Key to this proposal is an embracing of uncertain futures. With rising tides in mind, this project softens Vancouver’s barricaded and antagonistic relationship with water by casting water and urban wildlife as stakeholders and agents of design. The implementation of a structural fascia represents the peeling away of the urban fabric, while promoting muddy interspecies interactions that blur the boundaries between urban and ocean.

The fascia is porous and protective, acting to create multi-species habitat through stratification. The introduction of messiness into the urban realm encourages curiosity and play, while opening opportunities for habitat to form within a grey urban frame. The project’s dramatic topography and porous woven sealife-harbouring materials interface with and register daily tides and sea level rise while honoring False Creek’s past as an abundant and habitat-sustaining eelgrass mudflat in Coast Salish territories.