The End of the Line by TMontgomery from usa

The End of the Line reveals the interconnectedness of water, waste, life, and death in the functioning of the metropolis. The project first aims to evolve the public’s understanding of municipal waste through incremental exposure to its latent potential--revealing its central connection to the global energy cycle--in an effort to foster a positive relationship between life, waste, death, and shared public space.

Sited at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment plant--New York City’s largest and most aquatically-vulnerable municipal water treatment facility–the project harnesses untapped potential for the collaborative proximity of multiple, vital urban infrastructures: flood prevention, waste management, recreation and funeration.

The three-phase intervention is long-term and large-scale. In the first phase, a traversable flood barrier barricades the plant against extreme projections of sea level rise while also creating a new public space. The barrier is modulated to facilitate growth over time, generating connective tissue between the surrounding, disjointed neighborhoods, while simultaneously cultivating calibrated proximity to the waste management infrastructure below. This exposure seeks to re-condition the perceived “yuck factor” associated with wastewater treatment, as the plant transitions from a space of filtration to a space of recreation. As public perception of the plant evolves, the final phase introduces to society a water-based, alternative method of burial: aquamation. With the addition of this programmatic layer, the anticipated technological obsolescence of the plant--as well as the encroaching presence of water along New York's shoreline--are treated as opportunities for the celebration of life and death in the city.