Archinect - News

BIG designs off-grid 'adventure village' Vollebak Island

2023-06-01T14:29:00-04:00

BIG has shared details about their latest collaboration with British clothing company Vollebak to design a self-sufficient, off-grid island off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. Named after the brand, the 11-acre Vollebak Island is intended to be fully powered by carbon-neutral energy.

The island site centers around the 6,426-square-foot Earth House, a village-like series of nine interconnected buildings clustered under a man-made hill, and the 947-square-foot Wood House, a standalone garden suite structure on the island’s eastern shoreline.

View of Vollebak Island's Earth House. Rendering: MIR. Image courtesy Vollebak

Each space on the island is made from material tailored for their specific uses, including stacked seaweed, compacted earth, hemp, glass brick, and locally-sourced stone. The island will be powered through a combination of offshore wind, geothermal energy, and solar power, with the energy stored in Tesla power walls.

The Earth House. Rendering: MIR. Image courtesy Vo...

Chicago could become site of the Great Lakes' first offshore wind farm

2022-09-10T09:00:00-04:00

If state Rep. Marcus Evans has his way, Chicago will enter the race to build the first offshore wind farm on the Great Lakes. Evans has introduced a bill that lays the groundwork for a proposed wind farm in Lake Michigan, about 10 miles from the shores of the Southeast Side. The bill sets up a fund that would help the state to compete for federal money, including $230 million for port infrastructure projects available from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Evans introduced the bill, the Illinois Rust Belt to Green Belt Pilot Program Act, in January. The legislation would establish a path toward creating the offshore wind farm by allowing the state to apply for federal infrastructure funds. The proposal promises to create over 1,200 jobs, primarily occupied by underrepresented populations, an aim bolstered by its potential location near Black and Latino communities. The bill has since been referred to a House committee.

Illinois will face competition from Ohio and New York state in its quest to be the first home of an offshore wind farm via the Great Lakes as the two states are developing plans to respectively establish farms in Lake Erie.

As reported by the Chicago Tribune, the initiative has garnered support from local community groups, however, there remain reservations due to concerns over whether the promise to reserve jobs created from the...

Largest offshore wind farm on the West Coast proposed

2022-04-18T17:10:00-04:00

A company is proposing to build what could be the West Coast’s biggest floating offshore wind farm, suggesting the expansion of a technology that has yet to find footing in the U.S. [...] The proposal mirrors an earlier request made by Trident Winds in California several years ago, which jump-started a broader competition among deep-pocketed developers for the rights to generate offshore wind power there.

The project is called Olympic Wind and is the product of Washington-based offshore wind developer Trident Winds. The proposal aims to generate 2,000 megawatts of electricity that could power approximately 800,000 homes. The wind farm would be located 43 miles off the coast of Grays Harbor County, Washington, potentially making it the first commercial-scale offshore wind project in the state.

If realized, Olympic Wind would help Washington reach the requirement that its utilities get at least 80 percent of their electricity from carbon-free resources by 2030, and 100 percent in 2045. It could also contribute to the Biden Administration’s goal of developing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is reviewing the plan and will work with Indigenous tribes, the state of Washington, and others on next steps.

Energywire notes that the project is likely to face pushback from various fronts, including the local ...

South Brooklyn Marine Terminal to be converted into one of the country's largest offshore wind port facilities

2022-03-07T13:46:00-05:00

Last week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced an agreement that will transform the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal (SBMT) into one of the largest offshore wind port facilities in the country. This move will help establish New York as a leader in offshore wind and meet its climate goals of 100 percent clean electricity by 2040.

The deal, which was formed in collaboration between the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), Equinor, its partner bp, and Sustainable South Brooklyn Marine Terminal (SSBMT), will upgrade and build out the site as an operations and maintenance base. The terminal will become a power interconnection site for the Empire Wind 1 project, an initiative that will create an offshore wind farm across an 80,000-acre stretch of water 20 miles south of Long Island. Heavy lift platforms will be built on the 39th Street Pier for wind turbine staging and installation for Equinor and other developers. The port will also serve as a hub for the Equinor ...

Norway is building a salmon-inspired floating exhibition center

2022-01-27T14:59:00-05:00

The epicenter of salmon farming in Scandinavia is about to break the waves on an eye-catching new aquatic addition thanks to a creative new convention center design from Kvorning Design & Communication.

A subsidiary of the group named Marketex Marine is behind the scheme that will bequeath Norway’s spectacular Hardangerfjord with a floating exhibition hall they call the Salmon Eye. The 1,000-ton structure is only accessible by boat and is located in the middle of a commercial fishing operation run by Eide Fjordbruk. Marketex was selected for their expertise in off-shore engineering projects but says the Salmon Eye will constitute a new scale in terms of their design experience.

Image courtesy Kvorning Design & Communication

“The implementation of such a project requires the highest level of commitment from each of the participants involved, as nothing remotely similar we have constructed before,” Marketex’s Fjodor Kvitš noted in a statement. “The entire construction is a combinatio...

New York City and State are elevating offshore wind farm investments

2021-10-15T12:39:00-04:00

Late last month, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) announced a 15-year, $191 million plan to make New York City a leader in the offshore wind industry.

Called the Offshore Wind Vision (OSW) plan, it ensures the city meets its climate goals of 100-percent clean electricity by 2040 and carbon neutrality by 2050. The investment aims to create over 13,000 jobs and generate $1.3 billion in average annual investment; ensure 40% of job and investment benefits are directed toward women, minorities, and environmental justice communities; and reduce 34.5 million tons of CO2, which is the equivalent of removing nearly 500,000 cars from roads for 15 years, as noted in New York City’s press release.

The OSW plan is focused on three core areas: sites and infrastructure, ensuring the development of “best-in-class” infrastructure that will support the construction and operation of offshore wind farms; business and workforce, prepari...

Norwegian company developing 1,000-foot-tall offshore wind turbine farms that could power 80,000 homes each

2021-08-23T10:37:00-04:00

A Norwegian company is developing a new technology for floating, offshore wind turbine farms. Unlike traditional wind farms, these are organized in stacked, square grids, standing nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower.

The grids would stand at 1,000 feet tall, composed of multiple smaller turbines in a staggered formation atop a floating platform anchored to the ocean floor. Founded in 2017, Wind Catching Systems, in collaboration with Aibel AS as the main contractor and holding companies Ferd AS and North Energy ASA, aims to commercialize this wind catching technology.

The company claims that its grids will increase efficiency, reduce land use by 80%, and reduce production costs, allowing the system to be immediately competitive with other traditional grid prices. In addition, the team states that one wind catching unit will be able to generate five times the annual energy output of the world’s largest single turbines and could produce enough electricity for 80,000 European househol...

Denmark rolls out ambitious plans for 10 GW energy islands to meet climate goals

2019-12-13T14:05:00-05:00

Denmark is developing plans to build “energy islands” – areas of reclaimed land that would host vast wind farms able to generate up to 10GW of electricity, 8.8GW more than the largest offshore wind farm now in existence. The cost of the project or projects has been put at between $20bn and $45bn, most of which is expected to come from the private sector, with the government funding research and development.

With 41% of its national energy mix already generated by wind turbines, Denmark leads the field in Europe in terms of percentage. A recently passed National Climate Act signals further commitment to set bold and legally binding emission reduction goals.

Microsoft’s undersea data center now has a webcam

2018-08-23T13:10:00-04:00

Microsoft has been experimenting with undersea data centers for years, and the current installation in the Orkney Islands will be deployed for around five years. There are 12 racks with 864 servers and 27.6 petabytes (27,600 terabytes) of storage [...] The data center is powered by a giant undersea cable that also connects it back to the internet, and the findings could mean the company will scale this project up to more powerful data centers in the future.

Microsoft has now installed a webcam by its undersea data center located off the shores of Scotland. The video stream is part of the company's efforts to observe environmental conditions of Project Natick, a research project aimed at determining the feasibility of subsea data centers powered by offshore renewable energy.

Check out the live video stream here.

Shoring up America's infrastructure by repatriating money stashed overseas

2016-08-11T13:17:00-04:00

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump may have a lot of differences in temperament and policy, but common to both campaigns are promises to invest heavily in the country’s crumbling infrastructure. It’ll be a hard task to get the bill through a Republican-controlled, miserly House — particularly for a President Clinton. But there’s a pot of gold that both candidates could possibly dip into: the some $2 trillion in cash stashed overseas by American companies. A repatriation tax holiday could be used to fund infrastructure projects according to Dan Clifton, head of policy research at Stategas, as reported by CNBC.

For more on the state of American infrastructure, check out these links:

For Libertarian Utopia, Float Away on ‘Startup’ Nation

2014-06-04T15:22:00-04:00

As dawn breaks over the Gulf of Fonseca, southeast of El Salvador, Patri Friedman sets out for a jog. He trots past domed hothouses filled with fruit trees and feels the sidewalk sway gently underfoot as a tugboat chugs by with a floating apartment building in tow. The year is 2024, and Friedman lives on a so-called seastead, a waterbound city of some 1,000 people who produce their own food, their own energy and -- most important -- their own laws.

Previously:

Student-designed floating islands could house Brazil's offshore oil workers

2014-02-25T19:18:00-05:00

Your assignment is to come up with an idea so revolutionary that it could be considered an important advance in industrial design. Students at Rice University in Houston accomplished that with plans for a floating city that is being considered by one of the world's largest oil companies. Last year, the students won the inaugural Odebrecht Award for a radical design of man-made floating islands where as many as 25,000 oil workers and their families could live.

Previously featured in our Student Works and Screen/Print series, "The Petropolis of Tomorrow" proposes a new style of floating company towns to aid Brazil in offshore oil findings. NPR now reports that the project has surpassed its academic role to be considered by Petrobas, a Brazilian oil company, as a potential solution for housing workers on man-made islands within the next five years.

Neeraj Bhatia, author of "Petropolis" and professor of the Rice University students who conceived of the project, is also co-editor of the upcoming Bracket 4 issue, [takes action]. [takes action] submissions are open until March 10.

Obscenely Rich Tech Folk Are Still Building Their Island Utopia Off The Coast of San Francisco

2012-05-10T18:31:00-04:00

The project, which is now called Blueseed, is led by a team of execs plucked from Thiel's Seasteading Institute. Although the original plans for the floating tech village looked something like a fancy oil rig from the future, the latest plan is to either convert a cruise ship or remodel an old barge in to a swanky island anchored just outside the jurisdiction of the United States.

Click here for the Blueseed website.