piles positions itself as both a speculative landscape and a critical fiction that interrogates the contradictions embedded in climate adaptation within late-capitalist urbanism. situated within new york - the paradigmatic city of finance, development, and symbolic resilience - the project examines how the logics of capital intersect with the material realities of the epoch of the climate crisis.

piles imagines manhattan’s gradual extrusion upward through an artificial accretion of fill raising the land, mirroring the rising sea level. this gesture transforms the city itself into a site of ongoing construction and self-preservation, where the literal piling of earth becomes a metaphor for the accumulation of capital and labor required to sustain urban life.

piles redefines what it means to cultivate resilience in a world centered around risk management and mitigation. it is not a static design solution, but a continuously negotiated act of survival as the sea levels raise and disrupt the flows of capital and normalcy if functioning within a highly manicured city.

the project draws on real precedents across the tristate area where land-raising and replenishment initiatives in queens, new jersey, and battery park reveal how mitigation has transitioned into adaptation, and how adaptation, in turn, reinforces existing power structures; meanwhile echoing the existential threats of climate change to nations such as tuvalu, where the fight against sea-level rise is a struggle for the nation’s very existence.

ultimately, piles asks what kind of future is being maintained, and for whom, when the tools of survival are the same ones that brought us to the brink.