Quick Summary
• A pilot installation at Morningside Park in Miami is examining whether the concrete barriers lining South Florida’s shoreline can do more than hold back water. A team from Florida International University’s Institute of Environment has mounted a set of 3D printed tiles, produced at the university’s Robotics and Digital Fabrication Lab, onto an existing seawall.…
Additional Context
A pilot installation at Morningside Park in Miami is examining whether the concrete barriers lining South Florida’s shoreline can do more than hold back water. A team from Florida International University’s Institute of Environment has mounted a set of 3D printed tiles, produced at the university’s Robotics and Digital Fabrication Lab, onto an existing seawall. The project, headed by principal investigator Shahin Vassigh, investigates how flood-defense structures might simultaneously serve the ecosystems they typically displace.
Conventional seawalls shield roads, buildings and public areas from erosion, storm surge and rising water, yet their smooth vertical faces offer almost nothing to the species that once inhabited natural shorelines. The initiative, called BioCAP (Biodiversity Impro