Navigating New Waters Part 1 Project 2025 Christopher O’Rourke Sheffield Hallam University | UK Navigating New Waters proposes a Climate Action Assembly in Glasgow that reconnects marginalized communities with the evolving sustainability agenda. Located along the River Clyde—a symbolic divide between the city’s well-resourced and post-industrial districts—the project addresses the physical and social disconnection between local stakeholders and policy-making institutions. It reimagines the Assembly not as a formal bureaucracy, but as a civic commons: a space for open dialogue, education, and empowerment.The design integrates environmental justice with architectural and urban strategies. Public lecture and conference spaces offer accessible platforms for local voices, particularly small businesses and underserved communities, to engage with climate policy. Site analysis, including solar, wind, flood risk, and accessibility studies, informed passive environmental design and ensured alignment with CIBSE comfort standards.This project exemplifies placemaking through its contextual sensitivity and inclusive programming. It dissolves traditional hierarchies by fostering shared ownership of climate action, making sustainability not a top-down directive but a participatory practice. The proposal highlights architecture’s capacity to mediate between global imperatives and local realities, enabling collective adaptation in the face of climate change. Tutor(s) Laura Pedata