Block Edit
The scale of New York City’s flood risk has only recently come into focus now that storm systems are becoming more frequent and more powerful. The hundreds of dense residential blocks which surround Jamaica Bay face the brunt of the risk, forcing middle-class homeowners to decide between paying for increasing flood insurance premiums or costly adaptations. This decision is further complicated by the profusion of rowhouse type housing within these blocks, which are often unable to be individually lifted above the base flood elevation. Threatened both physically and financially, homeowners will likely be forced to leave their communities and attempt to find housing in the already overburdened New York City housing market. Therefore, this thesis proposes a system of architectural interventions at the scale of a residential block to enable the gradual introduction of elevated housing. To achieve this goal while ensuring the individual agency of existing homeowners, a design code will be created that will phase the introduction of new housing in between remaining structures on the site. This new housing will be linked by an elevated platform which will extend the public realm of the block while freeing the ground plane to return to a more natural and porous state.