The world's 8th continent
Dmitrii Blium
Problem and solution
Slovak designer Lenka Petráková has won the 2020 Grand Prix Award for Architecture and Innovation of the Sea from Foundation Jacques Rougerie, a French institute awarding visionary projects that encourage sustainable collaborations between scientists and designers.
Lenka has designed the floating station called The 8th Continent to solve one of the world's most pressing pollution problems: ocean plastic waste. Marine debris currently covers a surface of approximately 1.6 million square meters in the North Pacific - known as the Great Pacific garbage patch.
How it works
The station consists of five main parts, each serving a specific purpose.
The Barrier collects tidal energy that powers a turbine to collect the waste. As it floats on the water surface, it also moves waste towards the Collector.
The Collector is the part where the station sorts, biodegrades and stores the waste.
The Research and Education Centre is to study and showcase marine environments. This part is linked to the Collector and Greenhouses to follow the water processes and research them.
Greenhouses are the places to grow plants and desalinate water. Solar panels cover the Greenhouses and ensure enough power for the water reservoirs' heating, allowing the evaporation of water and its desalination. After the wastewater extraction, the filtered clean water is pumped into the water tank and either desalinated or used for plants' hydroponic cultivation. That is a method for growing plants without soil, just using water.
Living Quarters with support facilities. These pass through the building's center and connect all the parts together, geometrically matching the ship's keel.
Petráková designed the prototype to be self-sufficient: it can both adapt and benefit from the ocean's environment. The buildings allow wind to pass through the station, making it more resistant to strong ocean winds, collect water for irrigation, and harness tidal and solar energy.
"Although it is an unbuilt project, as Jules Verne said, anything one man can imagine, another man can make real," says Petráková. "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."
💡 Article in The Calvert Journal
💡 Article on Archdaily