Earl Jackson shares how Cooper Robertson is reinventing the approach to resiliency on NCARB’s latest blog post:

Reinventing the Approach to Resiliency

“While many federal community-development block grants target engineering solutions alone, our firm, Cooper Robertson, is finding opportunities to work with engineers. Doing so reminds our clients (and the communities they build for) that resilient projects should not only perform to resist and rebound from shocks and stresses, but also be beautiful, engaging, and add value.

In dealing with climate change and sea level rise, our team is currently challenging traditional ideas of what a wall can be. Isaac Newton said, “We build too many walls and not enough bridges.” Our firm doesn’t disagree, and we are finding new opportunities to design artful, resilient infrastructure that draw people together instead of separate them.”

Rebuilding Community After a Natural Disaster

“While policy and economics are often either the driving or limiting forces behind the realization of a large-scale public project, the communities that will live with the project after completion always want to know, “What will it look like?” So when communities can see that the changes to raise them above design flood elevations is also a new amenity—to be used as seating, landscape, program, art, or other public benefits—it changes the conversation. It helps ease common fears of being “walled in.”

Architects are trained to help multi-disciplinary teams visualize the complex relationships between policy, economy, infrastructure, buildings, and landscape. Through our recent work, we have been able to unite client communities, political leaders, and large multi-disciplinary teams under a collective vision for the future of their cities.”

Read more at NCARB