Photo Exhibit Focuses on How Communities Adapt to Climate Change

An exhibit at LA’s Annenberg Space for Photography looks at how different communities are adapting in order to become resilient to the threats of climate change - a review by LA County planner Clement Lau.

1 minute read

March 3, 2015, 11:00 AM PST

By melaniecj


For those who have moved past the "if" and on to the "how" to deal with climate change, an exhibit at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles is an eye opener.

"Sink or Swim: Designing for Sea Change" is a photography exhibit that features the work of Iwan Baan, Jones Bendiksen, Paula Bronstein, and Stephen Wilkes, looking at how infrastructure planning has been used to offer some sort of resilience in the face of climate change. Los Angeles County planner Clement Lau writes a review.

"The images selected for the exhibit explore the issue of building for resilience in the face of climate change and sea level rise in particular.  The photographs capture efforts to adapt for survival as well as ambitious infrastructure planning in a variety of coastal communities, ranging from the Kurigram District in Bangladesh to the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans to the Netherlands."

Lau writes about some of the key projects captured in those photos, which include floating schools in Bangladesh, a landmark roller coaster in New Jersey partly submerged in the Atlantic Ocean during Hurricane Sandy, and a boulevard in the Netherlands aligned with a 12-meter high sea wall concealed with undulating dune and stepped-back levels that key cars, bikes, and pedestrians separated.

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