iii. negotiation, with a line, by a line. (or two).

上善若水。—— 老子

Water is the highest good. —— Lao Tzu

Two lines drawn across a city edge.

One cuts into the ground to hold back the water. One hovers above to carry the people.

Not barriers. Not walls. But choreography—between industry, nature, and the public.

A stage for separation, without exclusion.One cuts into the ground to hold back the water. One hovers above to carry the people.

Manufacturing threatened by water.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard sits at the intersection of revival and retreat.

It is the site of a city-led push to restore manufacturing—a new economy for New York’s industrial waterfront. But it is also a site of tension: rising sea levels threaten its edges, while public desire for access challenges its operational boundaries. The yard is active, but isolated. A ferry stop delivers visitors into a space they cannot fully enter. Trucks move beside waterfronts nobody can reach.

This project gives its proposal: a strategy made out of two lines.

A trench is cut into the landscape—designed to hold rising water, but shaped to allow play, pause, and gathering when dry. Its slope becomes a soft barrier: separating without denying. Above it, a skywalk spans the yard. It connects public transportation nodes to the waterfront, arcs over private ground, and provides new access without interference. Together, these two lines mediate the overlapping demands of water, industry, and public life. Not by separation, but by choreography.

Mapping the site.

An overlay of flood maps and demographic data reveals a stark truth: low-income communities at the perimeter face the highest risk from rising waters.

This design becomes both refuge and resource—a public playground in dry seasons, and a hydrological shield in times of flood. Below ground, a network of filters, tanks, and conduits stores and redistributes stormwater.

The flood, once a threat, is refigured as a gift—absorbed, redirected, and returned.