Coastal Resilience: An Evolving Definition

It is no easy task to build a castle in the sand.

For architects, the process begins with the property itself — its size and grade, floodplain and native vegetation — before even considering the design, its flow, harmony and ingenuity.

Then, it is up to the builders to bring that vision to life, using modern-day materials that will, hopefully, stand the test of time.

But on the waterfront, that also means standing the test of the environment. Set against a backdrop of climate change, rising seas, worsening storms and soaring flood insurance, coastal resilience has taken on new meaning and importance — though it is unclear for how much longer.

“It’s a very dangerous proposition, but, at the same time, who doesn’t want to be invited to a beach house?” explained Janice Scherer, the planning and development administrator for Southampton Town. “You want to go — it’s beautiful, you’re at the ocean, it’s great. We see all of that. But it’s a balancing act. It’s balancing between society and the environment, and that’s not an easy thing to do.”

For generations, East End residents have called the oceanfront home — building and rebuilding after hurricanes and nor’easters swept their houses away. But new construction in Southampton and East Hampton towns hinge on compliance with Federal Emergency Management Agency regulations, stringent codes that dictate the specific elevation above grade that homes must be raised, as prescribed by flood maps.

“We don’t want people to have to be climate refugees and lose their property or their life,” Scherer said. “The most important thing is to keep people safe, and so that’s what all these regulations are really about.”

In communities subject to wave action and flooding, architects have no choice but to marry design with FEMA mandates, and by now most homeowners know that they will face the aesthetic challenges and compromises that come along with it, according to Southampton-based builder Hamilton Hoge.

“My recent several projects that I’ve been involved in, I think the owners are a lot more aware of what is ethical and what’s important,” he said, “and they’ve learned not to ask for the crazy stuff they would ask for 20 years ago.”

What began as modest beach bungalows dotting the most coveted oceanfront land have largely transformed into “grandiose” manses, Scherer said, many with walls of glass. Driving down Dune Road in Bridgehampton is a far cry from what it once was, she said. “It’s so different,” she said. “It’s become a status symbol.”

As much as the design is a conversation, in environmentally sensitive areas, a greater debate has emerged: whether to build or, quite simply, to not. Some experts say that strategic coastal retreat is the only path forward, while others cannot envision a time when building on the ocean, bays and other waterways fully stops.

“If people have enough money to build on the water, they’re going to build on the water. They’re not worried about losing,” explained Nick Zappola, owner of Zappola Construction in Sag Harbor. “Will I do it? No, I wouldn’t do it. It would be a devastating loss if the house was lost.

“But if you’re a billionaire, or a hedge fund guy, it doesn’t matter,” he continued. “They’d write off the loss. I’d be writing off the rest of my life and my kids’ lives.”

With flood insurance covering a fraction of the value of an average oceanfront home, architects and builders around the world have developed new ways to create more resilient homes on the coast.

In the Dominican Republic, the Mareines Arquitetura studio designed a home in Punta Cana that can survive 186-mph winds, while Deltec Homes in North Carolina is upping the ante, developing houses that will still be standing despite 225-mph gusts.

Then there’s Ichijo Co. in Japan, which created a house that can float during a flood.

“People assume that all development does environmental harm,” according to Paul Masi, partner at Bates Masi + Architects in East Hampton. “But a thoughtfully studied design can provide environmental benefits.”

He pointed to the Shadmoor area of Montauk, where the coastal bluffs are particularly susceptible to erosion due to a layer of clay below ground, causing water to pool there and break through the face of the sand.

“In response, our design for a house in Shadmoor centered on collecting water on the roof and the site,” he said, “and directing it to special drainage structures that transmit the water below the clay lens to reduce erosion.”

Rain gardens are just one mechanism in the coastal resilience arsenal, along with innovative piling systems to lift homes out of the floodplain, hurricane-strength windows and doors, and breakaway walls, designed to collapse in the case of extreme flooding.

“That way, if a storm surge hits, the whole house doesn’t get blasted apart,” Scherer said. “That’s the ingenuity there — it looks like it’s something that’s part of the structure, but, really, those walls are meant to break away. They’re meant to recede with the tide, if they had to.”

Before most of these tools existed, there was “Highway Behind the Pond,” an East Hampton home designed by Rafael Vinoly Architects. And, according to its Bridgehampton-based builder, Frank Dalene of Telemark, “When the sea rises and all the homes on the oceanfront are gone, this house will remain standing.”

Construction on the three-bedroom, 17,000-square-foot home began in 1991, which started by compact filling and pouring concrete to grade level for one year after concrete slabs and spread footings were placed 25 feet below grade.

Above ground, the structure is cast-in-place architectural concrete — some walls 24 inches thick — with a liquid color additive. All mechanicals, plumbing, electrical and HVAC were also cast into the concrete, with no room for error.

“The exposure that these houses are under is tremendous, and most people really don’t understand,” Dalene said. “Just building in a manner that prevents water from leaking in, all that knowledge is gained through experience. There are many times in the beginnings we failed, and then we found out how to correct that problem, and then we would incorporate that into the next house we built.”

In Dalene’s eyes, resilience is a higher form of sustainability. And while some wood-frame houses are sustainable, they are not resilient, he said. “The maintenance is intensive and they are subject to decay,” he said, “and cannot withstand the power of the ocean.”

Arguably, the greatest threat lies in building in a coastal erosion hazard area, or CEHA, which are low-lying and close to the ocean. For Masi, a recent Amagansett project, “Walking Dunes,” existed entirely in that zone.

“There’s this pretty common typology of these homes lifted on these wood pilings,” he said. “It becomes a part of the architecture that you are supposed to ignore and you just look at the house on top of it, but it’s something that you really can’t ignore. It’s the first thing that greets you when you arrive on the property. You’re just staring underneath the house, and you’re seeing this very rough, almost industrial pilings that were driven in the ground.”

The architect refused to take that approach.

Instead, he rethought that system and designed slender, galvanized metal columns that not only sat beneath the house but integrated into the interior architecture — artful not only in its appearance, he said, but also functional in the way it captures sand blown underneath the house.

The homeowners moved in this past April, he said, and, to his knowledge, haven’t left.

“I went by not too long ago, and because the house is required to be elevated, you have quite a view of the ocean, and it’s just dolphins and whales — it’s unbelievable,” he said. “It’s a show.”

That is what the oceanfront premium buys, after all. But at every chance Scherer gets, she urges homeowners to consider their safety first.

“The only real thing we have is to just tell people: back and up,” she explained. “Building on the water, it’s just one of those things where we would like to see retreat. We always, and every time, advocate for people to retreat back past that CEHA line, out of the floodplain, move away.

“These flood waters are rising, the climate change is affecting where that sea level rise is going,” she continued. “And if you reference those New York State sea level rise maps, they’re frightening.”

The conversation around strategic coastal retreat continues to be a contentious one, particularly in Montauk. Overcoming the sheer logistics and the financial and emotional implications that come from moving away from the shore is the challenge.

“Our most expensive homes are on the ocean, and as sea level rises, we’re not going to have an option,” Dalene said, adding, “The millions and millions and millions of dollars that we’re spending replenishing that sand, it’s really crazy when you think about it. We should be saving the money and helping people move back off the ocean — because that’s the only real answer to that.”

A chilling graphic in East Hampton Town’s Coastal Assessment Resiliency Plan, or CARP, shows what the region could look like as early as 2070. It is marked by tidal flood inundation and areas of permanent submergence — including parts of Springs, Montauk and all of Napeague — creating an archipelago off the eastern tip of Long Island.

“Montauk’s your perfect example of what is happening and what sea level rise is doing,” Dalene said. “You see this happening all around us, so that becomes part of resilience, too. It’s really sitting back from the ocean and probably even raising the floodplain even higher than what we have now — and going beyond what FEMA is having us do, just to be proactive.

“The longer we wait, the more critical it’s going to become.”