Description: Located offshore, floating breakwater systems are designed to reduce wave energy and protect vulnerable shorelines and infrastructure. These systems are adaptable to changing water levels and include integrated sensors that monitor wave height, frequency, and direction—providing performance data to inform adaptive design strategies.

Benefits: Reduces the height of flood protection systems required at the waters edge, reduces inland stormwater infrastructure required due to waves overtopping inland flood protection systems, reduces shoreline erosion and infrastructure wear, enhances safety for waterfront users, provides opportunities for increased water access, and supports long-term coastal resilience through real-time performance monitoring and data-driven planning.

© One15 Marina in Brooklyn Bridge Park; Persak & Wurmfeld

Guiding Principles: Activating

Description: Located off shore, engineered floating wetlands mimic natural marsh systems, providing habitat for native flora and fauna while improving water quality through phytoremediation. Anchored in place, these systems are monitored for biodiversity, plant health, and ecological performance to ensure long-term functionality.

Benefit: Enhances biodiversity, improves water quality, and delivers ecosystem services such as pollutant filtration and habitat creation. Ecological monitoring also offers opportunities for education and public engagement.

© SOM

Guiding Principles: Restoring & Creating

Description: Integrated into the building rooftops and pier structures, a network of green roofs and rain gardens is designed to manage stormwater directly at its source. These systems capture, filter, and slow runoff before it reaches surrounding waterways, improving water quality while also providing co-benefits such as urban cooling, habitat creation, and enhanced public space.

Benefit: Manages runoff, reduces urban heat island effect, and supports educational and ecological programming. Green roofs and rain gardens also improve water quality and provide habitat in dense urban environments.

© ASLA; Greenroofs.com

Guiding Principles: Restoring & Creating

Description: We are proposing a holistic design approach that weaves resilience throughout the site layout, materials, and building systems. This strategy considers climate risks, community needs, and long-term adaptability from the outset. Examples include elevating the first floor above future anticipated flood levels, placing critical equipment on higher floors, and selecting sustainable and durable flood damage-resistant construction materials.

Benefits: Builds systemic resilience by incorporating durability, redundancy, and risk mitigation into site design. Reduces vulnerability to climate impacts such as flooding, heat, and sea level rise, while supporting continuity of use and faster recovery after disruptions.

© Boston Coastal Flood Resilient Design Guidelines

Guiding Principles: Activating

Description: Installed along pedestrian corridors, gathering spaces, and key program nodes, strategic shading structures can help mitigate heat and enhance outdoor comfort. These features may include tree canopies, tensile fabric installations, or thoughtfully designed building overhangs that maximize shade throughout the day and seasons. Design and placement of shade structures will be selected to reduce solar exposure in key community and program areas to increase thermal comfort and usability of outdoor spaces.

Benefits: Lowers ambient and surface temperatures, reduces heat stress, improves comfort, and increases the usability of public spaces throughout the year.

© Shade Systems Inc.

Guiding Principles: Activating & Creating

Description: Located at the land-water edge and encasing the piles beneath the piers, these strategies introduce climate-resilient plantings and newly created intertidal habitats to support biodiversity, stabilize shorelines, and foster ecological transitions. These layered systems – including a new learning lagoon with tide pools on the pier deck and ecology wraps to create living reefs on each of the piers’ pilings – serve as immersive outdoor classrooms, offering opportunities for public education through signage, tours, and citizen science.

Benefits: Enhances ecological function and provides new and diverse habitat areas. These plantings and reef systems create educational opportunities and support aquatic species across multiple habitat zones.

© Greenworks PC

© Kind Designs

Guiding Principles: Restoring & Creating

Description: A hybrid shoreline protection system that may include living seawall panels along the face of the existing seawall to support filter feeders, and/or living shorelines or stone revetments between Piers 4 and 5 to provide ecological enhancements such as native plantings and sediment amendments. This approach softens the land-water interface, protects the existing seawall, reduces wave impacts on the seawall and inland properties, promotes marine biodiversity, and reduces reliance on hardened infrastructure.

Benefits: Reduces erosion and wave impact, supports marine biodiversity (e.g., oysters, mussels, juvenile fish), and improves water quality through natural filtration. Offers a nature-based solution to sea level rise and storm surge while enhancing visual and ecological connectivity.

© Stone Living Lab

Guiding Principles: Activating & Restoring

Description: The Harborwalk is where the pier connects to the broader Charlestown Navy Yard neighborhood. Our design for Pier 5 allows for flexible connections between the pier and the Harborwalk —such as modular walkways and elevated paths—designed to accommodate the current Harborwalk and be easily raised to support a future elevated Harborwalk as needed to protect the inland community.

Benefits: Maintains mobility and ensures continuity of community use and access to the waterfront. Encourages inclusive design and long-term adaptability in waterfront and flood-prone areas.

© Engineering News Record

Guiding Principles: Activating