| ecoLogicStudio has been completing phase1 of Simrishamn Regional Algae Farm, for the Osterlen region on the Swedish Baltic Sea. The project has been commissioned by the Simrishamn Municipality and it is currently exhibited to the public in the local Marine Centrum. A decaying fishing industry in the Baltic sea and an ageing local polupation call for the introduction of a new type of economic and urban system; the farming of algae has been adopted by ecoLogicStudio as a medium to propose and incubate such new model.The design approach allows for top down strategies and investments, for the production of biofuelds and other renewable energies, and bottom up initiatives as well as know-how, of the local farmers and fisherman, to be combined in a plan of co-action. The plan starts from the analysis of the existing environmental and social potential of the local landscape and illustrates emergent correlations to algae farming. Such hybrid conditions are than articulated in space by proposing new architectural prototypes to be developed across the Osterlen region. The exhibition on show in the Marine Centre in Simrishamn tests one of these prototypes, the "hanging algae garden", conceived as an interactive public space of cultivation, set in-between the labs of the marine centre, the local office of tourisms and overlooking the old port. The exhibition features three main components: -the actual algae garden, featuring the 7 most common algae species in the region, organised ... |
