THINKING ARCHITECTURE FROM THE MALDIVES

Transcription

1 THINKING ARCHITECTURE FROM THE MALDIVES 36

2 Abstract Pamphlet Architecture 36 will invite critical reflection on the prevalent image of the Maldives as a place under imminent threat of disappearance under the waves of climate change induced sea level rise. It will propose that this eco-colonial gaze burdens the Maldives and its peoples with developed world anxieties about global climate change and as a remote, peripheral site where utopic architectural fantasies about saving the planet from rising sea levels can be articulated. Instead, it will challenge readers to take up the far more complex socio-ecological relations co-producing global climate change by presenting maps, simulations, essays and architectural proposals that make legible and intervene in political, economic and ecological dynamics in the Maldives.

3 Proposed Contents Essays Architectural Imaginaries of the Ocean Rethinking Archipelagos from the Maldives Wishful Sinking Afterword World Maps World map of climate change risks World map of dredging operations World map of damage to coral reef systems World map of artificial islands, World Map of illegal sand trade World map of telecommunications networks World map of mineral extraction and e-waste Projects Sand Bank Maldives E-waste Exchange Male Sea Level Rise Toolkit Maafushi Island Climate Adaption Interface Funadhoo Island Resilience Strategy

4 Simulation of bioluminescence

5 Essays Architectural Imaginaries of the Ocean In 1967, AD published an issue titled Floating Islands, followed by a 1969 issue titled Inner Space. This was a time when military oceanography and ocean exploitation had become important elements in cold war strategy. The AD s opened up oceanic space to architectural imaginaries as a technologically exploitable resource and inhabitable zone. This essay will offer a critical analysis of this and shifting oceanic imaginaries in architecture since: from its use as metaphor for architecture as the materialisation of fluid phenomena and emergent forces, to its current status as object of fear and anxiety in the face of extreme weather events and sea level rise. Rethinking Archipelagos from the Maldives This essay will provide a critique of the concept of the archipelago deployed by architecture since the 1970 s. Rethinking archipelagos from the Maldives will challenge the land-sea binary on which architecture s claims to autonomy have been based, revealing far more complex, performative relationships between land and sea, and architecture and its environments. Wishful Sinking Disappearing islands and climate refugees have become signifiers of the scale and urgency of uneven impacts of climate change. This essay will offer a critical account of how sea level rise debates reverberate with Western mythologies of island laboratories. Representations of low-lying islands such as the Maldives burden them with providing proof of the global climate change crisis and as locations where developed world anxieties about global climate change are articulated. This enforces eco-colonial gazes and creates a problematic moral geography: only after they disappear are the islands useful as truth of the urgency of climate change, and thus a prompt to save the rest of the planet. Afterword The afterword will provide a critical reflection on the contents of Pamphlet 36 by an eminent philosopher of complex urban systems and on the shifting conceptual and physical terrains of the Anthropocene.

6 Simulation of the dissipation of wave energy by a tetrapod

7 World Maps Pamphlet 36 will include seven world maps constructed on the basis of scientific and other sources of data to visualize political, economic and ecological ocean dynamics: World map of climate change risks World map of dredging operations World map of damage to coral reef systems World map of artificial islands World Map of illegal sand trade World map of telecommunications satellites and networks World map of mineral extraction and e-waste

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9 Global submarine telecommunications cable networks

10 Simulation of wave motion acting on sand

11 Projects Pamphlet 36 will include five speculative, research driven design proposals for sites in the Maldives that make global material flows legible and adapt oceanic islands to their changing environment:s: Sand Bank Maldives E-waste Metal Exchange Male Sea Level Rise Toolkit Maafushi Island Climate Adaption Interface Funadhoo Island Resilience Strategy Male from Vilingili

12 Sand Bank Demand for sand, of the earth s resources now second only to fresh water, is threatening eco-systems, provoking violence, undermining good governance, and radically redistributing the earth s surface layer around the globe. The Sand Bank, taking advantage of local knowledge and the adjacency of the Maldives northern-most atoll, Ihavandihopolhu to the Indian Ocean s busiest trade route, utilizes the dynamic energies of the coral lagoon to intercept, stockpile and store sand for future use.

13 Maldives E-waste Metal Exchange This project proposes to expand Thilafushi, an island in the Maldives constructed entirely of trash, through the collection and processing of electronic waste. This looks to expose the dangers and hidden value of e-waste by producing a plastiglomerate land form and brokering its precious metals at an E-waste Metal Exchange in Male, thereby closing the global precious metal resource loop.

14 Male Sea Level Rise Toolkit At between 0.8 and 1.6m above sea level, Male, capital city of the Maldives, is extremely vulnerable to sea level rise according to IPCC predictions. This project proposes a datadriven analytical system to digitize and evaluate risk, value, adjacency and density, and infrastructural elements to enable the city to adapt to sea level rise by staying in place, but rising vertically.

15 Maafushi Island Climate Adaption Interface Senseables are devices that merge the self, the world, and data about one s place in the world. The Maldives currently ranks fourth in the world for mobile phone use per capita, with over two registered phones per person. This creates a vast pool for potential data collection. This project makes use of this high penetration of smart phones in the Maldives to create a citizen s mapping scheme that collects and maps island threats and local perceptions and knowledge. Sites at the base of telecommunications towers are repurposed to create computational data parks, to give social purpose to otherwise unused sites. The parks provide interfaces for development of adaption strategies to respond to climate change.

16 Funadhoo Island Resilience Strategy In response to predicted climate change risks, the Maldives government has developed a program of safe islands, which involves improving certain islands defenses through dredging and reclamation, while abandoning other islands to the sea. This project counters this with a proposal based on inhabitants attachment to their islands. It responds to sea level rise by careful mappings of risk, calibration of urban infrastructure with sea level rise and housing typologies that rise and fall with oceanic surges and tides.

17 Simulation of turbulence caused by dredging