Taking Back Control

Abstract

This project traces the role the North Sea has played in the history of the United Kingdom, with a particular focus on territorial control. In a post-Brexit scenario where supply chains between the island and the continent are interrupted, the contiguous zone just twelve nautical miles from the coast of the UK provides an ideal economic grey zone. A free-floating object in occupying this territory is not subject to the UK’s visa or customs regimes, nor is it at the mercy of the high seas. The project thus capitalizes on its position to subvert the exclusionary act of Brexit. Tapping into existing flows of secondary resources across the North Sea, the project manifests as a recycling plant which utilizes waste to produce recycled concrete made of bottom ash and plastic waste recovered from the sea. This new raw material is moulded into modular islands which are given birth to by the machine; thereby using unwanted matter generated in a terrestrial context to create a productive landscape in the middle of the sea. The project contests the exploitative nature of natural extraction within the North Sea and renders visible processes that are easy to forget by creating a physical structure that thrives at sea and exists independent of the land.