Coastal dikes have been built for millennia to protect inhabited lands from exceptional high tides and storm events. Currently, many European countries are developing specific programs to integrate the construction of new dikes (or the raising of existing ones) into the built environment to face sea level rising. Technical difficulties in succeeding in this operation are questioning the paradigm of protection for the long term, pointing out the need for alternative strategies of adaptation that are not yet fully explored. This paper elaborates on innovative models to deal with coastal flooding, presenting the results of an interdisciplinary research and design process for the case-study of Southend-on-Sea (UK). Detailed numerical simulations are used to develop a spatial strategy to accommodate water during extreme events, introducing different prototypes of dike designs that include seawalls, enhanced roughness through rock and stepped revetments, as well as vegetation. The overall goal is to push forward the traditional approach of planning water protection infrastructure within the solely field of civil engineering. It elaborates on the integration of the disciplines of spatial design and engineering and presents novel advances in terms of spatial design for the revetment of overtopping dikes.

This article discusses the socio-technical process of dam construction in the United States from the early 20th century to the present. It examines how marginal places have been the object of industrial modifications through the inventiveness and entrepreneurship of social groups and local individuals who, supported by federal measures, have built power and cultural relations on territorial scales for decades. Historical reconstructions describe the generative processes of places through dam construction to demonstrate that the contemporary built environment is a product of natural and human-made relationships. Events associated with modern dam constructions and, more recently, with demolitions along the Klamath and Allegheny Rivers are critically discussed to illustrate how environmental resources relate to and interact with technology, human practices, and places. The article suggests that dams have been engines for industrial growth and technological devices to reframe the interdependencies between people and the environment. Dams supply people with water and energy and protect them and their property from droughts, floods, and fires. However, after a century of operations, these structures are reaching the ends of their lifecycles. In light of dam removal trends in the United States, the article presents a historical narrative on the societal legacy of dams. The intent is to share a broad understanding of the current technical and political debates on whether to demolish or maintain US dams in the future.

The environmental crisis demands for an interdisciplinary design of urban infrastructure to increase resilience to climate change. Interdisciplinary design is about integration of data, concepts, ambitions and goals by bridging instrumental differences between engineering and spatial design. This paper presents the results of an interdisciplinary design study that deals with persistent flood issues in the Venice lagoon (Italy). The study illustrates how the differences in languages, methods and tools of the disciplines can be overcome by interdisciplinary collaboration directed towards the designing of spatial and technical solutions. Two design proposals are instrumentally described through the lens of the Casco and the Open Building concepts; both advocate the creation of an overarching frame as the basic condition for adaptive design. The paper gives insights on how to cooperate in interdisciplinary design settings in educational environments and builds knowledge on the collaboration between fields that might be relevant also for professional figures.

The undisputable human influences on the Earth’s system demand an urgent change of ways and transitions in human systems to sustain a healthy society in the future. Addressing the urgent climatic transformations in deltaic areas, this paper is an attempt of the Delta Urbanism research group at TU Delft to set the line for new (integrated) research inquiries by design and investigate fundamental, experimental, and strategic & operational responses to the existing prospects for action as a way to create collaboration between various sectors. These prospects for action are targeted at four critical fronts (climate, urban, governance, cultural) based on trends and challenges that deltaic areas are facing and to which coherent spatial strategies are needed. These fronts together need a research response to enable the making of the delta of the future through the power of interdisciplinary design. This perspective or prospect is established through six lines of inquiry that are elaborated in the paper. The central question is “how can the research field of delta urbanism provide a transformative ‘prospect for action’ to establish strategic pathways toward a resilient Delta future, where assertion and proof are synergized”? The discussion of the six lines of inquiry, which effectively address the four critical fronts, explores how they are poised to deliver fundamental, experimental, and operational outputs for further research and action.

Venice is representative of the result of anthropocene acts on a vulnerable delta system. Therefore it is an excellent study case for a multidisciplinary team of TU students and tutors, to perform interdisciplinary research and design. Two visions were developed on the shared knowledge base to investigate ‘how do flood defense systems influence the spatial aspects of the territory in the context of a high dynamic landscape in the Anthropocene? ’The plan for the Perfect Lagoon is focused on tackling all of the current and upcoming problems where the emphasis lies on preserving and perfecting the lagoon in its natural assets by introducing a new dike system that enforces the natural ecosystem. It makes smart use of the sediment flows and tackles erosion. The interdisciplinary design is especially worked out in the section of the dike, where dimensions and functionality are designed from a shared engineering and landscape perspective. The plan Symbiotic System emphasizes the interconnectedness of the Veneto region in a sustainable way. The new transport/dam system will make the urban system more smart, it will be less burdensome, and give more space to the natural ecosystem of the lagoon. Both visions are a testimony of how flood defense systems have a major influence in the spatial aspects of the territory. Using the multidisciplinary approach, an integral design can be made for the flood defense, in which the opportunities for the territory can be first explored and then designed together with hydraulic infrastructures.

Spatial design integrates social, cultural, economic, and political perspectives with natural site conditions and man-made construction to plan for sustainable urban development. The current flood-risk-related challenges induced by climate change place pressure on designing cities in which both natural and man-made conditions can be imbalanced. Creating a purely engineered line of flood defense to restore this balance does not always work. The idea of living more closely with water includes the discipline of spatial design more into flood risk management than the current dominant paradigm. Following the probability approach defined as risk = probability × consequences, the current Dutch paradigm is focused on reducing the probability with dikes; the United States focuses on reduction of consequences by evacuation and recovery. This chapter focuses on urban design and planning strategies for reducing flood risk not just by a flood defense line such as a dike, but also reducing risk by means of urban development behind the dike. Integrated urban flood design must integrate site-built environment characteristics and natural systems, and simultaneously solve challenges posed by hazards. Effective design, therefore, must be conducted on the basis of hydraulic engineering knowledge, leading to spatial designs that introduce resilient urban qualities. Two cases for this approach are presented and compared: Vlissingen, the Netherlands and Galveston, Texas, United States.

In a world influenced by climate change and consequently sea-level rise, extreme floods are expected to become more frequent in the future, representing a serious threat for riverine and coastal settlements. Therefore, flood protection is a large component of climate adaptation and should be closely related to other measures of climate adaptation and societal needs. In this context, SARCC (Sustainable And Resilient Coastal Cities) supports the use of integrated Nature Based Solutions into coastal management, urban planning and design, integrating them into existing infrastructure and flood defenses. This paper will focus on the strategy developed for Southend-On-Sea (UK), presenting the different approaches that were used to manage coastal flooding and make it part of a long-term large scale urban development strategy. In particular, this study estimated overtopping discharges during extreme storm conditions and analyzed their inland propagation using Delft3D FM numerical simulations. Based on these results, mitigation, and adaptation measures as a part of the spatial strategy were developed through a joint collaboration of hydraulic engineers, urban designers, maritime archaeologists and local authorities, pointing out the strength of interdisciplinary approaches for reliable and well-integrated flood protection strategies. Important highlight of the study is how flood risk management is integrated in spatial planning and how hydraulic engineering modeling is directly use as indicators to make spatial design decisions.

The current flood risk-related challenges induced by climate change place pressure on designing urban areas where natural and man-made conditions can be imbalanced. Today, flood risk is mostly managed to reduce the probability of flood events. However, the engineered probability approach to flood risk management might not always result in a well-designed landscape; especially in floodplain and coastal areas, water defence infrastructures significantly impact the urban structure. This project output highlights new possible synergies between flood protection infrastructure and urban landscape through integrated design. Designing, indeed, is the fundamental act to explore the spatial challenge of climate change in its complexity.

Questo saggio, a partre dall’enorme archivio di proget non realizzat per la laguna di Venezia, contestualizza tre piani (mai realizzat o compiut solo in parte) con l’obietvo generale di defnire nuovi strument e argomentazioni per problematzzare più a fondo gli intervent infrastruturali atualmente in corso. Quest proget, infat, sono casi paradigmatci con cui raccontare come specifci modelli di razionalizzazione del territorio si siano susseguit e come quest abbiano interpretato la laguna nell’ultmo secolo. Nello specifco, verrà dimostrato come a proget puntuali corrispondano specifche visioni della laguna all’interno di un quadro geografco di relazioni più estese.

Starting from the extensive archive of unrealized projects for the Venice lagoon, the essay contextualizes three plans (never or partially completed) in the aim of defining new tools and argumentations to further problematize the ongoing infrastructural interventions. These projects, indeed, are paradigmatic cases in order to report how specific models of rationalization of the territory came in succession and how they interpreted the lagoon during last century. In the specific, it will be demonstrated how distinct projects translate the lagoon environment within relations of a wider geographic context.

The development of knowledge about the mechanism in the delta has had a high dependency on projects and techniques available. During the period from 1930 to 1939, there is a consolidation of the achievements and further development of hydraulic engineering techniques, based on model-based and mathematical analyses and prognoses (Schot et al., 1998). In this time two of the physical models were built, the Waterloopbos in the Netherlands and the Mississippi River basin in the USA. Both models have been used extensively to expand knowledge and build projects, but both became out of use when computers appeared in the 1980s. Then the calculation models were favoured, as they can be done faster, and are also capable of handling complex problems. Computer technology became increasingly dominated by measurement, prognosis, calibration, verification and validation. For this project section, the current state of the two models is brought forth as a new technique in which maybe the Longue Duree of the relation between humans and nature can become evident.

The relation between the design of the flood protection infrastructure and the design of the urbanscape is the focus of this paper with the question on how these two types of design can consciously affect each other. The text presents the preliminary result of an interdisciplinary research conducted by a team of urban designers and hydraulic engineers on two pilot projects of coastal adaptation to extreme sea level rise on the North Sea: Vlissingen (NL) and Southend-on-Sea (UK). Spatial measures to accept the flood, land use change, water-proof housing developments and the use of nature-based solutions are described in relation to the urban fabric. The aim is to discuss models of flood risk reduction which are alternatives to the more conventional coastal flood protection strategies. A different designerly way of thinking and a great effort of description and analysis of the two cases have been enacted to enlighten the spatial qualities of the urban form and its long-term adaptability.