2023 Obel Award celebrates Kate Orff’s ecosystem-driven designs
Scape and its founder Kate Orff have scooped the 2023 Obel Award, which celebrates the landscape studio’s Living Breakwaters project
The 2023 Obel Award has been revealed, going to American landscape studio Scape and its founder Kate Orff (member of our Wallpaper* USA 300) for the Living Breakwaters project – an inspiring ecosystems-driven piece of green infrastructure design off the shore of Staten Island in New York. Championing sustainable architecture through pioneering, research-based solutions with an eco soul, Scape's work and the particular project are in perfect alignment with the award's mission – to focus on the ecological and social responsibilities of architecture.
Chair of the Obel award jury Martha Schwartz said: 'Breakwaters are an ancient idea for how to protect shorelines – and the people who live close to them – by building underwater seawalls to defend a harbour or a beach from the force of waves. Kate has designed an extraordinary, modern-day interpretation, the Living Breakwaters, which will not only protect humans and revitalise the coastline of New York City, but also restore lost marine biodiversity. This is a visionary project that tackles the full task of adaptation, and which has the capacity to inspire and to positively impact vulnerable shorelines worldwide.'
2023 Obel Award winner: Scape and founder Kate Orff
'Winning an architecture prize is really important for a project like this, which involved so many different people working together with a shared purpose. It is a true encouragement for community members, elected officials, landscape architects, ecologists and engineers, to come together and develop coastal adaptation projects wherever they are. It’s also an acknowledgement of the importance of thinking about design at a holistic, planetary scale. Our protective natural systems are in various stages of decline globally, and in order to repair them, we have to think and design systemically to tie the pieces back together. And that is an incredibly bold, creative act. Hopefully, this award can emphasise this point: that nature is a matter of design now and that we have to work fast and work together,' said Orff.
Living Breakwaters is a complex project (led by Scape, but created by a multidisciplinary team) that required the reimagining of its Staten Island site following 2012's Superstorm Sandy. It comprises a mix of stones and ecologically designed concrete elements, which have been strategically placed to support fin fish, and other marine species, such as oysters in the natural, gradual restoration of the shoreline – the latter species in fact playing a key role as ‘co-designers’ by helping shape and develop the artificial reef formation.
Orff, who recently also celebrated the opening of Tom Lee Park in Memphis, which she created together with Jeanne Gang's Studio Gang, was a critical player here too, in the quest to restore nature across the site. The design hopes to bring back ‘wonder and wildness’ to this part of Memphis, she told us at the time of our interview on the park. This part of Staten Island hopes to reap the rewards of her visionary design thinking too.
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).
-
‘Hedonistic and avant-garde’: Rabanne’s Julian Dossena on the legacy of the chainmail 1969 bag
Paco Rabanne’s 1969 chainmail handbag encapsulates the late designer’s futuristic, space-age style. Current creative director Julien Dossena tells Wallpaper* about the bag’s particular pleasures
By Jack Moss Published
-
Postcard from Paris: Olympic fever takes over the streets
On the eve of the opening ceremony of Paris 2024, our correspondent shares her views from the streets of the capital about how the event is impacting the urban landscape.
By Minako Norimatsu Published
-
The Mercury Prize nominees for 2024 have been revealed
Charli XCX, The Last Dinner Party and Beth Gibbons are amongst this year's nominees
By Charlotte Gunn Published
-
IM Pei's Everson Museum of Art gets a modern makeover
The East Wing of the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY has been given a contemporary refresh by emerging Los Angeles studio MILLIØNS
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Black Modernism’s lesser-known, at-risk architecture gems gain a lifeline
Conserving Black Modernism announces vital funding to save and preserve overlooked and endangered buildings by African American architects and designers
By Bridget Downing Published
-
Step into the Blanton Museum of Art's reimagined public realm by Snøhetta in Austin
Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas is completed and reveals its reimagined public realm and plaza designed by Snøhetta
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
This New York Townhouse renovation is a lesson in contemporary minimalism
TenBerke’s carefully considered New York townhouse is the reimagining of a century-old Manhattan structure that reframes vertical living
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Visit The Frost House, a lesser-known modernist architecture marvel in Michigan City
The Frost House is a lesser-known midcentury architecture gem in Michigan City, Indiana; we took the tour as the property goes on the market
By Audrey Henderson Published
-
Broadway designer Scott Pask’s Arizona retreat is a scene-stealing discovery
Scott Pask invites us inside his Arizona retreat, nestled in the foothills overlooking Tucson – a place to reboot, recharge and commune with nature
By Michael Webb Published
-
Upstate New York retreat Ridge House evokes land art
Ridge House in upstate New York, the work of Brooklyn-based studio Worrell Yeung, is at one with the surrounding countryside
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
2024 RIBA National Awards: browse the list of worthy winners
The 2024 RIBA National Awards have been announced, comprising 26 projects across the UK
By Ellie Stathaki Published