Our earth ocean is where all life started, billions of years ago, in the “primordial soup”. Today, our life still depends on the ocean, as it has produced more than 70% of the oxygen we breath and it captures and distributes most of the heat from the sun, controlling our climate. We have mapped 100% of the Moon and Mars in high resolution, but only 5% of our ocean. We are rapidly destroying the ocean, having overfished about 90% of large fishes, contaminated the surface of every ocean with plastic debris, and coral reefs - the nurseries of the oceans - are in imminent danger. The International Ocean Station (IOS) would be a network of low cost habitable floating scientific and R&D centres to study and develop solutions for the world oceans challenges. Similarly to the International Space Station (ISS), it would be a place of international collaboration, a manifestation of human beings overcoming adversity together.
I created the concept in 2008 as my Master Degree final project at the Royal College of Art and won the Ars Electronica Golden Nica [NEXT IDEA] leading the collective Open_Sailing in 2009. This is a large group project. I have too many people to thank here.
Area 10 (Peckham, London), Abi Palmer, Adam Weymouth, Adrien Lecuru, Andy Fox, Antonio Carvalho, Benjamin Lesur, Carla Colet Castaño, Carnaven Chiu, Carolina Mendoza, David Lee, Gerard Rallo, Gianluca Giabardo, Harrisson Leaf, Heidi Wikar, Hiromi Ozaki “Sputniko”, Ian Daniell, Ilona Gaynor, Jennifer Dunnam, Jorge Guberte, Kisoon Eom, Li Yu, Lucky PDF, Maia Marinelli, Martin Gautron, Matthieu Sales, Mauro Martino, Menka Parekh, Nadine Freischlad, Louis-Narito Harada, Nasser Moustakim, Oliver Goodhall, Ollie Palmer, Owen Hodgkinson, Pano Kroko, Patrick McGee, Peter Von Batheld, Rak Siri, Ruairi Glynn, Rupert Spann, Samantha Penn, Sey Min, Sinta Tantra, Stephen Sudano, Sylvain Troianowski, Tim Hull, Tom Davies, Toni Nottebohm, Vahakn Matossian, Yoko Kasai, Yumiko Ohara and many more.
Open_Sailing was presented at Ars Electronica in Linz Austria Sept 12 2009, and Sep 16 2009 at MIT FutureCraft. Cesar Jung-Harada and Hiromi Ozaki presented the Open_Sailing project at the Barbican London, as a part of the Radical Nature exhibition curated by Francesco Manacorda, with a strong emphase on the social aspect of Open_Sailing rather than on the engineering of the object. A serie of engineering videos should follow this winter, to explain the physics behind our project. That day, Frank Gutzeit (Collaborator with Wolf Hilbertz) also explained the techniques to grow artificial coral reefs.
My PhD (in progress in 2019) is essentially trying to build the knowledge base to build the IOS. After I complete my PhD, I will resume working on this project.
Archive website: https://sites.google.com/a/opensailing.net/www/
