iron island: design competition
Entertainment and Science. There are two founding elements of Iron Island, the competition providing architects with multiple and exciting themes for their work. The first one is the relationship with the marine element, which is always charming, and in platforms sublime and totalizing since they are not liminal or coastal architectures near the sea, but impossible structures driven into the sea: stable ground surfaces in a blue horizon that is as magnificent as fatal. The platform offers a singular marine experience, different from any land structure or boat. Despite the fury of the elements, it is stable and maybe it is the only true sea architecture. There will be many actions enhanced by the new architecture: dining suspended among blazing sunsets, diving from high diving boards and practicing every possible and most extreme water sport, falling asleep under a primordial sky, free from any light pollution. Landscape indeed guarantees remarkable opportunities for the architect. Yet, also the relationship between industrial archaeology and contemporary intervention will be essential. Architects shall seek it too.
The dialogue between old and new, between the vigor and severity of the original structure and the contemporary interpretation offered by the architect, will ensure extraordinary opportunities for the genesis of iconic architecture. This is a completely new ground to discover and experiment with languages, solutions, and shapes that can go down in history. Participants are asked to design a platform which can be used for the most diverse purposes.
Like the wonders of the ancient world, great industrial archaeologies carry a fascination of abandonment, of that mammoth and sublime melancholy that makes them magical in their own ruin and decay. The old industrial buildings are titans of concrete and steel that rise in the landscape devoured by vegetation and time, as if they were carcasses of immense ancient monsters that inhabited the world at different times, spawned by a different civilization. Of all the industrial archaeologies, some of the most suggestive are surely the offshore oil platforms. They are the heirs to a development race that imposed man’s right on nature, like ancient titans.
Today, these platforms live out their exile abandoned to the rust and oblivion of the sea. The issue of decommissioning such machinery entails legislative vacuums. This is because internationally there is no unified and compelling vision about the future of these facilities.
Yet, while on the surface legislators are deciding which is the best action to take, something surprising has happened in the deep sea, unforeseen by the engineers who developed such machines. The platforms have become a treasure chest of biodiversity, almost as if they were artificial coral reefs, which have turned into a refuge for countless marine species once the man left. One of the symbols of environmental violence is now the bastion of environmental protection. Then, is it right to plead the very expensive cause of its removal? Or can such platforms rather find new meaning in the age of decarbonization and environmental sustainability?
These are the questions of Iron Island, the competition by Manni, CNR-IRBIM, and YAC to write the future of ancient oil platforms.
Off the Italian coast, specifically in the northern Adriatic Sea, there are numerous offshore platforms.
Since they had been installed on a small sea, they are well suited to becoming the first model of virtuous transformation and redevelopment of these steel and concrete islands.
YAC thanks all the architects who will take up this challenge.