Bridging the void : From Infrastructural Fragments to a Resilient and Inclusive Waterfront

Design has long mediated the relationship between land and water, yet contemporary waterfronts are increasingly shaped by hard-edge engineering, land reclamation, and infrastructural systems that suppress ecological processes and obscure histories of displacement. In Northeast False Creek, a once-productive tidal marsh transformed through colonial infill, industrialization, and highway infrastructure, these interventions have produced a fragmented landscape marked by environmental vulnerability, social disconnection, and limited public access. As sea levels rise and climate uncertainty intensifies, such approaches—dependent on containment, elevation, and densification are increasingly inadequate, reinforcing both ecological risk and spatial inequity. This project confronts these conditions by reframing the waterfront as a living, adaptive interface in which water is not excluded but engaged as a primary design agent. Drawing from pre-colonial tidal ecologies, Indigenous stewardship practices, and contemporary theories of ecological urbanism and more-than-human design, the work advances a landscape-based approach rooted in permeability, adaptability, and relational connectivity. Through topographic reconfiguration, the integration of wetlands, swales, and rain gardens, and the restructuring of circulation networks, the proposal constructs a floodable and performative landscape capable of absorbing, storing, and filtering water. Simultaneously, underutilized infrastructural spaces are reclaimed to support inclusive public life, creating environments that accommodate diverse users while fostering new social and ecological relationships. The work repositions the waterfront not as a boundary to defend, but as a dynamic system to engage one that operates across temporal scales and embraces uncertainty as a design driver. It concludes not as a fixed solution, but as an evolving framework for resilience, where vulnerability is transformed into capacity, and fragmented urban, ecological, and social systems are reconnected through design.