Next Project

Breathing Platform

Part 1 Project 2011
Kenzaf Chung
University of Westminster | UK
Breathing Platform will fully emerge with the rising sea levels, providing a habitation for human society in the future. The breathing platform will be a sustainable form of living, having a factory for seafood processing and a factory for container manufacturing at the highest level with dwelling spaces, growing places and social functions below water ready and waiting for use when the sea level rises and floods the town of Whitstable.

Fishing is in decline in Whitstable with as few as 150 people employed in the harbour today. For today’s Whitstable, a new landing bay is designed for fishing boats and the seafood is processed. Special custom-made mini-containers ship the fresh, live seafood and smoked fish to London and local markets. The proposal seeks to integrate a manufacturing enterprise within the poetic landscape through the revival of an existing declining industry.

Observing and recording the natural process of the movement of water and land, investigation of the concept was fluidly conceived with a series of abstract three dimensional physical models. Water moves the land with its flow; represented by slicing and shifting materials in the concept models.

The ground level platform is envisaged in the same way conceptually; here the spaces pull apart and the walls slide past each other. The structural steel grid and roof beams are similarly fractured with a dynamic rhythm.

Moving across the spaces and connecting them, the container track winds through the buildings. The public route into the building reflects the trackway above, exploiting the potential of touristic activity and its theatricality. A series of evocative film still images envisage the spaces.

Adapting to the changing environment, Breathing Platform emerges from the sea. Water walls pour down the interior of the building from the collection reservoirs above, providing fresh water for the populace and a dramatic public space in the heart of the structure.

In 50 years time when Whitstable is inundated by flood water the existing populace migrates to the newly emerged structure where they will farm, fish and live in the multi-functional container homes, a microcosm for a future city unfolds.

Kenzaf Chung

Tutor(s)


2011
• Page Hits: 13582         • Entry Date: 15 September 2011         • Last Update: 15 September 2011