Clippership Wharf, a new residential development overlooking Boston Harbor, is designed to withstand rising seas and storm surges. Fast Company spoke with Nick Iselin, general manager of development for Lendlease Americas, and Shannon Lane, associate and landscape architect at Halvorson Design, about the resilient measures built into the site, including the new living shoreline.
“Rather than building, say, a concrete seawall or deployable barrier around the pier portion of our wharf, we actually kind of peeled away some of the existing seawall to provide a terraced, living shoreline that contains various levels of salt marsh grasses and reclaims granite rocks that came from the sea wall,” says Lane. “That helps to dissipate wave and storm surge activity versus deflecting it.”
Natural solutions are key to addressing the threat of rising water and are designed to work in concert with engineered systems. At Clippership Wharf, the design team raised the ground plane of the site by 25 feet, giving the property a 14-foot buffer from high tides. During extra high tides or storms, a retention area fills with water. Rather than a concrete path, the design team built a wooden boardwalk that can still be used as the water rises.
"Our aspiration was to always be a 100-year project," said Iselin. "I don't know what's going to happen to sea level rise in the next few decades, but we've created a scenario that outpaces even the most aggressive sea level rise projections through 2070."