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Protecting NYC From Floods With Giant Boxes of Trash


January 6, 2014 | Andy Cush

Here’s a strange proposal for dealing with the looming threat of more devastating floods in Lower Manhattan: stuff a bunch of shipping containers full of garbage, then line the island with them. It comes from designers Ishaan Kumar, Arianna Armelli, and David Sepulveda, finalists in the ONE Prize competition, which seeks to highlight big ideas in green-oriented urban design.

Of course, it will never get made, but the rendering looks pretty neat. The team says their project, dubbed [CONTAINED], would save the city $980 million in cost of shipping out waste. From their proposal:

[CONTAINED] repurposes garbage as an abundant renewable resource to stormproof our city. Using an elementary infrastructure [CONTAINED] encapsulates the entire refuse production for the general population. In addition, [CONTAINED] establishes the re-industrialization of NYC while providing citizens with preventative residential typologies. Climate change is evident, and it is our duty to understand the implications that Hurricane Sandy set forth.

(Photo: christopher charles/Flickr)