Innovative Design and ‘Living Seawalls’ Can Improve an Imperfect Solution

High-value real estate dominates Miami’s coast, where luxe hotels, stretches of retail and apartment complexes come with waterfront views. Along the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, however, high value also means high risk. Enter seawalls: a complex climate solution undergoing major innovation.

Seawalls are “just simply to keep the water out where the water belongs and keep the people or everything else in where it belongs,” said Philip Parker, an architect and an adjunct associate professor in Pratt Institute’s Graduate Architecture and Urban Design department. “So, the wall becomes this massive separator.”