Fluid Territories: The North Sea
The sea is the territory that the encounter between abstract and concrete spaces is most visible. Since the end of the thirteenth century the process of appropriation of the sea has begun, as the first nautical charts were made, becoming de facto a multiscalar design problem. Ever since, the sea is appropriated, divided, and exploited. Such condition has not only changed the way in which the marine space is defined, but also has altered the relationship between the land and the sea, their architecture, and their subjects. In Diploma 7 Fluid Territories: The North Sea, we have investigated architectural propositions that react to such territories; frames that capture, forces that trigger, lines that appropriate, and lenses that make visible the conflicts between space, the territory, and its subjects.
This year Diploma Unit 7 dwells in the juridical ambiguity associated with the North Sea, which generates the possibility of creating a state of exception, a spatio-temporal condition in which normality and the rule of law is suspended. Displacement, confinement, unlimited resource extraction and ecological crime, human incarceration, genocide are justified in this peculiar territory that exists ’away and elsewhere’ – it is set as an outside of unlimited opportunity. Thus, one could claim that the ‘architecture of the sea’– whether be in form of a military platform, a ship, the coastal settlement, or the invisible lines of multiple spatio-temporal jurisdictions–, emerges before and outside any specific appropriation. This architecture exists within a reality of extreme asymmetrical and disproportional violence and colonial externality. It becomes a ‘liminal space’; a space that in its formal separation from the rest of the world presents a realm of instability and possibility.
Diploma Unit 7 have addressed these aspects through a year-long research-by-design project. A compilation of collective research is presented in an A2 Book alongside 12 individual projects that are exhibited in different media formats; models, drawings, movies, photography that together envision possible futures for the North Sea region. Within this framework, the sea stands at the centre of inter-European and global disputes. We claim that the North Sea should be seen as a politicized territorial entity through which broader political, environmental, economic and societal questions could be addressed. In this way any spatial proposition, whether landscape, urban or architectural, are challenged and revisited through the lens of the North Sea as a referenced territory. The 12 projects propose new spatial interventions that would address the complex, yet not always visible, spatial, juridical, environmental and geopolitical natures of the North Sea, triggering the future scenarios that are informed not only by climate adaptation and clean energy futures but also by political propositions. Such scenarios dwell on micro- and macro-politics, from the scale of the body to the territory, exploring the ways in which any form of co-habitation is conditioning or conditioned by the interaction between human and nonhuman environments and agents.
The sea is the territory that the encounter between abstract and concrete spaces is most visible. Since the end of the thirteenth century the process of appropriation of the sea has begun, as the first nautical charts were made, becoming de facto a multiscalar design problem. Ever since, the sea is appropriated, divided, and exploited. Such condition has not only changed the way in which the marine space is defined, but also has altered the relationship between the land and the sea, their architecture, and their subjects. In Diploma 7 Fluid Territories: The North Sea, we have investigated architectural propositions that react to such territories; frames that capture, forces that trigger, lines that appropriate, and lenses that make visible the conflicts between space, the territory, and its subjects.
This year Diploma Unit 7 dwells in the juridical ambiguity associated with the North Sea, which generates the possibility of creating a state of exception, a spatio-temporal condition in which normality and the rule of law is suspended. Displacement, confinement, unlimited resource extraction and ecological crime, human incarceration, genocide are justified in this peculiar territory that exists ’away and elsewhere’ – it is set as an outside of unlimited opportunity. Thus, one could claim that the ‘architecture of the sea’– whether be in form of a military platform, a ship, the coastal settlement, or the invisible lines of multiple spatio-temporal jurisdictions–, emerges before and outside any specific appropriation. This architecture exists within a reality of extreme asymmetrical and disproportional violence and colonial externality. It becomes a ‘liminal space’; a space that in its formal separation from the rest of the world presents a realm of instability and possibility.
Diploma Unit 7 have addressed these aspects through a year-long research-by-design project. A compilation of collective research is presented in an A2 Book alongside 12 individual projects that are exhibited in different media formats; models, drawings, movies, photography that together envision possible futures for the North Sea region. Within this framework, the sea stands at the centre of inter-European and global disputes. We claim that the North Sea should be seen as a politicized territorial entity through which broader political, environmental, economic and societal questions could be addressed. In this way any spatial proposition, whether landscape, urban or architectural, are challenged and revisited through the lens of the North Sea as a referenced territory. The 12 projects propose new spatial interventions that would address the complex, yet not always visible, spatial, juridical, environmental and geopolitical natures of the North Sea, triggering the future scenarios that are informed not only by climate adaptation and clean energy futures but also by political propositions. Such scenarios dwell on micro- and macro-politics, from the scale of the body to the territory, exploring the ways in which any form of co-habitation is conditioning or conditioned by the interaction between human and nonhuman environments and agents.
Unit
Masters:
Hamed Khosravi, Platon Issaias
Students:
Aarohi Bakeri
James Deru
Judy El-Hajjar
Mamoru Hoshi
Joseph Istance
Mikołaj Karczewski
Jie Hao Lau
Patricia Moericke
Nicole Ng
Buster Ronngren
Raya Shaban
Yuki Terado
Hamed Khosravi, Platon Issaias
Students:
Aarohi Bakeri
James Deru
Judy El-Hajjar
Mamoru Hoshi
Joseph Istance
Mikołaj Karczewski
Jie Hao Lau
Patricia Moericke
Nicole Ng
Buster Ronngren
Raya Shaban
Yuki Terado