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. 3 4 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. 5 6 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. 7 8 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. 9 10 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. 11 12 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. 13 14 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. 15 16