The Jacques Rougerie Foundation’s annual International Architecture Competition supports and accompanies the development of visionary biomimetic architectural projects located in Space, in the Sea, and those addressing Sea Level Rise’s challenges. The aim is to encourage collaborations between designers and scientists that deliver creative solutions to environmental challenges. A winner is selected from each category to receive the Grand Rix Award for Architecture and Innovation.
The French institute awarded the visionary project “The 8th Continent” the 2020 Grand Prix Award for Architecture and Innovation of the Sea. The project, by Slovak designer Lenka Petráková, is a prototype ocean cleaning facility. It’s designed to solve one of the planet’s most pressing pollution problems: Ocean plastic waste.
Petráková said:
The oceans today are not just eerie and forbidden regions, but areas that, despite the fact that they may never have seen a human being, feel the effects of human activities. Marine plastic pollution has impacted at least 267 species. Globally, millions of tons of trash enter the ocean each year. Due to ocean currents, this plastic waste collects in particular areas; one is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (The 8th Continent). Garbage Patch is the location for the proposed floating station, which collects plastic debris from the surface of the water.
The Garbage Patch covers about 1.6 million square meters in the North Pacific Ocean. The 8th Continent collects the plastic debris there and breaks it down into recyclable materials on the spot.
Petráková said:
Although it is an unbuilt project, as Jules Verne said, anything one man can imagine, another man can make real. And I believe today is the time to imagine a cleaner, environmentally more sustainable future and ways to achieve it with technical, architectural, and artistic creations, to allow us to build them for ours and the world’s better tomorrows.
The structure consists of interconnected petal-shaped buildings standing on tentacle-like platforms. There are five zones within, each serving an essential purpose:
- The barrier where waste is collected and tidal energy harvested
- The collector where the garbage is sorted, biodegraded and stored in a collector
- Greenhouses where plants are grown hydroponically
- The research and education center where scientists study and showcase marine environments, particularly the worrying conditions
- Living quarters with support facilities
Petráková said:
The floating station is with different processes answering the environmental changes on site. Object connects research and education facility with ocean plastic recycle center. The project uses marine science and knowledge to showcase the increasingly troubling side of marine environments, not as a new phenomenon but as the result of centuries of human – ocean interactions. This unique meeting platform should bring people to this distant environment and fight against the dilution that we cannot hurt the ocean by our action onshore.
The floating station is self-sufficient thanks to tidal energy harvesting (via turbines underwater) in The Barrier and solar panels covering the greenhouses. Water desalination units convert seawater into usable drinking water for the inhabitants’ needs and crop irrigation. Furthermore, the building is designed to allow air to pass through, making it more resistant to strong ocean wind.
Petráková concluded:
The live-giving ocean is suffering, and we need to help restore its balance for our planet’s survival. we cannot achieve it only by technology, but we need an interdisciplinary platform to educate people and change their relationship with the marine environment for generations to come.
A recent global analysis by a team of international experts found that it’s possible to reduce yearly flows of plastic waste into the ocean by about 80% by 2040. However, they also said that no single solution alone could achieve such an outcome, and clean-up efforts – including ideas like The 8th Continent – will be necessary to take care of the 20% that escapes our grasps on land. And like Petráková said, everyone needs to understand how their actions affect the ocean if any of the more significant initiatives are going to work.
