unit-code
The history of our civilisation has largely been defined by the stability in weather patterns associated with specific geographic locations. Cities were often created and developed according to how agriculture, livestock, resources and habitable conditions intersected. Contrary to this, islands are often sites where the ‘uncommon’ exists, flourishes and evolves, often independently from the mainstream pattern. Some uncommon forms of wildlife, social structures and protocols and ecologies grow in isolation from the rest of the world. Others closely relate to questions of borders and sovereignty, or to other human constructs associated with fiction, cartography and computation.
Some examples are: the plethora of flora and fauna unique to the Galapagos; the distinct plant life of Socotra; land diving practices in the Pentecost Islands; the self-imposed isolation of the Sentinels of North Sentinel Island; the settlement of Neft Daşları, which was founded as an off-shore oil drilling platform; the obsessive archiving and monitoring activity in Svalbard; the legal protection and preservation of Skellig Michael, which doubles as Ach-To in Star Wars; the political division and 21-hour time difference of the Diomede Islands, only two and a half miles apart; or the intersection of the prime meridian and the equator that creates Null Island, and is in fact nothing more than a weather and sea observation buoy.
A new climate regime is currently playing out. What possible futures could be incubated and formed on these seemingly outlaw territories? What initiatives at architectural, infrastructural and ecological scales could suddenly appear on these new test sites? What purposes would they serve, who would manage them, and how would they be perceived by those looking from outside the island?
Studio 2B (‘to be’) uses Climate-Fiction (Cli-Fi) and world building as vehicles for exploring these new initiatives to be explored. In so doing they respond to questions of economy, ecology, society, technology, energy, infrastructure, media, AI and automation.