One of the architects for the project called BIG U—the most ambitious of six schemes that recently won HUD's "Rebuild by Design" competition—is so excited about the "designed" multi-use barrier that he predicts New York City will leapfrog the rest of the world in thinking about flood protection. "If you put up a 10-foot wall, you may have solved the problem, but you also killed life on the waterside of the barrier and the community's connection to the water," architect BIG's Kai-Uwe Bergmann says. BIG U would protect the city during the rare storm and take city life into account the rest of the time.