Table Of ContentThe Ocean as
a creaTive experience
The Ocean as
a creaTive experience
Architecture, Art, And Music
Jürgen Claus
Published by
Jenny Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd.
101 Thomson Road
#06-01, United Square
Singapore 307591
Email: [email protected]
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The Ocean as a Creative Experience: Architecture, Art, and Music
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form
Copyright © 2023 by Jenny Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd.
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ISBN 978-981-4968-57-7 (Hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-003-35668-4 (eBook)
This book was written in view of the
undulating green hills of the Belgian Wallonia.
I dedicate it to Nora Claus, a partner in all the expeditions.
Special thanks to the composer and publisher
Jenny Rompas and her attentive and
sensitive publishing team.
—Jürgen Claus, Baelen,
Wallonia 2022
A diver next to a humpback whale in the Dominican Republic, 2006. (Courtesy:
NOAA Photo Library, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/
wiki/File:Anim0920_-_Flickr_-_NOAA_Photo_Library.jpg)
Contents
Prologue
Introduction
ix
1. Researc h in Ocean Architecture x1i
1.1 We Must Approach the Seas with Imagination 2
1.2 The Genesis of a Floating Civilization 3
1.3 Paul Maymont: An Urbanist Between
Continents 5
1.4 The Missing Education of a Marine Architect:
A Talk with Jean-Michel Cousteau 7
1.5 Imagining Living Underwater: Dialogue with
Architect Yona Friedman 11
1.6 The Metabolism Goes Seaward 16
1.7 Kiyonori Kikutake: Teach Us How to Survive 17
Post-Disaster Architecture
1.8 The Threats of a Floating Architecture or
Notes About 22
1.9 Tokyo Bay Relaunched: 1959 to 2045 25
1.10 Building with Sea Minerals: Wolf Hilbertz 28
1.11 Jacques Rougerie: Portrait of an Oceanaute 31
1.12 Renzo Piano Builds with the Pacific Ocean:
The J. M. Tjibaou Cultural Center on Nouméa 39
1.13 Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, Snøhetta, and the
Energy of Building 42
1.14 Ocean Renewable Energies 49
1.15 The Power of Dorte Mandrup: Whale
Architecture 53
1.16 The Louvre at the Sea: Jean Nouvel Builds a
2. ExpansioMnest ao-fu Vniisvuearls Aer t into the Ocean 5663
2.1 Visual Art in the Biosphere 63
2.2 Seascapes on the Canvas 65
2.3 A Future Workshop of the Sea: Imagined 71
2.4 Butterflies in the Pacific Ocean: Doug Aitken 84
viii Contents
2.5 Art in the Sea Versus Critical Zones: Jason
DeCaires Taylor 89
2.6 Liquid Asia Art. Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba and
a Poem to the Pacific 95
2.7 The Molecules of Our New Water. An Interlude
About Media 103
2.8 Sculptures Recovered: The New Underwater
Archaeology. Imagination is the Trigger 107
2.9 Tentacular Thinking 116
2.10 Robertina Šebjanič: AquA(l)formings—
Interweaving the Subaqueous
117
2.11 Toward a Nautical Research: A Dialogue
with Peter Weibel—The Binary Code has
3. SoundscRaeppelsa fcreodm C tehlees Oticael aNna vigation 112215
3.1 TLoaw Maerrd an Ecology of Marine Sounds 125
3.2 For the Repertoire of Terms 128
3.3 : Out of Debussy 129
3.4 The Global Rearmament: The Growth of
Machines or the Renewal of Music by Noises 131
3.5 Excerpts from Jürgen Claus: The Voice of
the Ocean. Radio Feature, 1979 136
3.6 A Bell Tower Underwate r 138
3.7 Murray Schafer and the New O rchestra of
the Sound Environment 141
3.8 A Foray into the Sound Ocean 148
3.9 An Artistic Noise Aquarium: Victoria Vesna 150
3.10 Maritimes Rites: Alvin Curran 153
3.11 Yana Winderen: The Son ic Unconscious 156
3.12 Melt Me into the Ocean: Yolande Harris 158
Sugge3st.1ed3 RefTerheen Sceea B ioso Gkisv aennd a AV-oVi cMea terials 162
Index 171
177
Prologue
What if art holds the solution to the unfolding ecological and economic
crises of our time?
Africa-Arctic Flyway
We’re approaching the most dangero—usP peoteinrt F ienn hdu, man history and are
now facing the prospect of the destruction of organized human life on
Earth.
—Noam Chomsky, 2022
This book is about the wide-ranging appreciation, encompassing
many essential aspects, that we give to the sea, to the space of the sea,
and thus to the unimaginably vast, infinitely diverse birthplace of our
conceptions of space, economics, and philosophy of our knowledge
of the planet; of its cartography; and of its racially dissected coasts
and land acquisitions. That we face the sea as exploiters, hostile
to profit, and as great destroyers is not to be concealed. Only here,
in this book, our appreciation concept of the planet sea is in the
foreground. We are children of space, of the endless space above our
planet as well of the space of the great oceans. If we experience space,
we have points of orientation for our cosmic as well as our earthly
orientation. By understanding space, we understand something
essential about ourselves.
This book deals with proposals for the settlement of the seas.
The first chapter is devoted to the particular architecture designed
and occasionally executed for this purpose. This could be stimulating
Auqacene
for a younger generation of architects who are committed to the
living conditions in the . The author presents exemplary
realizations for this to be discussed. The second chapter expands
the view to the neighboring world of visual art and its extension
to marine and submarine zones. Finally, the third chapter is on the
Nada Brahma
sonic ocean of sounds. This is not surprising because the world is
full of resonance, even within the sea. : Everything
1
sounds. Nada Brahma The World is Sound
1
Joachim-Ernst Berendt, : , London and The Hague:
East-West Publications, 1988.
