Pacific Aquarium

15 Pages·2017·6.29 MB·English

ACSA Faculty Design Award
2016-2017 Winner Submission Materials
Pacific Aquarium
RANIA GHOSN
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
EL HADI JAZAIRY
University of Michigan
PACIFIC AQUARIUM
m m m
1 m 00m 000 500 000
0 5 1 1 2
- - - -
Mag 0
SEA LEVEL
Mag 1 0 km
Mag 2 EPIPELAGIC
EXOSPHERE
1000 km Mag 3 {The Sunlight Zone} -0.20 km How do we make sense of the the unaccounted for spaces
Mag 4
800 km Mag 5 MESOPELAGIC ocean at a moment in which it is of environmental externalities
Satellite N Camelopardus {The Twilight Zone} -1.00 km presented in crisis? The ocean is Drawing on dark ecology, each of
a site of significant anthropogenic the nine projects incorporates the
600 km Cassiopeia
Continental Shelf transformations. It is simultaneously externalities of resource exploitation
NE Cepheus Polaris NW the biggest resource for life on and climate change into matters of
400 km Ursa Minor earth and a large extraction and concern that weave together scales,
Lacerta
Thuban Ursa Major -2.00 km dumping ground –of gyres of temporalities, and species beyond
Draco
Deneb Mizar Leo Minor marine debris, deep sea mining the human.
200 km THERMOSPHERE E EquuleusDelphinus SaCgVyuigtltnpauesculAalbireo LyraVega Hercules Corona BoreaAllpihseccaBootes ArcCturausnes VenCCoar otCiamcroilia Berenices Denebola JupiteLreo W B{AThTeH MYidPnEigLhtA ZGonIeC} Continental -3.Slope00 km pTboylu lemivxeete sinn, as ainvnde e aep ncovacirrhbo sonhnma sepinnetkda. l Swtheoecn Podanecdr i,af ictc hc Aaaqnbuninaeerliitnusgm o t fhi ncesu straieolnlsasitteiioe onsf ,
Altair Serpens [Caput] transformations is to be confronted appropriates the object of the
Aquila
100 km with risks and uncertainties at the aquarium to take aim at the abysmal
Virgo
80 km Mesopause Meteor Capricornus ScutuSmerpens [Cauda] Ophiuchus Libra Moon Spica Corvus Crater -4.00 km swcea rleem ofa tihne s op llaitntleet .m Poabraildizoexdic ianl lpya, rt decisotannocmei cb wetowrerieens oanudr stehlefi sghre at
60 km MESOSPHERE Saturn Antares Mars ntal because of our failures to represent scales of the Earth. Each aquarium
Stratopause Microscopium SagittarCiuosrona Austrina Scorpius Lupus ContineRise tbhoet hs ctoa lteesll oafn ad s ttoo hrye athr.a t is difficult harocuhsietesc atu rreasli pn rcoajesct tm aolodnegl owfi tthh e
40 km SE Telescopium Ara Norma Centaurus SW ABYSSOPELAGIC -5.00 km companion fish species. Collectively,
Crux {The Abyss} Can an architecture that accounts the nine aquariums reclaim the
Circinus Rigel KentauruHsadar
340° Triangulum Australe 20° for the sites and concerns of production of nature into public
330° 30° environmental externalities—their controversies by connecting political
20 km STRATOSPHERE Ozone Layer320° 40° Ocean Basin -6.00 km dimensions, forms, relations—bring ecology with speculative design and
310° 50° the whole Earth into the domain of collective aesthetic experience.
Commercial public concern?
Airplanes 300° 60°
10 km
8 km Tropopause 280°290° Pthriellnipcihne Rtryeunkcyhu IzuKtr uOeJGtrangrAiPepclaReAnhasB TncaCAhw tHGraeErn ac hAleutian trench GAPRABTCAHGE Puerto Rico trench 70°80° -7.00 km Fmimiraasntgi,f iPneaascttoiiof ioncn tA htqhroueua egrnihuv mtirho eon ummtleeindneitusam la
6 km Mount Everest Marianas trench Middle America trench of the architectural project. It
HADAL
270° Bougainville trench 90° {The Trenches} engages the Earth as a grand
4 km Java (Sunda) trench -8.00 km question of design making formal
260° Tonga trench Peru Chile trench 100°
Kermadec trench
250° 110°
2 km TROPOSPHERE 240° 120° -9.00 km
230° 130°
220° 140°
Planetary Boundary Layer
1 km 210° 200° 160° 150° -10.00 km
190° 180° 170°
1 2
0 km SEA LEVEL -11.00 km
SITE CONCEPT
The Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the Rather than strictly separating the interests
Pacific, covering an area approximately the of mineral exploration from those of the
size of Europe, has the world’s largest known environment, the project consolidates the nine
deposits of deep-seabed rare earth minerals. To proposed APEIs and overlays them onto the
date, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) exploration concessions. Each of the resultant
has issued twelve exploration licenses for the nine zones operates as a project that illustrates
CCZ and designated nine areas of particular the contradictory concerns of ecology and
environmental interest (APEIs). economy within the same territory.
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OVERMINING UNDER THE WATER TOWERS
The International Seabed Authority mandates A catchment dome caps mining activities
the conservation of the flora and fauna in occurring on the ocean floor to contain localized
the mining area of the Clipperton fault. A sediment plume. Polluted water is separated
terraforming infrastructure relocates transects from surrounding water and transported into
of substrate samples to a suspended ecological a series of inverted water towers just below
reserve. Over a decade, the infrastructure the surface for processing. Purified water is
incubates a benthic ecosystem that will be gradually released back to the ocean.
grafted onto the depleted seabed.
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MARINE LANDFILLS IRON TOWERS
Large-scale landfills capture floating waste, Suggested as solution to ocean acidification,
oil, fuel and detergents from the Pacific Gyres. iron fertilization stimulates photosynthesis in
Seawater cascades into a landfill to be filtered plankton converting dissolved carbon dioxide
by a one-way membrane surface. When a marine into carbohydrates and oxygen. The vertical
landfill site is filled, the inverted pyramid is tensile structure, which contains high iron
sealed and becomes a floating island in the sea. concentrations of water, extends the habitat
of phytoplankton to the deep ocean attracting
corals and other sea creatures to the structure.
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MEDUSA MAZE PARLIAMENT OF REFUGEES
Climate change opens a niche for the rapid The Parliament of Refugees is an assembly of
proliferation of jellyfish. The submerged maze Anthropocene things, such as sea turtles, plastic
is a jellyfish Pac-Man, populated with planktons bags, CO32− molecules, scallops, bleached corals,
and sea turtles. The Pac-Medusa is a jellyfish drowning wetlands, hammerhead sharks, algae,
husbandry for an emerging cosmetic industry. It Homo sapiens, Brighamia rockii, Nihoa finch.
is also a Damnatio ad bestias, an Anthropocene The Assembly is organized around a hollow
arena that pits the gelatinous beasts against pillar that connects it to the center of the Earth
their predators in a luminescent aquarium. through a submerged volcano.
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ROBOT FISH COLONY CLIMATE SANCTUARIES
Deepsea mining produces plumes that smother The submerged building tells the story of the
near-bottom species away from their habitats. A first five submerged Pacific islands of Vanuatu,
school of cyborg fish restores such habitats by Marshalls, Fiji, Tuvalu and Kiribati through
collecting the plumes into a massive spherical their cultural landscapes: volcanic mountains,
sponge-like nest where the toxic particles coastlines, highlands villages, cliffs and water
are solidified and processed into energy. The territories.
fish subsequently decompose into organic
sustenance for the returning species.
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CLASSIFIED SEDIMENTS INSTALLATION OVERVIEW
An artificial landform camouflages the entrance The installation appropriates the object of the
to a sequence of vaults that extend deep aquarium to take aim at the abysmal distance
into the Earth’s crust to house security and between our selfish economic worries and
intelligence records on the deep sea. This icon the great scales of the Earth. Each aquarium
of secrecy dissimulates itself by mimicking the constructs a section of the Pacific Ocean that
cartographic resolution of the trigonometric incorporates the externalities of resource
projection of the deep sea. The territory hides in exploitation and climate change into scales,
the map. temporalities, and species beyond the human.
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INSTALLATION DETAILS
[1] Medusa Maze; [2] Climate Sanctuaries, [3]
Below the Water Towers, [4] Marine Landfills,
[5] Iron Towers, [6] Overmining, [7] Classified
Sediments, [8] Robot Fish Colony, [9] Parliament
of Refugees.
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