An Architecture of the Sea: Nationalizing the World’s Maritime Commons--Then and Now

Though May 12, 2019 marked the 10-year anniversary of the 2009 deadline for countries claiming sovereign territories along the ocean floor, many nations continue to file sovereign claims to extended seabed territories. In the largest land-grab since the colonial project, and in accordance with the provisions of article 76, paragraph 8 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, eighty-five1 sovereign territorial claims to the ocean floor have been made for the purposes of resource extraction and exploitation. In an exhibition entitled “Nationalizing the World’s Maritime Commons, Then and Now: May 12, 2019 | May 12, 2019,” I produced an “Atlas of the Sea,” which renders visible these new oceanic territories in an effort to establish the space of the sea as a site for design, and to shift the frame of urbanism and territorialization to the space of the sea. In this paper, I expand upon the ideas put forth in the exhibition by making an argument for an architecture of the sea. By underscoring the discipline of architecture’s engagement with territory during the second half of the twentieth century, I argue that while a territorial approach to architecture is nothing new, it may serve as a precedent for developing an architecture of the sea. In particular, I argue that a territorial approach to— and an ethics of visibility for—designing the space of the sea is necessary in the face of a rapidly changing world order.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.108.25

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ISBN
978-1-944214-26-5