Season 4 of Van Alen Sessions, the Short Documentary Series, Explores Community Efforts to Fortify The City Against Sea Level Rise and Adapt to Climate Change

New York, NY (June 26, 2018) — Van Alen Institute and The New Yorker announce the launch of the fourth season of Van Alen Sessions, an online short-documentary video series highlighting current debates about urban infrastructure.

• June 28^th: Van Alen is hosting a public screening of Turning the Tide in Miami from 7:00 P.M. ET at 30 West 22^nd Street, 5^th Floor, between 5^th and 6^th Avenues in New York City
• June 29^th: The series will be available to watch here on Van Alen’s Web site and YouTube channel
• July 3rd: Van Alen’s media partner for this season, The New Yorker, will begin posting episodes on its Web site, newyorker.com.

Turning the Tide in Miami explores how the people of Miami are banding together to help the city and its residents adapt to sea level rise. In five 3- to 6-minute episodes, the series explores what is at stake for Miami in terms of the viability of its infrastructure, real estate market, drinking water supply, and the well-being of its most vulnerable populations. These videos profile Miamians from all walks of life‑-from property developers to artists, ecologists, and activists–and their efforts to ensure that their city will not only remain vibrant but also become more resilient in the decades to come.

“In Miami, low-lying areas of the city are now regularly flooded even on calm days,” says Van Alen Executive Director David Van der Leer. “Turning the Tide in Miami reveals what people are doing to meet the challenge of reinventing the city’s physical and social fabric in the face of rising seas. Design and engineering professionals and everyday people alike are coming up with wonderfully imaginative and effective solutions.”

Van Alen Institute produced Turning the Tide in Miami in collaboration with Brooklyn, NY-based documentary filmmaker and writer Merete Mueller, with editorial direction from The New Yorker. Ms. Mueller’s feature-length work explores the impact of built spaces and landscape on our personal experiences and has screened at SXSW and Hot Docs. Her short-form videos have appeared on The New York Times, The Atlantic, and VICE’s Web sites. She has also taught writing and filmmaking at Bronx Community College.

Turning the Tide in Miami builds upon Van Alen Institute’s Keeping Current: A Sea Level Rise Challenge for Greater Miami, a multi-year, multi-project initiative ongoing since 2017. Van Alen is working locally with researchers, policymakers, students, and community groups in the region to produce innovative design competitions and public programs that explore the impact of and solutions to sea level rise through the lenses of economy, ecology, and equity. A number of Keeping Current partners appear in Turning the Tide episodes.

This season of Van Alen Sessions is the fourth of eight multi-episode seasons planned through 2019. Season One dealt with massive transit tunnel building projects, while Season Two explored the relationship between energy infrastructure and communities, and Season Three investigated the impact of automation on urban infrastructural systems. All four seasons to date may be viewed via Van Alen’s website and YouTube.

Van Alen Institute has produced Van Alen Sessions with talented documentary film directors and graduate student researchers and shared finished videos with the public through media partners as well as its own online channels. Funding has come from the National Endowment for the Arts, AkzoNobel, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. NEA funding continues through June 2019, and Van Alen is seeking new funders to match the NEA grants for subsequent seasons. Prior to The New Yorker, Van Alen’s media partners have included The Atlantic and CityLab.

About Van Alen’s Climate Adaptation Initiatives

Van Alen Institute has been investigating the role of design in transforming cities, landscapes and regions in the face of climate change for several years. Work has included research, design competitions, and public programs including:

• Van Alen Climate Council (2018-ongoing): a platform for exchange for leading architects, landscape architects, engineers, planners, researchers, developers, and other environmentally-minded professionals. The Climate Council program centers on investigative travel to North American destinations that are undergoing, or will soon undergo substantial environmental change.
• Keeping Current: A Sea Level Rise Challenge for Greater Miami (2017-ongoing), a two-year program including design competitions for public facilities, a summer program for high school students, a mobile exhibit and conference, and more in collaboration with Miami-Dade County and other local partners. This project is supported by nearly $1M in funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Knight Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the Miami Foundation, Target, and Terra.
• Shore to Core, a design and research competition in collaboration with West Palm Beach (FL) Community Redevelopment Agency, invited professionals to reimagine downtown West Palm Beach as a dynamic, resilient waterfront city.
• Changing Course: Navigating the Future of the Lower Mississippi River Delta, a design competition to reimagine a more sustainable Lower Mississippi River Delta. Following Hurricane Katrina and the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a broad coalition gathered to develop strategies to bring communities, ecologies, and commerce back into balance.
• Rebuild by Design was an initiative of President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to address the structural and environmental vulnerabilities that Hurricane Sandy exposed in communities throughout the region and develop fundable solutions to protect residents from future climate events.

About The New Yorker The New Yorker is a multi-platform media enterprise, spanning print, digital, audio, and video content, and live events. With more than a million subscribers to the weekly magazine and more than twenty million readers every month on newyorker.com, The New Yorker delivers unparalleled reporting and commentary on politics, foreign affairs, business, technology, popular culture, and the arts, along with humor, fiction, poetry, and cartoons. Reaching beyond print, digital editions, and apps, you can find The New Yorker’s writers, editors, and artists on the radio on “The New Yorker Radio Hour” and at marquee events like the New Yorker Festival. The creativity, influence, and impact that have characterized The New Yorker since its founding, in 1925, are today amplified far beyond its pages. 

About Van Alen Institute At Van Alen Institute, we believe design can transform cities, landscapes, and regions to improve people’s lives. We collaborate with communities, scholars, policymakers, and professionals on local and global initiatives that rigorously investigate the most pressing social, cultural, and ecological challenges of tomorrow. Building on more than a century of experience, we develop cross-disciplinary research, provocative public programs, and inventive design competitions.