Inspired by the Pacific Garbage Patch, the Dutch architects of Whim Architecture presented a project to build a floating island made of waste, completely habitable and self-sufficient
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himYou know the Pacific Garbage Patch? It's about a gigantic floating “island” made up exclusively of garbage that for a game of currents has joined together creating a real continent of waste that sails on the ocean and that we had also mentioned in our article on major environmental disasters created by man.
It is precisely from this sad story that the Dutch architects of WHIM architecture they took inspiration for the project Recycled Island with which to create a floating island habitable from waste, especially plastic ones, which are indecently populating the surfaces and the seabed. For now it is a simple idea, but if the project were to go through, it would succeed in the noble task of achieving 3 objectives:
- la cleaning the oceans,
- the making of a lives sostenible
- la creation of a new land.
Inside Recyled Island thus would arise fully sustainable housing, but also arable areas, recreational places, of tourism e urban life. seaweed marine, for example, would be perfect as arable resource and they could be used for food, fertilizers, bio-fuel and also to increase the fish fauna around the island. These Dutch "geniuses" want to create a self-sufficient, non-polluting "world" where the population that will inhabit it can be in the true sense of the word self-sufficient, self-producing and self-consuming everything you need.
Le size of the island, according to the architects, they should be inspired by those of the Hawaiian archipelago, while the ideal place to give birth to it would be in the North Pacific, the part of the ocean where the waste hovering absolutely in massive quantities. Creating it there, in fact, would allow you to immediately use the necessary materials without excessively needing others, furthermore reducing costs and transport costs. The Garbage Patch, therefore, will finally have its purpose: to disappear and give life to a truly habitable context.
Pure utopia? Not really. Recycled Island is not just a dream. In the past, there have already been positive experiences that have shown - in a certain way - the possibility of intelligently reusing plastic dispersed in the sea. In 1998, in fact, the British Richart Sowa created "Spiral Island". An artificial island located in the lagoon near Puerto Aventuras, on the Caribbean coast of Mexico. This eco-architect took a lot of plastic bottles that floated off those coasts, put them together and joining them to a structure of plywood and bamboo gave birth to a floating, habitable ecosystem, where plant species could very well grow and develop. There was also a solar oven it's a composting system highly optimal. Unfortunately, however, the craftsmanship of the work made itself felt on the occasion of Hurricane Emily in 2005. It was swept away and disappeared.
The architects of the Netherlands undoubtedly seem capable of putting together a much more scientific project - presented for the first time at the Lost & Found in Amsterdam - that could very well stem problems related to typhoons and hurricanes. This is why they are looking for different professionals to help them turn it into reality: from the oceanographer to the chemist for the recycling of plastic, to the civil engineer for the construction of thefloating ecosystem.
Man is careless of his land, he continues to dirty it and does not respect it. Could the oceans be our future habitats? Posterity will judge.
Alessandro Ribaldi
