e360: So basically you are looking at this large region and proposing what to do in various parts of it?

Orff: Yes, so that it all comes together. Often we are only responding in a piecemeal way. We have system collapse, but we address it with single limited projects here and there. What we are trying to do is integrate many local projects into a larger-scale systemic approach, into a larger-scale resilience plan.

e360: Tell us about the Living Breakwaters project. What stage are you at, and what are your goals there?

Orff: After Superstorm Sandy hit in October 2012, New York City’s Department of Housing and Urban Development started this project called Rebuild by Design. We worked with them to develop the Living Breakwaters project in Staten Island. It’s essentially a stone-core breakwater that is seeded with oysters, a structure that takes that harmful wave action out of the equation and helps rebuild the beach. It’s also bringing a critical intertidal marine ecosystem back into the urban landscape where it has been decimated. Next year oyster cultivation is going to start up.

e360: Oysters were once an important species in New York Harbor.

Orff: Right, they were a keystone species until they collapsed in around 1900. We went from a harbor that was maybe 20 percent oyster reefs to zero. That was a profound physical change. We essentially went from slower, cleaner water to faster, dirtier water, because oysters filter the water, especially of excess nitrogen. It led to a collapse in much of our marine life.

e360: A project like this entails a new way of thinking about landscape architecture, doesn’t it? You are not just designing the physical landscape. You are taking an active hand in designing the biological environment as well.

Orff: Now, with the sixth extinction, we need to think radically differently about what infrastructure means. We need to include life and see that living landscapes are a form of infrastructure in the sense that forests, for example, clean our water and our air. Oyster reefs clean the water and buffer the shore, and mangrove forests help keep our coastal shorelines intact. An exciting change is that we are reframing ecosystems as infrastructure, and we are testing and modeling their efficacy.

e360: This is sometimes referred to as green infrastructure, isn’t it?

Orff: Yes, it is essentially the design and deployment of living systems—reforesting, restoring coral, building bio-swales to capture and hold water. It’s basically thinking about the physical landscape and the ecological systems that sustain us and weaving them back into cities, weaving them back into the fabric of our communities in order to help us adapt in the long term, not just to respond to emergencies.

e360: I’m intrigued that, in talking about such matters, you don’t generally speak about “restoring nature.” You speak instead of something you call “regenerative design.” What’s the difference?

Orff: Restoring nature is trying to bring back nature for nature’s sake. As much as I, too, am guilty of that desire at times, this is simply not possible because our water quality has changed, and our air and water temperatures have changed. What I’m trying to do is rebuild natural systems in a strategic way that reduces climate risk for communities.

e360: You’ve been quoted as saying: “There’s no more natural nature. Now it’s a matter of design.” What did you mean by that?

Orff: We humans are profoundly impacting the planet. There is no “pure nature” that’s outside of us, untouched up there in the foothills somewhere. We’ve “made” the world what it is already, so now we need to take a very, very strong hand in the remaking. It is a matter of design in the sense that it requires work, intention, design, funding, political skills. It’s not a naive or nostalgic attempt to restore the past. Instead, it’s layering up natural systems to reduce risk, building this hybrid future of stewarded nature.

e360: In Staten Island you are building a breakwater offshore, but in other places you have advocated tearing down some built structures to allow water a place to go during floods.

Orff: We have to soften our shorelines, we need to remove roadways from critical migration paths. Otherwise, flash flooding will get worse, and our biodiversity will continue to plummet. So a big part of climate adaptation may simply be unbuilding what we’ve already built. Rather than thinking of design as something merely additive or “beautifying,” we need to think about undoing our environmental mistakes, like damming rivers, bulkheading our shorelines, and concretizing streams. We need to start making room for rivers and floods.