Farming the Common Sea

Project idea

Acknowledging the perception of fish as an ethical alternative to meat, this project intends to address some of these more complex realities. In response to aquaculture as the fastest growing global food industry, I seek an alternative approach to the intense and harmful methods currently used.

Through re-evaluating perceptions of large-scale mass aquaculture, we can change food culture to acknowledge the lower end of the food chain. Provision of food can be done in a more responsible way for the future. My proposal seeks to influence a fairer ecosystem of distribution.

Using a period of research in Japan as an opportunity to explore the Japanese fishing industry, the monopolisation of aquaculture technologies becomes apparent. As production of fish is forced to increase in response to globally declining fish stocks, bay areas fill with net enclosures and coastlines become territorialised. The infrastructure of aquaculture becomes a visible pattern on the landscape.

In the United Kingdom our coastlines have become populated with wind farms. This new infrastructure has amputated the productivity in these locations, particularly fishing. Morecambe Bay is home to many different types of fishing practice, predominantly in relation to shellfish. Small family run businesses have developed fishing methods over centuries of knowledge in relation to the tide.

Walney Wind Farm off Barrow in Morecambe Bay was proposed to be one of the largest wind farms in the world. The site offers a new way to think about a system of interaction between humans and plants in a context that knows no boundaries or divisions as we know on land.

Project description

This proposal consists of a ‘co-location’ of aquaculture amongst offshore wind farms as a more considered approach to food production. The new aquaculture industry benefits coastal communities who have been impacted by the installation of these new infrastructures, aiming to offer an alternative to the fishing practices that have been severed.

As a way to celebrate the existing infrastructure, a series of hybrid interventions brings a new form of inhabitation to the wind turbines. Reconnecting the production of food with its consumption, a new location for a specific food experience is created as a driver for a new appreciation of our productive seascape.

Technical information

This masterplan strategy focuses on the hybridisation of the wind turbine structures, turning a mono functional infrastructure into one with cultural value which acts as a driver to take people out to the wind turbine site. A key consideration was the logistics of how this plan could make use of existing systems and infrastructures.

Small scale architectural interventions at the base of these turbines emphasizes a different approach to the mass scale mono culture we currently see in the aquaculture industry; to work with the many small scale practices that already exist in Morecambe Bay.