Kate Orff, the founding principal of SCAPE, is the first landscape architect to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Recognized for her work designing adaptive and resilient urban habitats, Kate leads collaborative, innovative projects that simultaneously address impacts wrought by climate change, nurture social interaction, and encourage people to be active stewards of the natural environment. For all this and more, the Waterfront Alliance is honoring Kate on October 7 as a 2019 Hero of the Harbor. Last week, we met Kate on the banks of Newtown Creek and talked with her about fostering the civic realm at the waterfront, influencing regulatory policy, and sustainable cities.
Newtown Creek has seen significant revitalization due in large part to the efforts of active and engaged residents. What are SCAPE’s goals here?
Newtown Creek is a parable of the dramatic changes the New York City waterfront has seen in just a few generations. It’s also a place that’s very personal for me. My father grew up on the Creek and crossed the bridge every day from Queens to Brooklyn, where he went to Brooklyn Tech, passing the horse rendering factories and oil tankers along the shore.
Looking around today, it’s obvious the landscape is in transition. You can see a marina, the remnants of old industry in the distance, and only imagine what this place was like pre-European settlement with active fishing and crabbing. Today, high-rise residential and mixed-use spaces are coming in. By cultivating a more active community and smaller-scale waterfront uses, people have new ways to interact with the Creek. Groups like the Waterfront Alliance and Newtown Creek Alliance have helped repair these relationships—making sure it works for people, industry, and ecosystems.
It’s a great place to apply all the lessons SCAPE has learned about how to make a more equitable and accessible waterfront even more rich and biodiverse: retain industry and a working waterfront, create get-downs and intertidal habitats, and reset the overall relationship with the Creek. Watery realms are civic space of the next century—we try to build this into every project we do.
Your projects tend to emphasize ecological and social goals. Are these equal aims, to you?
At SCAPE, we see ecological goals and social goals as completely intertwined. Un-making dams, re-opening river corridors, connecting upland streams with bays and reconnecting rivers with their basins—all these transformations are great for food systems and ecosystems, setting a protective value for the wetlands and intertidal landscapes we’ve lost over the years. I truly believe what is good for fish is good for people!
I look at systems through the lens of habitat or species—both are ways to better understand complex interactions and social benefits. Our Living Breakwaters project in Raritan Bay is a good example. In the past, Staten Island was protected by a very rich, viable, three-dimensional reef off the southern coast, which was badly damaged and over-harvested through the years, heightening vulnerability for people on shore. In the Living Breakwaters project, we’re trying to rebuild that onshore culture and offshore protective reef system. It’s a great example of how investments in ecological infrastructure can simultaneously improve recreation, fisheries, health, and job growth.
Which other SCAPE projects are you excited about? What are you learning from your experience in other regions and nations that we can apply here in New York City?
We’re currently working with the Gowanus Canal Conservancy on a comprehensive plan that anticipates coming development, and creates an interconnected civic realm along the waterfront. It’s exciting. It’s not reactive; it’s very proactive, channeling the needs of the community into a more comprehensive vision instead of the typical parcel-by-parcel approach.
We’re also working on waterfront parks in San Francisco and Memphis, both with design elements that bridge nature and culture, water, and land.
We try to push the boundaries of the regulatory environment, creating dialogues with the clients and partners like the US Army Corps of Engineers and state regulators about how design and landscape architecture can influence policy and regulation. That, for me, is the most meaningful work we do.
What do you think is the future of sustainable cities?
As director of the Urban Design program at Columbia University’s GSAPP, I’ve tried to recast the school’s focus on resilience and global cities.
Over the years, we’ve traveled to cities around the world in various stages of water risk; Amman, Kolkata, Rio de Janeiro, and CanTho, among others. I feel that water is going to be the defining element for cities in the next century. We’ve found that water is where cities can really look to invest for longer-term resilience. There are incredible case studies around the world of localized water management, wetland replenishment, and water capture techniques having a huge impact on the health and livelihood of cities and villages, particularly in India. It’s been incredibly eye-opening to see water as the beating heart of our cities and landscapes for the coming century.
I recently visited Mozambique with the World Wildlife Foundation for a study in Maputo. We quickly learned that the entire drinking water supply of Maputo was highly dependent upon an intact forest in Swaziland. This just goes to show that trans-border water issues can directly impact health, wellness, and livelihoods. Ecosystem management, forestry, and water are all increasingly urban issues.
You look at the world through the eyes of a landscape architect, but at heart you’re an activist. From the community member to the project funder, how do you build support for doing things a little differently that might take more effort— building an oyster reef, designing for sea level rise, using natural infrastructure instead of floodwalls?
Landscape architecture has traditionally been a service-based profession. At SCAPE, we’ve tried to transform it by taking a more activist stance, going beyond the typical limited engagement of a landscape architect to influence policy and advocate for change. In our projects, we try to push for a regulatory environment in which a new way of thinking about landscape management and reclaiming water systems can take hold.
That involves a lot of extra time, a lot of extra engagement with people. It requires multiple registers—the language of the regulator, the language of the person living in the community, the language of implementation and funding. It also requires being able to actively listen and translate that expanded influence into action and spatial practice. That’s why I see landscape architecture at the forefront of urban advocacy.
Did being the first landscape architect to receive the MacArthur Foundation “genius” award change how you approach your work? Have you seen a shift in the field generally since receiving the award?
The MacArthur was an amazing moment—not just for me, but for landscape architecture writ large. I feel like it’s shining a spotlight on all the ways that landscape architecture has been so influential in our current conversation—how we’re going to live together in this environmental climate crisis we find ourselves in. It’s given me the opportunity to think more holistically about things that I want to think about in the American landscape, begin to advance initiatives on the Gulf Coast, the Mississippi River, and think more about the positive transformations our country needs to confront in the coming decades of increased drought, more intense storms, and sea-level rise.
There is a lot of talk these days about preparing for the reality of sea-level rise and the next big storm. What is your vision for creating resilient, revitalized, and accessible coastlines in New York City and how do we get there?
As much as Superstorm Sandy was a tragedy in this region, it also was an eye-opener for all of us who work together on the harbor. In my view, the City made a lot of great decisions after Superstorm Sandy not to wall off the water, not to create a fortress, and to preserve what we value.
Our city is part of the Hudson River Estuary, and that’s critical to maintain. I think we need more tools in the toolbox to think about resilience. We need to think about strategic managed retreat, building higher, building differently, scaling our energy grids down to be more manageable and resilient. Investing in intertidal landscapes at risk of being completely inundated is also critical, whether they’re reefs, wetlands, or dunes. Replenishing the ecosystems we’ve lost doesn’t just boost their protective value, it enhances the biodiversity we cherish and are stewards of here.
How did your experiences growing up shape your passion for ecologically-driven design and active stewardship? How do you explain your work—and why you do it—to your children?
I have two kids, eleven and eight. I feel it’s important not to say their generation will fix these problems. It’s really on us. So that’s what I say to my children, to my daughter who feels climate despair, even before she’s in a position to do anything about it.
I really try to emphasize that we’re all working on it. We’re changing our behavior, transforming the way we consume energy and protect biodiversity and the beauty of life on the planet. Her life is going to change, but we’re setting the stage. I feel tremendous responsibility to be part of that change.
Thank you, Kate! We look forward to honoring you on October 7 at Heroes of the Harbor!
Photo Credit: Megan Loeb
