Avoid the ‘science of yesterday’
Henk Ovink thinks about the threat posed by rising seas to developed coastlines, a lot. The Dutch expert on the subject brought his water wisdom to the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) this semester, co-teaching a course on managing such risks and vulnerabilities, GSD 01507. Final student presentations followed a semester of “studios” that sought to provide design answers to real-world problems. For the last year, Ovink has been a senior advisor to U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Shaun Donovan ’87, M.Arch. ’95, M.P.A. ’95. After Hurricane Sandy scoured the Northeast in 2012, bracketing New York City with coastal disasters, Donovan formed the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force. Ovink, whose lowland country has had centuries of experience holding back the sea, had met the secretary during his tour of the Netherlands in December 2012, and soon signed on to help. Helping largely meant organizing Rebuild by Design, an open...