Catherine Townsend, President and CEO for the Trust for the National Mall, joined FOX5 to discuss threats to the cherry blossom trees. Photo by Angela Napili
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DC Cherry Blossoms are in danger due to flooding at Tidal Basin. Matthew Morrison, Arborist at the National Mall and Memorial Parks and Catherine Townsend, president and CEO of the Trust for the National Mall, joined FOX Weather Sunrise to talk about the issue.
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Facing the challenges of damage caused by increasing foot traffic from millions of visitors, the growing impacts of the changing climate and daily flooding caused by the rising sea level, the beloved Cherry Trees on the National Mall need our help now more than ever. National Park Service arborists work year-round to care for the trees and ensure they continue to bloom for generations to come.
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The Tidal Basin is one of the most iconic spots on the National Mall, but changes in weather patterns and increased risk of coastal flooding have rendered it one of America’s most endangered landmarks.
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More severe weather patterns, rising tides and changing landscapes due to factors like fossil fuel emissions point to a coming reckoning. News4’s Derrick Ward reports that locally, the signs are as close as some of our national treasures.
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The Tidal Basin holds a storied place in the national imagination, but its future is under threat. Your input is essential to the Ideas Lab process. Together, we can produce visionary world-class solutions, build consensus, generate public awareness, and reimagine what the Tidal Basin can be.
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By Daniella Byck, published by Washingtonian
The Tidal Basin is sinking. The cherry trees are under water. Now preservationists have tapped landscape architecture firms to plot out their future.
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By Whitney Pipkin, published by The Chesapeake Bay Journal
A visit to the Tidal Basin in the District of Columbia should deliver sweeping views of cherry trees heavy with pink and white blooms this time of year, drawing millions of onlookers to the concrete shorelines annually.
But not this spring. For the second straight year, festival organizers are warning people to stay away, encouraging them to visit virtually. This is not only because of the coronavirus pandemic. The popular gathering spot also faces growing problems with accessibility and safety hazards caused by regular flooding. The water flowing into the basin from the Potomac River rises up and over its sea wall twice daily, at each high tide.
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Compiled by Madella Hickman Ring, Antiques and The Arts Weekly, January 22, 2021
Tidal Basin Ideas Lab has unveiled proposals from five leading landscape architecture firms that reimagine the future of Washington, DC’s iconic Tidal Basin and National Mall.
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By Lucy Wang, Inhabitat, November 20, 2020
The National Mall Tidal Basin — also known as “America’s front yard” — is home to some of the nation’s most iconic landmarks such as the Jefferson Memorial, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. But the beloved Washington, D.C. public space is under threat from daily flooding and is in urgent need of critical repairs and improvements. In a bid to save the celebrated landscape, five prestigious landscape architecture firms — DLANDstudio, GGN, Hood Design Studio, James Corner Field Operations and Reed Hilderbrand — have been tapped to reimagine the future of the Tidal Basin and National Mall. Keep reading for a preview of all the designs.
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By Nicole Noechel, Washington Gardener, November 2020
Over the past 10 years, Washington’s historic Tidal Basin has experienced worsening daily flooding and crumbling infrastructure, according to the Trust for the National Mall’s Executive Vice President, Teresa Durkin…To address these problems, the Trust for the National Mall, along with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and civic partner Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, have teamed up to create the online Tidal Basin Ideas Lab with five reconstruction plans by world-renowned architects and design firms.
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By Eleanor Gibson, dezeen
A bridge to the White House and man-made islands are among the conceptual proposals five architecture studios have developed for preserving Washington DC's Tidal Basin reservoir and the National Mall.
DLANDstudio, GGN, James Corner Field Operations, Hood Design Studio and Reed Hilderbrand all created schemes to reimagine the site for Tidal Basin Ideas Lab – organised by National Trust for Historic Preservation, Trust for the National Mall, the National Park Service and architecture firm SOM.
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By Kat Barandy, designboom
With the ‘Tidal Basin Ideas Lab’ exhibition, a team of designers unveil proposals to reimagine the sinking tidal basin at Washington D.C.’s National Mall. The team includes leading landscape architects DLANDstudio, GGN,Hood Design Studio, James CornerField Operations, and Reed Hilderbrand. the area includes memorials to Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and martin Luther king jr. as nearly 1.5 million people walk along the basin’s rim during the annual cherry blossom festival each spring, the increased car and foot traffic have driven parts of the tidal basin area underwater while the walkways flood daily.
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By Elizabeth Fazzare, Architectural Digest
Home to some of the nation’s most iconic monuments, Washington, D.C.’s Tidal Basin—the man-made reservoir adjacent to the National Mall—currently suffers from crumbling seawall infrastructure and twice-daily flooding. Today the National Trust for Historic Preservation; the Trust for the National Mall; the National Park Service; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; and American Express unveiled the Tidal Basin Ideas Lab to address these issues through design.
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At a Distance, Episode 85, October 22, 2020
Walter Hood, founder and creative director of Hood Design Studio and co-author of the forthcoming book “Black Landscapes Matter,” talks with us about how his new proposal for Washington, D.C.’s National Mall Tidal Basin could facilitate unity, why spaces that elicit discomfort are a step toward reconciliation, and the importance of investing in people and places that society takes for granted.
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By Madeleine D’Angelo, Architect Magazine, October 21, 2020
The Tidal Basin on the National Mall is home to some of Washington D.C.'s iconic monuments—including the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial—as well as 3,000 famed cherry trees. But a crumbling sea wall and daily flooding—which will only become worse with sea-level rise due to climate change—have left the area in desperate need of both repair and future-proofing. Aiming to find design solutions for the 107-acre site, the National Trust for Historic Preservation partnered with the Trust for the National Mall, the National Park Service, and civic partners Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and American Express, to launch the Tidal Basin Ideas Lab Exhibition.
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By Matt Hickman, The Architect’s Newspaper
The Tidal Basin Ideas Lab, a project initiated by a collaboration of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Trust for the National Mall, National Park Service, and civic partner Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), has unveiled a new online exhibition that envisions how the National Mall Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., can evolve, adapt, and thrive while buttressing itself for a future increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of a changing climate.
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By Elliot C. Williams, DCist
On Wednesday, a combination of non-profit organizations, companies, and design teams launched the Tidal Basin Ideas Lab, an online exhibit that presents new plans for building a more sustainable Tidal Basin.
Originally intended to be an in-person exhibit, the project was shifted completely online, where visitors can submit feedback and ideas for the Tidal Basin’s future.
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By Mimi Montgomery, Washingtonian
Could there one day be a land bridge extending from the Jefferson Memorial through the Tidal Basin?
Perhaps, at least according to the Tidal Basin Ideas Lab, which released renderings from five architects that depict possible renovations of the historic area. The Ideas Lab aims to address the Tidal Basin’s flooding and deteriorating infrastructure by bringing design and sustainability leaders together to collaborate on solutions.
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By Deane Madsen, published by Architectural Record
The saying goes that a rising tide lifts all boats, but what happens to national monuments, environmental landmarks, and other fixed elements of landscape when the waters rise and refuse to recede? That question is at the crux of the Tidal Basin Ideas Lab, which showcases the work of five firms, commissioned by the National Park Service, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Trust for the National Mall.left unaddressed, rising waters could inundate the trunks of those cherry trees along with monuments to figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Jefferson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in several feet of water every day during the river’s twice-daily high tides.
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