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...

Diller Scofidio + Renfro win $1.3 billion 'Pearl Eco-Island' competition in the South China Sea

2016-09-02T13:28:00-04:00

The South Sea Pearl Eco-Island development is funded by HNA Group and will include houses, hotels, a cruise ship port, yacht harbour, spa and theme park. [...] The jury said the “singular and clear” design would “create a beautiful, iconic form rising naturally out the landscape, recalling the volcanic caldera of the area, and shape the island into a continuous structure that would be an extremely efficient compaction of resort, retail, and housing."

The "eco" stands for... well, it depends. To HNA Group: “This proposal is one for a truly a human-made island that celebrates all that makes such water-bound places so attractive and beautiful, while contributing to our understanding of deep, intrinsic ecology.” To the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, these manmade islands are an explicit move by China to exert sovereignty (a status that The Hague explicitly rejects), and they're causing massive environmental harm.

Investigating China's role in the South China Sea this past July, "The tribunal clearly decided that China had caused severe harm to the coral reef environment," according to Kent Carpenter, the tribunal's expert witness and a professor of biological science. Much of that damage was attributed to island building. You can find more on their proceedings here.

Runners up to the competition include Foster + Partners and Morphosis.

Building New York City's sixth borough

2015-08-18T11:40:00-04:00

If it is possible, financially and technologically, to build a three-acre park in the river west of New York City, then why isn’t it possible to construct an artificial island at a higher elevation than downtown Manhattan that would serve as New York City’s sixth borough? Many of the city’s problems—real estate prices, developers purchasing blocks at a time, the astronomical cost of parking a car, or even a bicycle, even shoreline erosion—are problems of space. So why not just build more space?

Amsterdam's ambitious IJburg housing project on 10 artificial islands keeps growing

2015-06-15T13:05:00-04:00

Right now, Amsterdam’s Center Island (Centrumeiland in Dutch) doesn’t look like much [...] The island, in use for the first time this summer as a campsite-cum-art installation, is in fact an entirely artificial creation, lying at the heart of what could currently be Europe’s boldest engineering and housing program. [...] The archipelago will eventually be home to up to 45,000 people in 18,000 homes, 30 percent of which will be earmarked for affordable rent.

Tristan da Cunha + RIBA accepting redesign ideas for remote fishing/farming community

2015-05-04T19:23:00-04:00

Tristan da Cunha is an island in the South Atlantic Ocean, located about 1,750 miles southwest of Cape Town. Described as the remotest inhabited island in the world, Tristan da Cunha is internally self-governed and actually consists of four islands: Tristan (the main island), Nightingale and Inaccessible, and Gough Island. A tiny fishing/farming population of less than 300 people known as Edinburgh of the Seven Seas -- or locally as "The Settlement" -- permanently resides on the main island. In time for the island's 200th Anniversary in 2016, the Tristan da Cunha community is ready for a redesign to ensure a more self-sustainable future.

Earlier this year, the island's Government called upon RIBA to organize an international two-phase ideas competition to seek cost-effective schemes that would improve the quality and energy efficiency of Tristan's houses and government buildings. Additionally, the strongest ideas would enhance the island's agrarian systems to support grazing and grow...

RIBA seeks architect to redesign remote island community of <300

2015-03-26T17:09:00-04:00

[RIBA] has launched the contest to create a self-sustainable future for those living on Tristan, a tiny community “ruled by the weather”, part of the Tristan da Cunha group of islands. [...] Tristan’s government, led by Alex Mitham, called in Riba to manage the process of finding an architect to overhaul residential property as well as carry out urgent replacement of the government buildings, currently little more than agricultural sheds which “are nearing the end of their useful life”.

Tiny Spanish Island to be First Energy Self-Sufficient Island

2014-10-01T11:32:00-04:00

El Hierro, the most remote of Spain's Canary Islands, is now billing itself as the world's first energy self-sufficient island that has never been hooked up to a power grid [...] This past summer, El Hierro inaugurated the Gorona del Viento power plant, a $110 million wind and water turbine farm. By the end of this year, the plant will generate all of the island's energy needs of up to 48 gigawatt hours per year.

Not only will El Hierro be the first energy self-sufficient island, it's will also exclusively make use of renewable energy sources, a mix of wind and hydro-power. Previously, the island – the most remote of the Canary Islands – couldn't hook up to the Spanish grid and had to barge in about 40,000 barrels of oil a year. Meanwhile, the island is also planning to have only electric cars by 2020, NPR reports. This little rocky island is a good model for the rest of the world; though with a population of just over 10,000, it has a bit of an advantage.

China is busy building islands in the South China Sea

2014-09-08T21:18:00-04:00

But I’ve seen aerial photographs of this place taken by the Philippine navy. They show the massive land reclamation work China has been doing here since January. Millions of tonnes of rock and sand have been dredged up from the sea floor and pumped into the reef to form new land.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes travels to the South China Sea, where the Chinese state is building islands.

Dror's Vision for HavvAda

2012-09-28T13:00:00-04:00

New York firm Dror today unveiled designs for a collosal artificial island to be created right off the coast of Turkey, not far from Istanbul. The project, dubbed HavvAda, is envisioned to rise from the sea by piling up one billion cubic meter of soil carved out of the main land from the construction of the proposed Canal Istanbul, another ambitious mega project currently proposed to run parallel to the Bosporus. Inspired by Buckminster Fuller, six gigantic geodesic domes will lift up artificial hills on the island which will be covered with residences and commercial buildings for a population of several hundred thousand people.

Find a detailed project description and images courtesy of Dror below.

A century after the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed; Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan presents the Canal Istanbul project and offers to re-visit the map of the city. One billion cubic meter of soil may be carved out of the main land in order to create the canal. Turkish deve...