What could be
The description of
The Black Gold project, which can be found on
Dutch designer Chris Collaris's website, seems fanciful enough.
THE BLACK GOLD project explores a new sustainable potential of a discarded mega oil tanker ship. The mega oil tanker ship can be seen as the perfect icon representing the geographic, economic and cultural history of the Arabic oil states.
The concept is to repurpose the decommissioned Mega oil tankers and turn them into public building projects. Mega tankers are filled, for decades with all kinds of chemicals, and they are made (mostly) out of a whole lot of steel. They are also incredibly
dangerous to break down.
The life span of such ships is roughly 25 to 30 years, so most of these likely had been launched during the 1980s. But the rising cost to insure and maintain aging vessels makes them unprofitable to operate. Now their value was contained mostly in their steel bodies.
[...]
Oceangoing vessels are not meant to be taken apart. They’re designed to withstand extreme forces in some of the planet’s most difficult environments, and they’re often constructed with toxic materials, such as asbestos and lead. When ships are scrapped in the developed world, the process is more strictly regulated and expensive, so the bulk of the world’s shipbreaking is done in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, where labor is cheap and oversight is minimal.
The main problem is that these ships are built to withstand a whole lot of physical adversity and breaking them down is almost unnatural. There are untold accidents, and while siphoning off fuels and chemicals from the carcasses of these behemoths is one terribly unsafe job, it's the actual taking to pieces of the ship that leads to the most unsafe working conditions. But, the idea behind this design greatly reduces at least half of that dangerous process. The designers are trying to sell the idea to
the people with the money and resources to do it.
Standing just one and a half decade after the threshold towards the present century, the world has entered a new era of globalization. The global financial crisis took hold in 2008 and inaugurated a far less oil industry-friendly era. The decreasing availability of natural oil supplies and the climate change consequences of burning fossil fuels has triggered a worldwide objective to produce cars, trucks and even airplanes that can run on eco-friendly fuel sources. The slowdown in the European and Chinese economy (in combination with an unchanged supply by Arabic oil states) caused a recent historic fall of crude oil price. Economy wise, still, earnings for tankers have held up well compared to ships that carry other goods, collectively known as dry bulk and container ships. But common earnings on oil tanker transportation will fall because of oversupply in crude oil and oil tanker ships, changing transportation systems as future transatlantic pipe connections. For this reason a growing fleet of relatively new vessels will not be used for what it has been built for.
THE BLACK GOLD project is an answer to the contemporary search for true iconic buildings in the Southern Gulf region. The renovated and converted mega oil tanker laid at anchor represents the new future of the Arabic States in Southern Gulf region as a true present icon.
The basic concept is clear. With a piece of solidly built and fastened metal you can really create all kinds of things. There is virtually space for a reasonably sized town inside one of these things.
An open walkway to help bring in light and air, taking away some of the foreboding it once had.
Public spaces, stores, maybe even a place to let the kids run around and drive parents crazy?
It won't solve many of the labor violations found in these areas of the world but it may create a step towards more positive thinking around how we see the future of a reduced fossil fuel world. Also, it never seems to hurt to play to the vanities of the ridiculously wealthy in order to turn the ship just a little away from the icebergs on the horizon. If it works out, the U.S. has a whole fleet of hulking metal we might want to repurpose for the greater good.
A few more artist renderings below the fold.
Set it up just right and you could have a modern Stone Henge, with winter and summer solstice calendar markers!