OCÉANO
‘The ocean speaks. New ecologies and new economies of the seas’ is an exhibition that analyses the impact of human action on marine ecosystems and reflects on how the city's relationship with the sea can be redesigned through an innovation-based approach.
Barcelona’s opening to the sea was one of the major structural changes that redefined the city in the 1990s. Now, the climate crisis is making us re-evaluate its relationship with the sea and the ecosystems it includes. The exhibition addresses this issue in an interdisciplinary way, covering architecture, technology, speculative design and urban planning, all of them disciplines that are capable of suggesting new approaches to the major challenges society is facing.
The starting point for this exhibition is the history of the relationship between a city – Barcelona – and its seafront. From here, it takes a thorough look at the conflicts and circumstances present in coastal communities all over the world, which are home to 40% of humankind and make up a significant proportion of our most valued land.
The exhibition project proposes a flexible system that makes the most of the museum's pre-existing conditions. On the one hand, it is a large space, with a height of almost six meters. On the other, the technology it offers is a key starting point: the suspended technical ceiling, formed by parallel, one-way rails from which parallel, electrified, and structural guides are suspended, occupies the entire exhibition space ceiling, determining the technical possibilities of the intervention. Thus, it was decided to take advantage of this structure and work with these rails as a geometric base, providing support for the large curtains that will ultimately generate nine parallel corridors, resulting in a de-hierarchized space, both experientially and expositorily.
Working toward a sense of floating, within the concept of depth, the project proposes a consistent floor plan and section that breaks the Euclidean hierarchy and generates a new relationship between the visitor and the space. This results in a way of moving through the space as if it were a kind of immersion, in which you discover the exhibits as you move in any direction.
The final proposal is a system of 10 parallel curtains, 6 meters high and 30 meters long, separated by two meters (the distance between the bars of the museum's technical ceiling). These curtains are raised at different points to allow passage through them and reveal the exhibition's content. Thus, the exhibition has 9 entrances and infinite ways to navigate, infinite interpretations, like navigating an ocean of information that is always different.
Artists
Adrian Lahoud, Sam Jacoby, Benjamin Mehigan con Accept & Proceed, MadebyON, y PoOR; Ant Farm; Atelier Luma; Embassy of the North Sea (Sheng-Wen Lo, Leon Lapa Pereira & Harpo ’t Hart); Institute for Postnatural Studies & Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano; Kelly Jazvac, con Patricia Corcoran y Charles Moore; Laboratori d’Aplicacions bioacústiques (UPC); Landlab, laboratorio de paisajes; Liam Young; Marina Otero Verzier con Dan Miller; Marshmallow Laser Feast en colaboración con Tom Mustill; Ocean Ecostructures; Studio Klarenbeek & Dros.
CREDITS
Author: Studio Animal (Javier J. Iniesta)
Colaborators: Marina Benítez, Diana F. Pareja
Graphic: Koln Studio
Light design: Cube
Curator: José Luis de Vicente
Building coordinator: Isabel Aparici
Client: Ayuntamiento de Barcelona
Location: Design Hub Barcelona
Builder: Ovejero Sequeira
