The Urbanisation of the Sea:

The book tells the story of the sea-land continuum based on the case of the North Sea — one of the world’s most industrialised seas, in which the Netherlands plays a central role. The space of the North Sea is almost fully planned and has been loaded with the task of increased economic production from new and traditional maritime sectors. At the same time, it has been emptied of cultural signi ficance. Through diverse projects from academia, art, literature, and practice, from analysis to design, the book explores synergies for designing this new spatial realm. Port city expert Carola Hein, professor of the history of architecture & urban planning at Delft University of Technology, and Nancy Couling, associate professor at the Bergen School of Architecture and researcher of the urbanised sea, combine forces with interdisciplinary experts to guide the reader through this complex and fascinating topic

Scarcity and Ocean Space - Case-Study Barents Sea, Norway

Urban systems operate at a multitude of scales, densities and levels of specialization over vast areas of the planet, as has been pointed out by Lefebvre in The Production of Space and The Urban Revolution and more recently by Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid in their essay Planetary Urbanization. Pressure on ocean space for energy production, extraction of resources, infrastructural and logistical development is steadily increasing, making the ocean a site of spatial and environmental convergence, a type of urban “hinterland”.While ephemeral in relative dimensions over time , critical nodes are beginning to emerge where the vast scale of the ocean is confined by physical limits.The first part of this paper examines ocean space in terms of scarcity within this context. Scarcity has been discussed as a relational term, relative to need or demand (Samuel and Robert, 2010) and in fact as a condition produced by ever-changing and newly created “needs”(Luks, 2010). In spite of market dynamics, some commodities have a stable and absolute quantity. “[...] the total quantity of the stuff named H2O remains unchanged through the hydrological cycle, neither created nor destroyed”(Samuel and Robert, 2010, p.110). The limitedness of ocean space completes the conception of a finite world. It also highlights the inherent problematic of measurable quantities and boundaries in relation to scarcity, both of which pose challenges to current design vocabulary and planning methods. Marine resources are considered a common heritage of mankind.The UN supports the “Marine Spatial Planning” (MSP) initiative, currently being carried out by a handful of countries and ideally aimed at a bal- ance of both use and protection of marine resources. Examples of MSP demonstrate, however, the strong link between economic priorities and ocean planning.This point will be illustrated by spatial plans for the German EEZs in the North Sea, since MSP is well advanced in Germany. Limits to conventional planning, and the need for a new form of design when dealing with a complex, three-dimensional ecosystem such as the ocean, become apparent. Part one concludes with selected theoretical positions, which can serve to inform spatial conceptualizations better adapted to ocean conditions. This discussion draws on a case-study carried out by the EPFL laboratoire Bâle (laba) on the Barents Sea- a resource-rich territory four times the size of Norway. Here, for the first time, the receding ice-front has made both the vast oil and gas reserves more readily accessible and the Northern Sea Route commercially viable, posing a critical environmental dilemma.The design re- search resulted in both long-term development plans, called ‘Territorial Constitutions’ - consisting of a plan and written articles of constitution- followed by architectural projects anchored within this framework. Selected projects, which illustrate innovative ways of designing with the specific characteristics of the ocean, will be discussed in the second part of this paper

The Role of Ocean Space in Contemporary Urbanization

Although the ocean is investigated by many scientific fields, research about ocean space is scarce. But energy production, extraction of resources, infrastructural and logistical development is increasing incrementally, resulting in a quantum shift in scale and intensity of spatial demands. Almost no part of the global ocean remains unaffected by human impact. The ocean is therefore a site of spatial and environmental convergence, a type of âhinterlandâ to urbanized territories. While these developments are ephemeral in relative urban terms, often remote and hard to decipher, they also carve out vast territories and leave lasting physical legacies. These phenomena have largely escaped spatial articulation. History is rich in examples of radical forms of urbanization which engaged the ocean as a network agent, without claiming territorial rights. Intensified activities, however have led to the territorialization of the ocean through the establishment of fixed exclusive economic zones. A fundamental contradiction between open ocean systems and bounded space becomes apparent. As opposed to to a territory defined by political borders, this thesis proposes an integrated, kinetic definition of ocean territory based on oceanography and biological thresholds with which urbanizing forces interact. Both the oceanâs inherent spatial properties and cultural interventions become active components. Based on this definition, the first objective is to identify and define specific forms of urbanization within ocean space. Extended urbanization refers to one of the three interacting moments of urbanization proposed by Brenner and Schmid as part of their developing theory on planetary urbanization. This has its conceptual roots in the dual urban processes implosion-explosion as described by Lefebvre in The Urban Revolution. As a specific form of extended urbanization, I argue that ocean space participates in the loose, uneven, and indistinct morphologies we are only beginning to recognize as âurbanâ. Ocean urbanization is researched first through literature pertaining to four topics which permeate interactions with ocean space and which each represent a rich field of urban theory; Networks, Seascape, Technology and Ecology. Empirical research is then carried out on two case studies; the Barents and the Baltic Seas. These seas undergo a spatial analysis based on the proposed definition of ocean territory. Under urbanization processes, networks lace the ocean floor, the seascape produces energy, technology monitors ecosystems and ecology embraces petroleum exploration. The study distills properties common to both seas, but also distinct manifestations of urban processes within each context. As a result, nine principles of urbanization can be identified. The seas also revealed dispersed intensities in particular locations. Five such situations were chosen as the object of a closer study, which are then proposed as typological conditions: Interpenetration Contraction, Expansion, Assemblage and Confluence. The second objective of the thesis is to relate these findings to current Marine Spatial Planning. What can architects contribute to the conceptualizing, mapping and managing of ocean space? A critical appraisal of ocean planning practice in relation to the research findings, concludes that the architectural challenge is to redraw limits according to ocean dynamics and to launch the ocean project

Imagining the Invisible: Spatial Design for the North Sea

The North Sea is undergoing severe ecological degradation. Can this condition be used as leverage for a change in societal attitudes, which are subsequently reflected in planning practices? Currently, both avenues are progressing with few effective feedback loops. This question is examined through imaginative proposals made by students at Bergen School of architecture, who address the North Sea as a holistic seascape composed of human-made and natural phenomena and aim to provide strategies for ecological recovery while reinstating the commons.ISSN:0269-7459ISSN:1360-058

The Ocean Project_Planning a resilient seascape

Planning the SeaThe sea is the site of one of this century’s greatest planning challenges. It is a material, spatial, ecological and recreational resource. As a vital producer, it is also a site of spatial and environmental convergence- a condition within which economic value is threatened by overall ecological degradation. Planning is initiated as a way of regulating interactions and conflicting spatial claims. Adopting the concept of seascapes as a parallel to landscapes, this paper traces the emergence of large-scale planned seascapes both for productive and protective purposes. While a relatively recent phenomenon, planning ocean space builds on centuries of seascape construction – a process merging natural, cultural, political and geological phenomena. But planning the sea swiftly emerges as a contradiction in terms. Static geometric fields created by cartesian coordinates bear little relevance for the intervening water-column. The ocean rolls through such boundaries, forming temporary zones through organic thresholds and obeying its own territorial logic. Which planning approaches can ensure the continued resilience of the seascape and public access to the vast ocean commons?SeascapesThe conception of seascape has evolved since the 16th century from the picturesque genre parallel to landscape painting. However this paper argues for a primary meaning of seascape as a realm shaped manipulated and cultivated through human interaction. Referring to J. B. Jackson’s three-fold understanding of landscape as a structural basis for the discussion, the properties of his landscapes one, two and three are tested on seascapes; the productive seascape, the essentially visual seascape and the all-encompassing, amorphous hybrid of architecture and nature defined later by Koolhaas as simply “scape”. In all three, landscape exists by definition only in relation to urbanization. It is here that we begin to understand the seascape as the full interpenetration of natural and cultural systems. Large-scale ocean planning (MSP) currently uses a combination of two-dimensional, land-based zoning tools and precautionary principles to secure maritime transport corridors, sites of wind-energy or fossil fuel production and to outline marine protected areas. In Western Europe, however, mono-functional economic priorities and superficial (of the surface) geometries clearly dominate the resulting spatial order. Case-studyIn order to examine such offshore conditions more closely, the large-scale energy seascape of Nysted Windpark in the Baltic Sea is presented as a case study. In its specific cultural-territorial context, this windpark reveals surprising interdependencies and potentials for resilience, heterogeneity and social interaction, hence moving away from a purely technological infrastructure towards an integrated public resource. ConclusionsLarge-scale planned seascapes mark the emergence of a new urban realm and a paradigm shift in maritime interactions. Rather than a plan, this realm must be approached as a project which democratically coordinates a deep, kinetic, contingent and highly differentiated spatial commons, and engages the active involvement of its global stewards

Planning for Flow in Ocean Space: A Barents Sea Case Study

Ocean space is currently being urbanized on an unprecedented scale, a phenomenon under investigation by the architectural laboratoire bâle, EPFL Switzerland. Lefebvre writes of the all-encompassing process of urbanization, that agriculture, industry and urbanization follow each other (Lefebvre 2003). This model can be tested for ocean space, which already plays a major role within mobility and organisational networks and is at the same time a fluid, partially industrialised landscape of dimensions often far exceeding comparable zones on land. The research aims to investigate these relationships, position ocean spatial typologies within the urban debate and identify planning tools informed by the physical, as opposed to the virtual, condition of flow, which implement the ocean itself as an “active” agent. In the case of the Barents Sea in northern Norway, the interest in ocean space is fuelled by the opening of the Northern Sea Route to Asia and the prospect of releasing vast off-shore reserves of oil & gas on the one hand, and the alarming rate of global warming as reflected in the receding ice-front on the other. The strategic development of infrastructure, the provision of access and the complex grid of international networks active in the region are indicators of a particular type of urbanism acting at the territorial scale. This specific character, however, demands an urbanism of flows. Despite its remoteness, its vastness, its extreme climatic and light conditions, its relatively sparse human population and its abundance of natural habitats, this territory is under extreme pressure. The Barents Sea exemplifies the need for a new kind of spatial strategy, a strategy which works with the dynamics of the ocean and its potential for the current urbanization processes. How can urban design methods and principles be applied to ocean territory and how can natural “clients” such as inhabitants, or phenomena such as ice, be catered for in planning terms? The laboratory’s project developed “territorial constitutions” for the Barents Sea which were then further articulated in singular architectural projects as a proof of concept. The context revealed itself to be both an extremely harsh and aesthetic natural environment and a correspondingly extreme artificial and utilitarian built environment

Seascape North Sea

GIS data sets describing the Seascape characteristics of the North Sea, including seafloor composition, bathymetry and fish population

OCEANURB - the unseen spaces of extended urbanization in the North Sea

The project investigates and maps spatial patterns in the North Sea, both the natural systems and those introduced through urbanization processes. The data-sets contain three types of data: GIS files for the geographical area of the North Sea according to themes (Seabed composition, Fish populations and Infrastructure), QGIS maps containing selected shape files and written reports for 4 Work Packages. The GIS files are the most recent versions available from different national sources or organisations, but together the collection covers the whole North Sea. The aim is to demonstrate the high levels of spatial occupation which have been reached by combined sectors in the North Sea, but which are difficult to perceive and have not been previously considered as “urban“ indicators