrastructure, including life, for example in the sense that forests clean water and air. Oyster reefs clean water and provide coastal buffering, and mangrove forests help keep coastlines intact. An interesting shift is that we are re-architecting the ecosystem as an infrastructure and testing and modeling its effectiveness.
e360:It is also called green infrastructure.
Orff: Yes, it is essentially the design and deployment of living systems, such as regenerating forests, restoring corals, and building bioswamps to capture and retain water. It's fundamentally about thinking about the physical landscapes and ecosystems that sustain us, weaving them into our cities, and connecting them to communities in order to not only respond to emergencies, but to be able to adapt in the long term. is to weave it back into the structure of.
e360:While talking about this, I was interested in the fact that you don't usually talk about „recovery of nature''. You're talking on behalf of what you call „regenerative design.“ What's the difference?
Orff: Restoring nature means trying to restore nature for nature's sake. I sometimes have such a desire, but this is not possible, because the water quality has changed, the air and water temperatures have changed. What I'm trying to do is restructure natural systems in strategic ways that reduce climate risk for local communities.
“Instead of thinking of design as a mere addition or ‘beautification’, we need to think about undoing environmental wrongs.”
e360: You are reported to have said this. „Nature is no more. Now it's a matter of design.“ What did you mean by that?
Orff: We humans have a huge impact on the earth. There is no unspoiled „pure nature“ somewhere in the hills outside of us. We have „made“ the world what it already is, and now we need a very, very powerful hand in remaking it. It is a design problem in the sense that it requires work, intention, design, funding, and political skill. It is not a naive, nostalgic attempt to restore the past. Instead, we are layering natural systems to reduce risk and build a hybrid future of managed nature.
e360: Staten Island is building offshore breakwaters, while other places are insisting on tearing down some of the structures they've built to channel water away during floods.
Orff: We need to soften coastlines and remove roadways from important migration routes. Otherwise, flash floods will get worse and biodiversity will continue to plummet. So a big part of climate adaptation may simply be dismantling what we've already built. Rather than thinking of design as just an add-on or something to beautify, we should instead think of design as a product of environmental wrongs, such as damming rivers, bulkheading coastlines, and concreting rivers. I need to think about reverting to . We need to start making room for rivers and floods.
e360: We have tried to control nature with large-scale infrastructure projects. But it could backfire, right?
Orff:For decades, infrastructure has been built as „single-purpose,“ often designed by engineers to isolate one element of a system to solve a single problem. Ta. For example, on Staten Island, levees designed to keep water out were overcome during Superstorm Sandy, resulting in a „bathtub effect“ that traps water within neighborhoods rather than blocking it. This occurred and several people died. We try to fix natural systems in place. But of course, that's not how natural systems respond, and it's completely inadequate in a climate-changing environment where many regions are experiencing heavier rainfall, facing more intense heat, and lowering sea levels. Rising. Frankly, the old rules no longer apply.
e360: One of the areas you've thought a lot about is the Mississippi River. You suggested Mississippi River National Park. How would it work?
Orff: We need to think more comprehensively about the situation in America. We used to do that, whether it was Route 66 across the country or when we established the national park system. There was a time when I was thinking on a much larger scale. We are now so polarized and fragmented that we can only think about the next thing that is immediately achievable in a small area.
Mississippi River National Park is therefore an idea that proposes a larger vision that returns the river to its floodplain and unites its stakeholders, from hog farmers in Iowa to shrimp farmers in Louisiana, and my The idea is that it will ultimately reduce the risk of harm to some people. These communities will face.
“The (Chattahoochee) project is also about bringing together people from communities who don't normally interact with each other.”
e360: Could a national park framework be a way to restore river health?
Orff: The national park framework, flawed as it may be, is a way to bring these lands together for recreational and climate adaptation purposes and to restore rivers as living systems. Because that's not the case now. Because the river is divided and polluted drainage exists in the lower Mississippi River, and all of the upstream rivers flow behind constructed levees, when floods occur, they are enormous.
e360: On a less ambitious scale, you're planning a project in metro Atlanta called the Chattahoochee Riverlands, a 195-mile-long bike path and greenway that will pass through both white and black communities. . You've said that projects like this can help bring polarized communities together.
Orff: For this project, we broke through bureaucracy and mapped out access routes through a mosaic of public and private lands. This is a radical effort to connect historically fragmented public realms and showcase the river's ecology and history. Beyond its physical footprint, Riverlands' goals are to raise public awareness, improve connectivity and access, and address long-standing legacies of environmental racism and underserved communities. It is about increasing community mobility and building a strong local legacy of water conservation and protection.
It's also about bringing people together from communities that don't necessarily interact that much, and that's already working. Rivers have the great power to bring people together, connect disparate places, and revitalize cities.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.