Power Rig

The Power Rig severs the outer skin of the Triple E. Vast chunks of metal are torn away in order to access the heart of the ship. Irreversible trauma is caused as the fuel and engine of the

behemoth is extracted to power the education Rigs.

1m

The Waalhaven Skills Metaboliser: Learning to live in the shadow of obsolescence. Alexander Cooper

alexanderwpcooper@gmail.com

The Waalhaven Skills Metaboliser: Learning to live in the shadow of obsolescence.

The shipping industry, and in particular act of transporting the vast amount of goods across the world, can be used as a litmus test to indicate at what state the global economy is in. The man made incisions into the landscape in geographically strategic locations provide evidence that our pursuit for reducing the gap between supply and demand is reaching an intercontinental scale (see the Panama Canal, The Suez Canal).

The recently constructed super sized container ship, the Maersk Triple E, heralds a new stage in the our obsession with the age of fulfillment. At 400 metres long, 165,000 tonnes and capable of carrying over 18,000 containers, the Triple E is a vessel that has been specifically designed to respond to a relatively new shipping technique – slow steaming. This technique involves the consolidation of multiple cargo loads but transportation slower speed in order to save money on the e rising costs of diesel fuel.

This trend will force shipping companies around the world to engage in designing new ships that will specifically deal with slow steaming as the industry norm. More worryingly, the same companies will have no choice but to scrap vast numbers of their aging fleet. These ships will become a casualty of our obsession with narrowing the time frame between supply and demand. Thousands of ships will become cost ineffective to run and become obsolete.

’?etelosbo ti sredner euqinhcet citsigol txen eht ecno E elpirT eht fo semoceb tahW‘ – noitseuq eht sksa tcejorp evitcepsorp yM

The location of my site, the Waalhaven Harbour, has arrived at a very similar conclusion to that of the outdated container ships we see today. Stuck in a rut between the city and the industrial sprawl of the harbor, it has been largely ignored by the logistic effort of the Rotterdam Port authority. The aim of the Waalhaven skills metaboliser is to take these obsolete elements and use them as a base to regenerate. Taking queues from Rotterdam Makerspace and Rotterdam Academy of Architecture (who both house their teaching spaces within old boat building warehouses), I aim to pair up with TU Delft’s Centre for Logistics and Control to retrain the seamen that would usually work in the Maersk Triple E.

By pairing the ships structure along with new pier-style constructions I aim to create education in deconstruction. The form of the Triple E will become repurposed and manipulated to serve the needs of the inhabitants. The ship will experience terminal trauma - structural members will be ripped from their positions in the most horrific way; it will be torn limb from limb as the parasitic structure moves in and takes hold. It will be a living demolition site in a constant state of flux. Within this shell of agitated steel and rust, seamen will learn new logistic techniques, ways to adapt aging systems of control to propose new and experimental methods allowing them to control the ports destiny. The Triple E will become a living case study radical design that has run its course. Its corpse will now be regenerated into spaces to export knowledge.

waste