Marina Barrage

This guide to Marina Barrage in Singapore starts with the island's most basic vulnerability: for decades it drew more than half its water from across the border in Malaysia, a dependency Lee Kuan Yew called an existential threat. In 1987 he proposed damming the Marina Channel to turn it into a freshwater reservoir, an idea the technology of the time could not yet deliver. The guide follows that wait, nearly twenty years, until membrane technology caught up and construction finally broke ground in March 2005, with Lee Kuan Yew present in person.