The final lecture for the Fall season of The Environmental Institute will be presented Wednesday, December 1, at noon at 105 HLLS North, Procopio Room at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  Catherine Seavitt, Principal, Catherine Seavitt Studio, and member of the faculty at Princeton University School of Architecture, will discuss the Palisade Bay Project, a proposed adaptive transformation of the Upper Bay of New York Harbor in the face of climate change and global sea level rise. This collaborative research imagines a “soft infrastructure” for the Upper Bay, rethinking thresholds of water, land, and city, and challenging the “hard” infrastructure of storm surge barrier solutions to flooding. “Soft infrastructure” strategies work to alternatively buffer or absorb flooding, while also creating a new destination on the water. The work, published in the book On the Water: Palisade Bay (Hatje Cantz, 2010) is the result of a two-year research project funded by The Latrobe Prize, a biennial research grant awarded by the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects for collaborative research. This work served as the inspiration for the workshop and exhibition “Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront,” which opened at the Museum of Modern Art in March 2010, and is currently on exhibit as part of the U. S. Pavilion exhibition Workshopping: An American Model of Architectural Practice at the 2010 Biennale di Architettura in Venice, Italy.

For directions and more information, log on to www.umass.edu/tei/TEI/LectureSeriesFall2010.html