Project
Sargatopia
Year: 2022
Category: Landscape & Urbanism
Skills: Rhino, Illustrator, Photoshop
This project explores a new urban community deeply tied to Sargassum, a natural, carbon sequestering macro-algae that has grown uncontrollably in the Atlantic Ocean over the past decade. It is sourced before it reaches the Caribbean shores, after which it is processed to create raw material for construction. The sargassum based material offers low embodied carbon along with opportunities to experiment with load bearing masonry construction. After agreeing upon a localized building and ethical framework, members are given the freedom to build on their own, resulting in a ground up, iterative approach that explores new ways of living in an eco-based urbanism.
Life in Sargatopia
This drawing explores new visualization methods to represent how the community could grow outwards over time around a central workshop. The workshop would be used to process the seaweed into usable building products out of which the rest of the community would be built.
Street Section
This sheared section oblique shows how walls would could be constructed in a dense urban network where streets are designed to be wide enough for 2 wheelbarrows to pass through. Manual labor is preferred in this low-carbon community.
Totem
Not only does the community require an ethical and low-carbon way of building, it aso requires a low-carbon way of living. The marriage of manual craft and design is encouraged in this community of builders, who's sustainable ambitions are enshrined on a central totem.
Daniel Vanderhorst
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