Designing a Nature 2.0 with reinterpreted vernacular design solutions for infrastructure and architectural settlements on the Lofoten Islands.

1. Introduction

The steep- and rawness of the granite walls which form the Island of Moskenes (Lofoten Islands, Norway) can simply be breath taking.

They reflect both, the sublime forces of geologic influence, which have acted on these impressive formations for more than over 3.5 billion years, as well as its raw nature of atmospherical context, which has exposed the matter to multiple forces of erosion, such as some of the strongest currents of the oceans and flows of water.

What we can read in this dramatic and sublime landscapes, extends far below this veil of appearance into the depth of its masses. These granite formations, which tower in almost vertical direction into the sky, penetrating low-lying clouds and fog, have been inspiration to many landscape painters and poets.

"Even while I gazed, this current acquired a monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed – to its headlong impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea … was lashed into ungovernable fury… Here the vast bed of the waters seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into frenzied convulsion – heaving, boiling, hissing…"

Edgar Allan Poe | A Descent into the Maelstrom

However, they don't just meet a flat surface at their bottom, they extend far below the line of Water into the very deep of the Norwegian continental shelf forming a very diverse and lively marine topography.

The Lofoten Islands, can be compared with a set of big stones lying in the middle of a torrential river, altering velocities of water streams and creating multiple eddies, leading to almost silent waters in the downstream side of the object, short reverse flows on the upstream side of the object and even more torrential velocities between the objects.

This unique location and exposure of the Lofoten Islands results in many diverse micro climates with highly bio-diverse and differentiated habitats. The enormous supply of nutrition transported by the gulf-stream makes these habitats to the spawning grounds for many species and also permanent home to one of the biggest remaining concentrations of coastal fish around the globe.

1. Brief

Although The Lofoten Islands represent an important and highly valuable future human source of nutrition, they have become more and more threatened by human intervention, leading already to the disappearance of some once local spices, and to a drastic fall in numbers in many others.

Two of the very ongoing threats to these still very diverse and wild flora and fauna, are the increase of aqua-cultural-activities, and the increasing number of visiting tourists every year. Both interact as open systems and leave traces of their presence behind, spreading, extending and densifying in this Nature, altering the natural into cultural landscape.

In this studio we will try to find ways of designing a vision of a cultivation of natural landscape, which fits better to both, natural and human necessities as well as local and global interests of the future, by using methods of terrain analysis and GIS data sets as initial input, to gain a better understanding of local topography and environment.

However, the challenge will be how to translate these deeper readings of nature into semi-artificial architectural settlements, showing a negotiation in form of a more symbiotic coexistence of the projected built environment, into the existing natural space, as well as providing architectural responses to a future more sustainable touristic - and aqua-cultural use (cultivation) of the Island of Moskenes, by using state-of-the-art technology and digital artistic creativity.

text: Marc Ihle