By Jugal Patel, Student Correspondent
This is Part 3 in the Adapting to Rising Seas series.
“Let’s face it: The waterfront will always be prime real estate that everyone wants to live on,” says William Parks. “It’s up to architects to make that happen.”
Parks spent the 2014-15 academic year working with other Hampton University (HU) architecture students on a neighborhood-level project as part of his work toward a master’s degree. As part of a Virginia Sea Grant (VASG)-funded project coordinated by Wetlands Watch, the HU students set out to find ways to protect Chesterfield Heights, a historic neighborhood in Norfolk, from sea level rise—a growing challenge for architects.
Traditional sea level rise adaptation designs include raising homes, protecting the coast with structures, or rebuilding farther from the water. Best management practices (BMP) are also used in the form of artificial ponds designed to drain water during floods.
These practices come with downsides, though. Relocating farther from the water diminishes waterfront life. Raising homes removes the community porch culture. Introducing structures to protect the coast can also impact delicate ecosystems. And with limited space, sometimes there isn’t enough room in an existing neighborhood to dig up the ground and introduce a pond for drainage.
“BMP is out of the picture,” says Parks. “We’re going with something better. We have the opportunity to explore new ground, so let’s explore new ground.”
With their eyes set on innovation, young architects pioneered new features to protect Chesterfield Heights from rising seas.
“These people have lived in these homes for multiple generations and love it there,” Parks said. “We wanted to give [their] kids the same opportunity they had, to share Chesterfield Heights with the next generation and keep the traditions, stories, and history alive.”
Parks and fellow HU architecture graduate student Quince McCurley took on the project for their master’s theses. They worked with classmates to visit the neighborhood, interview residents, and walk the streets, looking for spaces where water could be stored during floods.
According to McCurley, embedding themselves in the community was essential to finding solutions.
“Being able to feel the air, smell the water, hear the people’s testimonies on what’s going on, what they experience, and what they like makes it easier to design for them,” McCurley says. “It’s those factors that make up a big part of design.”
McCurley developed plans for converting existing basements into cisterns that could hold water when the water table rises. The design would allow residents to retain some usable basement space and utilized ventilation to keep moisture and mold from building up on the permeable pavement floor.
Parks looked at how to store water above ground. At first he considered large lawn cisterns, but changed his mind when he considered the cost. He also saw the need for a plan that could adapt to changing conditions.
“The most important aspect was the modularity,” he says. “These houses won’t get raised tomorrow, but they are experiencing flooding right now.”
To accommodate the changes, Parks saw a need for developing small cisterns that could be added over time. He designed a new concept: small, above-ground plastic containers that could have plants on top and water inside. The containers would collect and retain rainwater during the storm, with an outflow to allow controlled release of the water after the storm.
“I wanted it to be something that you can just go to the Home Depot, pick it up, put it in the back of your truck, and bring home,” he says. So far, he’s built models of the containers, called manufacturers, and priced the production costs for his design.
Both McCurley’s basement adaptations and Park’s plant-topped containers address an important consideration for the historic neighborhood—to retain historic listing, the street-level appearance of the neighborhood can’t change. McCurley’s underground design would be hidden from the public view. When it’s time to raise houses, Parks’s containers would slope downwards from the raised porch all the way to the lawn’s edge, masking the risers.
By the end of their first semester working on these challenges, however, HU students still didn’t know whether their designs would work.
“With architecture you go up so high, but if you don’t have anyone to pull you back down, sometimes it’s not real enough,” says McCurley. That’s when Old Dominion University engineering students came in to test their designs. “I liked working with [the engineers] because they brought that aspect that we needed.”
The HU architecture graduates plan to produce two books on the project, a general report on their work, and a guide tailored to residents. The guide will include actions that residents can take to help contain and manage floodwater.
For the HU students, the ability to work on this real-life project was inspiring.
“I’ve found a subject I am really passionate about and I want to continue to push forward in the ‘uncharted water’ looking for new innovative solutions,” Parks says. “Ultimately I would like to open up an architectural practice that focuses on urban design and sea level rise.”
This story is part of an in-depth, six-part series, “Adapting to Rising Seas,” on the award-winning Chesterfield Heights resiliency design project. Stories are published every Friday and explore different aspects of the project.
