8 minute read
United Plastic Nation: An Architectural Polemic
In that time the United plastic Nation (UPN) concept was initiated by an open competition call. Designers were asked to imagine an island of 1km 2 , not dedicated to any specific use or programme, the island could be anything and be placed anywhere.
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Figure 1. United Plastic Nation, Streetscape
Concept Idea
In that context, we felt the answer to this brief couldn’t just be a tropical paradise or a designer’s superstructure fantasy but rather had to employ the tools of architecture to tackle some of our most pressing issues. What if we could take greed, ignorance and violence and create something positive? What if we could turn ocean garbage into the promised land? What if we could turn refugees into citizens? And why can’t we turn tax criminals into social investors?
Figure 2: First Sketch
So we programmed our island as the antipode - an evergrowing structure made out of ocean plastics, floating with the ocean currents and slowly turning circles around the globe, creating a safe haven for the displaced and dispossessed and the squirrelled away fortunes of the world's richest alike. The floating refugee tax haven plastic smart eco future metropolis, so to say.
Facts
The sheer dimensions of these issues are shocking. About 65 mio. people are currently displaced, a number equal to the population of Great Britain. An estimated 100 mio. tons of plastics are swimming in the oceans. Growing every year by another 8 mio. tons, a mass equivalent to 1000 Eiffel towers. And then there is this huge amount of money - some conservative estimated 2 trillion $ US total - which is deprived from official budgets and can not be used anymore to fight these and many other issues in the world. A sum bigger than all the value the world’s largest economy can generate in one year, about 1.15 times the GDP of the USA.
Figure 3. Concept Diagram
Staggering numbers, but also proof that drastic action is needed and that the idea is theoretically viable. A medium sized country could be populated with the number of people in most urgent need of a safe place to live in. There is enough plastics in the world’s oceans to build entire cities. And last but not least an entire nation state could be financed with profits from the tax evasion industry.
Description
The UPN is initiated with the deployment of small floating platforms into international waters. These platforms are equipped to collect plastics from the ocean surface and filter it out of the deeper waters. The plastic is then cleaned and refined in order to be used as building material. Fully automated swarms of robotic drones continuously print this material layer by layer into an inhabitable structure. Eventually, an ultra dense urban fabric measuring 1km 2 in size evolves. The first district of the United Plastic Nation.
Figure 4. Travel Route of the UPN.
While growing, the island passes by all continents and collects its colonists. It links regions of poverty and despair with regions of wealth and prosperity. It occupies the space in between physically as well as on a socioeconomic level, thus providing a safe haven for those who had to run from despair and don’t have any access to prosperity. The gravity of the crisis demands fast growth.
When the first district has reached its capacity at 100,000 inhabitants, more islands are built. At this stage the UPN becomes attractive not only to those without a choice but also for those who seek opportunities. Ultimately a global network of floating cities circles the oceans. A society of true urban nomads is created, not moving from city to city, but moving their city themselves.
Positioned in international waters, the UPN is bound by no national or supranational laws, thus enabling it to function as a tax haven and generate revenue. This will facilitate the first phase of growth, at a later stage the industry can be diversified. The UPN’s connectivity to all regions of the world, its cultural diversity and architectural peculiarity, its dynamic and highly motivated population predestine it for industries like logistics and transportation, culture and tourism, innovation and science.
Yellow: Wave Power Plants/Breakwater - Green: Recreational Park - White: Residential-Purple: Industrial/Harbour-Blue: Political/Cultural- Red: Financial/Commercial
Figure 5. UPN Zoning Map
In the plan view the districts of the UPN develop in an exactly concentric shape. Parallel, they grow equally in height and depth, under and over the surface, gradually rising in height and density from the outer perimeter to the center. On the one hand the island’s design is governed by a rigid, quadratic, 3 dimensional grid. On the other hand its ever-growing nature and its modular DNA creates a structure that is continuously in flux.
A clear hierarchy is horizontally imposed. The district develops linearly alongside the increasing density. From the outer breakwater and industrial ring, with recreational and residential zones in between, to the commercial, public and cultural center in the middle of the island.
The vertical zoning develops complementary. Starting at the bottom with the industrial plastic processing facilities at the deepest point and the banking servers directly above where the light is sparse and the temperatures ideal for cooling. Followed by the public zones on surface levels and the residential areas above. The top layer, where sun exposure is best, is reserved for aquaponic farming.
Several transport networks are woven throughout the city. Multiple forms of transport are provided, from metro tunnels under the surface, boats on the surface, pedestrian zones and bicycle highways to a drone network in the skies.
The island’s design is optimised to withstand the conditions on the high seas. The circular shape offers no weak point to the waves, the organisation along the vertical axis provides stability and balance, like the keel and the mast provide stability in sailing boats. The structure always stays afloat and can’t capsize.
The concept can be realised with existing real world technologies or with those which will be available in a near future. The collection of ocean plastic is currently successfully tested with several prototypes. The advances in robotics in building are rapid and this technology will soon reshape the whole industry. Drones are already part of our all day life and can be easily combined with AI and swarm intelligence. 3D printing is increasingly implemented into the building production and has already been used to print entire houses out of plastics. International cyber linked high speed finance has been a reality for a long time and consists nowadays essentially out of server farms and algorithms. The concept of harvesting the wave power has been around since 1890. Several working wave power plants have already been built and some also function as a breakwater. The urban farming industry is quickly evolving and even though it’s still mostly in a start-up phase there are already a few large scale urban farms in operation.
Figure 6. Schematic Section + Functional Diagram
As fantastic as the concept of a floating plastic metropolis might sound, it employs a fundamentally architectural approach on a technical, spatial and functional level. Like any structure, the UPN is based on simple physical laws and has to adhere to its own idiosyncratic rules and constraints. The goal is to demonstrate that not the idea of a floating plastic mega metropolis is outrageous, but the scale of the global crises we as humans cause. At the same time the concept gives proof that we not only possess the knowledge but also the means to resolve these crises.
Critique
As convincing as this concept theoretically may sound, there remains a bunch of unresolved questions. Technical ones such as the structural integrity, quality, durability or toxicity of ocean plastics can probably be resolved with clever engineering.
Far more pressuring are ethical questions though. Do we want to undermine international jurisdiction? Are we not amplifying the crisis when we promote tax evasion? Are we creating a floating trash slum, an offshore refugee ghetto? Eventually, we have to ask ourselves whether we want to live in a world in which the United Plastic Nation is the best solution or if it is not too late to deal with the mess we have caused in front of our own doorstep.
That said, our objective in this project was not to seriously propose a quick fix to problems of global scale and complexity. This concept is not meant to be built, it is meant to contribute to a public debate. We see this work as an architectural polemic. A critique of the existing conditions with the tools of an architect: scaling, contextualising, transforming and visualising. Ultimately we hope to provoke thought and debate. And even more importantly, to instigate optimism, create a positive attitude and to inspire out of the box thinking.
About Authors
Bjørn MuendnerDipl.Ing Arch.
Noël SchardtM.Arch, B.Arch
F R E I S C H AE R L E R arch is a German-Australian architecture & design collective based in Berlin and Melbourne. It was founded by Noël Schardt and Bjørn Mündner in 2010. Both have a Diploma/M.arch degree in architecture from Technische Universität Berlin and some 10 years of practice in architecture, interior & corporate design and conceptual thinking. Noël and Bjørn have extensively travelled and collected work experience in many different countries, always trying to incorporate this knowledge into their projects. Projects varying in topic and size reach from a resort hotel design study in China, to Universal Music’s staff canteen in Berlin, to a mud brick + concrete house prototype in Burkina Faso and various concepts for revitalising industrial sites. www.freischaerler.archi
