From Mark Foster Gage to Charles Renfro, Ferda Kolatan and more, design minds have a range of ideas. Hypotheses so crazy, they just might work. Here are some projects for saving New York.

East River Valley Project by Mark Foster Gage Associates

East River Valley project from architect Mark Foster Gage, whose work seems to take inspiration from the enchanted and/or dystopian CGI megalopolises of fantasy films, proposes draining the East River and plugging it up with enormous dams, allowing the city and its residents to use the revealed riverbed for parkland, food production, and the construction of massive, next-generation, geothermal wells to power the next century of the city’s energy needs.

Ewok NYC by DS+R

Ewok NYC by Charles Renfro of Diller Scofidio + Renfro took the lessons learned from working on the High Line to imagine creating a citywide network of rooftop parks: “Delicate bridges could fly over streets, linking lush islands of green in the sky.” And “planted surfaces are not only appealing aesthetically, but also absorb summer heat and storm water, problems that will only get worse the deeper we get into global warming.





Apocalypse Harbor, SU11 Architecture+Design

Apocalypse Harbor of

Ferda Kolatan from SU11 Architecture+Design suggests another response to climate change, the New York Bay Peninsula project: “Combining landfill with infrastructure, a new peninsula emerges bridging the devastated areas and creating a barrier to protect lower Manhattan and Brooklyn from future flooding.



