FROM CREEK TO BEACH

A Plan for Resilient Public Housing in Coney Island
James Khamsi, Jessica Cheung, Tzuyi Chuang, Jun Park

This is a study for three New York City Public Housing Authority (NYCHA) communities in Coney Island that suffered considerable damage during Superstorm Sandy. In the wake of this devastation, considerable financial support has become available to NYCHA to rebuild them. Current priorities have been focused on securing their power and how water by elevating their boilers and generators in freestanding buildings. They will be large – 80’ x 55’ in plan and could be as tall as 40’ – and distributed frequently throughout the campuses. We were asked to study the impact of the buildings will have on the public realm of the campuses.

We saw an opportunity to advance a more comprehensive plan for these communities that would make them more resilient, more integrated with their neighborhood and more responsive to their residents’ needs. Our first priority was to tie these new boiler facilities into a comprehensive water management system which when coordinated with new pedestrian and bicycling networks would integrates these communities into the social and natural ecologies of their neighborhood.