Congratulations to AIA Virginia’s 2015 Emerging Leaders in Architecture! Their project, “Porous City,” helped the Commonwealth of Virginia land a $120,549,000 grant from the National Disaster Resilience Competition (NDRC), sponsored by the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The grant, announced recently in Norfolk by HUD Secretary Julian Castro, Governor Terry McAuliffe, and Michael Berkowitz from the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities, will be used to address sea level rise in the Hampton Roads region.
The 2015 ELA project, “Porous City – a digital test lab of current + future resiliency strategies for the City of Norfolk,” focused on the Chesterfield Heights neighborhood in Norfolk. The results included a website they created (www.porouscity.com) and an education program as well as design concepts applicable to coastal flooding areas throughout the region. ELA’s project supported the NDRC application by demonstrating ongoing and innovative research into scalable and repeatable strategies for flood-prone communities.
Each year, ELA participants complete a real-world project where they experiment with practical application of the principles discussed in the ELA sessions. Communities selected for the projects actively participate in the process and benefit not only from the creative, innovative problem-solving ideas developed by these young architects, but also from the ELA recommendations for implementation. Great work, AIA ELA 2015!
AIA ELA website:
http://www.porouscity.com/
Winning application:
http://www.dhcd.virginia.gov/index.php/virginias-resiliency-plan.html
ODU news:
http://www.odu.edu/news/2016/1/hud_grant#.VqZJvVKTr5d
100 Resilient Cities:
https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/our-work/initiatives/100-resilient-cities/
Thank you to Brian Frickie, AIA and Mel Price for contributing this article.