A Membrane for Manhattan

from Architizer article

All architecture must decide its stance on how it will accept or resist preexisting conditions. This site specificity is part of what makes architecture what it is, and in the face of global climate change, architects, designers and planners must determine what kinds of problems need solving: are we to actively undo centuries of environmental damage, hopeful of an eventual return to a bucolic status quo, or must we accept its consequences and take the aftermath as a launching point for a new ‘progressive’ design?

Architects Tingwei Xu and Xie Zhang from the University of Pennsylvania have fervently opted for the latter challenge, as demonstrated in the porous membrane they have designed to cling around Manhattan’s buildings in anticipation of rising sea levels.