Architecture of the Seas

PERCEPTION, CONCEPTION AND REPRESENTATION OF THE OCEANS IN REGARD TO GLOBAL URBANIZATION PROCESSES

Besides naval architectures, off-shore rigs, wind parks, and hydrologic energy plants, physical infrastructures such as geological deep sea cables and pipes, the seas are webbed by container shipping routes, signposts and a multitude of lines of legislation, delineating economic or ecological zones, which unlike on land, seemingly miss any concrete physical or material reference to be aligned to. These inscriptions however, strongly relate to specific conditions, which often refer to measures of a dynamic spatial situation that constitute – as much as affect – the built and lived environment in various spatial and temporal scales. The work looks at current and past instances of the role of the oceans in settlement and urbanisation processes, trajectories, findings, failures and related inventions, shifting the view from the land to a view from the oceans.