The Design Trust for Public Space has selected five winners from its 12th Request for Proposals (RFP) cycle, a citywide call for project ideas that address key public space challenges on the theme of “Water: Designing an Equitable Water Future for New York City.” 

Photo credits: Map courtesy of the Seaweed Zone; NYC DEP; Photo of Tiffany Baker by Jason Bailey; Rising Tide Effect; Pratt Students testing out OTW models at the RETI Center Field Station in the Gowanus Bay, GBX Terminal;

“The story of New York City is a story of water,” said Matthew Clarke, Design Trust Executive Director. “We chose the theme of water for this RFP cycle because the city faces urgent pressures to mitigate the effects of too much or too little water, from heavy rainfall testing our infrastructure to heat advisories threatening our most vulnerable residents. At the same time, as a global port and city of islands, we wanted the theme to connect New Yorkers with the cultural vibrancy inherent in our waterways.”

The Water RFP received many exciting submissions offering creative new solutions to approaching water in the public realm. Explore 26 ideas for New York City’s water future from our semi-finalist projects here. A cohort of five final projects has been selected to receive a $10,000 stipend and participate in a nine-month, guided incubator, supported by a network of experts and professionals. Each team will develop their ideas into a final deliverable, which could be a white-paper, a small publication, a website, a policy brief, or other creative product, and present their work at convening to be planned for 2027. 

In addition to review by the Design Trust staff, the finalists were selected after review from an independent advisory committee made up of water experts and community leaders across sectors and disciplines. 

Meet our Water RFP Finalists:

Annabel Finkel/ Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners: “Drinking Water in the Public Realm”

This project examines how the city’s existing water infrastructure can be adapted to support reliable public drinking water in streets and neighborhood corridors. Through research and cross-agency collaboration, the project sets out to produce a clear action plan for expanding equitable water access. By addressing institutional and operational barriers, the work positions drinking water as essential civic infrastructure within the city’s climate resilience and public space planning efforts.

“On hot summer days, millions of New Yorkers move through streets and sidewalks without access to a free drink of water,” said Annabel Finkel, Urban Planner at Starr Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners. “This project asks how a basic necessity can become part of everyday public space, rather than something people have to seek out or pay for. The Design Trust incubator will provide the space to work across agencies and translate this idea into a feasible, city-supported pathway for delivering drinking water where it’s needed most.”

Gita Nandan & Zehra Kuz / Thread Collective: “On the Water”

As sea levels rise, NYC could gain 20,000 to 60,000 acres of new water surface, with 12ft tidal depths, dramatically reshaping its shoreline. Floating structures are a viable solution; moving with the tides, they allow coastal communities to remain in place. “On the Water“ is a movement to facilitate, advocate, innovate, and construct floating structures, as an ecological, social and spatial response to climate change. The urgent project will work closely with communities to imagine, plan, and regulate an equitable model for living within the New Inter-tidal Zone.

“We are thrilled to be a finalist for the Design Trust Water Project,” said Gita Nandan and Zehra Kuz of Thread Collective. “On the Water reimagines the water's edge not as a boundary, but as a fluid mutable condition and a shared civic threshold—where ecology, public life, and climate resilience meet. Through mapping and analysis we will define a new Intertidal Zone where floating communities are a viable option for living with water in the next century.”

Greg Pucillo: “The Seaweed Zone Project”

“The Seaweed Zone Project” aims to make it easier for New Yorkers to explore, propose, and obtain permits for community-scale seaweed aquaculture. By identifying environmentally sound, physically feasible, and socially equitable seaweed cultivation sites along the New York City waterfront, the project will turn complex environmental data and regulatory processes into an accessible feasibility map and a community pilot starter kit. Seaweed can store carbon, promote biodiversity, enhance water quality, and offer a platform for bio-based innovation, providing an engaging and transformative way to connect with nature and your neighbors in a city of water. 

“Seaweed invites us to better understand and care for the waters that surround us, and to think creatively about a bio-based, circular future,” said Greg Pucillo. “In the context of warming coastal waters, it’s also a lens for discussing and enacting climate resilience. This is why I’m so excited to join the Design Trust’s Water Incubator. Within the program's structure and with supportive partnerships, I’m hoping more New Yorkers (of all species) can gain easier access to the benefits and opportunities of community-scale seaweed aquaculture.”

Kaitlin Krause/ Rising Tide Effect: “Water Wise NYC: Designing a Citywide System for Equitable Water Safety”

“Water Wise NYC” is a civic design initiative to embed water literacy into the fabric of New York City, reshaping how New Yorkers understand, live with, and connect to water across public space, infrastructure, and everyday life. As climate change intensifies flooding and coastal risk, communities most exposed to environmental risks and drowning disparities often face gaps in access to life-saving water safety knowledge. Rising Tide Effect will lead a participatory process to develop a strategic design framework and place-based interventions, such as waterfront wayfinding, environmental storytelling markers, and climate-responsive installations, that make water risk and resilience visible and understandable across rivers, oceans, recreational areas, and flood-prone neighborhoods. The result is a scalable blueprint for a more equitable, climate-resilient water future.

"Water shapes how people move through New York City every day, yet it often goes unnoticed or misunderstood,” said Kaitlin Krause, Rising Tide Effect Founder & Executive Director. “Water Wise NYC is about making water visible, understandable, and part of everyday life, embedding water literacy into the public realm through cues, systems, and storytelling. In doing so, it not only makes information more accessible, but also fosters a deeper connection between New Yorkers and the water that surrounds them. Through the Design Trust incubator, we can translate lived experience and proven, on-the-ground solutions into scalable interventions across the city. We are grateful for the opportunity to join the other finalists on this exciting journey."

Tiffany Baker/The Dear Neighborhood Project: “NYC Flood Memory Toolkit”

“The NYC Flood Memory Kit” is a public-space communication system helping New Yorkers understand citywide flood risks occurring outside traditional mapped flood zones. The kit offers direct steps to prepare communities for future flooding, and participants are invited to share their own experience with invasive water. Building on The Dear Neighbor Project, where residents' interviews inspired 8+ multi-site murals in Gowanus, this modular toolkit of maps, resources, and interview prompts enables public spaces like libraries, community centers, and organizations to host water-focused workshop events to make climate impacts visible.

“Current flood maps tell part of the story, but omit the way flooding shows up in everyday life,” said Tiffany Baker, Brooklyn-based Artist. “Flooding is not just a set of data points on a map; it is a shared story that deserves visibility. Through this work and with the support of The Design Trust Incubator, we’ll have the opportunity to document the current water reality, enabling us to shape our future preparedness, starting with neighborhoods."

The Water RFP is generously sponsored by the Woodner Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, HKS, Arup, Amalgamated Bank, and Buro Happold.