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Architect wins award for proposal to turn Columbia Point into climate-resilient island with power-generating canal

Columbia Point as an island

Paul Lukez Architecture design for Columbia Point canal. Morissey Blvd. on the left.

Paul Lukez Architecture of Somerville reports it's won an award at the annual World Architecture Festival in Berlin for its Hydroelectric Canal that would run from Carson Beach to Savin Hill Cove along Morrissey Boulevard as part of a complete re-do of Columbia Point to make it better able to withstand rising seas.

The WAFX Prize is meant for projects that could solve problems over the next 10 years. Although Lukez first showed off the idea in a 2015 climate-change competition sponsored in part by the city, the city has taken no steps to put the plan into action.

The firm's proposal would use tidal flows to generate electricity. The design also calls for a complete re-do of the point's existing apartments, schools and other facilities:

Our innovative design reconnects and reuses fresh and marine water systems through restored fringing salt marshes, shellfish beds (including oyster reefs), tidal flats and pools, and eel-grass beds. Each of these natural habitats is integrated with human ones (e.g. Living Building Quads), providing comprehensive human and ecological services: primary production, food production, fish and shellfish habitat provision, biogeochemical cycling of nutrients, carbon sequestration, sediment trapping, wave attenuation, shoreline stabilization, water quality improvement, etc. ...

The new Morrissey Channel would capture rising sea levels and tidal changes and embrace the ebb and flow of natural water currents to generate hydroelectric energy through advanced turbine technologies, which would power communities and build lively public spaces. This ecologically sustainable urban model would assume a new form of resilient urbanism that generates an amenity-rich landscape, restored ecology, and an economically viable, self-sustaining community.

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Comments

and I'm off to Cities: Skylines.

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Already there....

IMAGE(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4564/38606056622_88747514bd_m.jpg)
IMAGE(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4580/38582299506_51ebe43b75_m.jpg)
IMAGE(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4561/37920946224_df6fe7a993_m.jpg)

yep I'm addicted. Full album -> http://bos.tn/ITwG3

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I'd gladly live there.

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Glad to see another Cities Skyline Addict!!!

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All we need is quadrillion dollars or so and we can get started right away!

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I mean, it looks nice and does a bunch of cool things, and I get that it is a design created essentially to win an award, but I cannot fathom why they used an actual geographic location and decided on a complete reconstruction that wipes from the map several institutions (including an alma mater of mine and an institute of higher education that a sibling graduated from and myself and another family member took classes at) along with housing that have been there for decades. I look at this and can only think about the West End. Essentially this is an Eco-West End for Boston.

Still, it looks cool.

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Those institutions, housing, etc. that render you so nostalgic?

It isn't this design that will be wiping them from the map.

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The canal takes out McElroy Hall.

Still, no reason why UMass/Boston is destroyed for this. Or Harbor Point. Or the Kennedy Library or the State Archives. Now the mock US Senate they just built? Sure, that can go.

And before you preach from the pulpit of CC, think about how the Netherlands deals with water encroaching on land.

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This is just a Sim City version of what could be, but won't be.

Except all your favorite places will either go under or be subject to much wave action by the end of the century.

What we actually need: plans to move stuff or build stuff where NATURAL defenses will be in play - so let's knock over that high school and put back the tidal marsh, eh? Move stuff in land and provide transit for it.

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But throwing out an entire community is insane, and yes, I know this is SIM-land, but why destroy an actual neighborhood?

Again, was one of the other entries a plan to destroy a chunk of Amsterdam? Because they’ll be in a lot more trouble than Dorchester Bay will be.

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To me, it appears that the JFK library, the EMK Center, & all of UMass is intact-- not sure about BC High, though.

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Looks like they've decided that Harbor Point can just be torn down and replaced - along with the other stuff there (which includes a BPS school, a hotel, and a couple of office buildings).

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It’s all gone, replaced by a Le Corbusier masterpiece.

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A good friend of mine is in it. Maybe go see it.

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.

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Also.

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