From Extractivism to Post-Fossil
Project details
- Year
- 2023
- Programme
- Bachelor – Spatial Design
- Practices
- social
- Minor
- HR Ontwerpen: Architectuur -> graduation practice is Powerplay
Architecture is able to change our built environment actively and visually into a post-fossil future and therefore educate society of changing our values, fantasies and freedoms to ones which no longer enables oil to interfere. How can the Maasvlakte contribute to this change of modernity?
In the past 150 years climate devastation has become more prominent in our society; it is something we need to keep on tackling. In architecture there has been a rise in projects which focus on sustainability and the use of net zero materials, however they do not fully consider the environmental heritage when designing these sites. We have to move from an oil based modernity to one where oil no longer has a place along our habitats.
In my research I look into a set of design principles that can ultimately lead to a speculative spatial narrative into an oil-less future.
The next 150 years we will be unbuilding and unlearning the antropocenic, fossil fuel system of living by no longer viewing humans seperate or superiour to the ecosystem and viewing architecture as the binding factor between humans, nature, animals, economy, and production.
Looking to a possible fossil free future takes some imagination. It takes acknowledging the history of modernity, climatological agreements, possible sustainable options and more. Yet, it should not be forgotten that we need to think in longer increments of time. The earth can no longer play to human centred sustainability, and it needs consciously looking into new values and developments which highlight and ultimately tackle social and environmental justice.
In my research I have used the Maasvlakte as a case study, to highlight the climate devastation and the extractivism the Netherlands exhibits. Though I acknowledge the economic profitability, it erased an important part of history and has erased an ecosystem, which no justice has been taken for. I strongly believe that by decommissioning this infrastructure I am able to set a stone to returning this oil landscape to its original ecosystem.
