With flooding from various sources becoming more common, the Elizabeth River Project is looking to examine how coastal areas can potentially change construction to better adapt to the changing environments, according to an article in The Washington Post. To help guide this study, the project has built their new headquarters on a flood plain and designed it to be submerged. Says co-founder of the Elizabeth River Project Marjorie Mayfield Jackson of the design, “It’s intended to show you how to work and play and live with this rising sea level. And once it’s no longer functioning, we take down the building and give it back to nature, give it back to the river.”
Says Sam Bowling, who headed the design as an architect for Work Program Architects, “We want to show others that there might just be a better way to live and work in urban areas on the coast, despite rising seas.”
Says Norfolk’s acting chief resilience officer Kyle Spencer of the Elizabeth River Project’s new headquarters, “We’ve been supportive of this. We’d like to see ourselves as this sort of living laboratory to work through these really complicated, tough issues cities like ours are facing.”
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