An image from the movie "The Wave" from 2015. In "Being Ecological" Tim Morton wonders about the prevalent mode of climate writing, which he calls "information dump", "dumping massive platefuls of facts on to us" over and over again. Morton wonders, why we do that and...
Just 31 years lie between two disasters of the same nature along the shores of a lake in Western Norway destroying twice the two lakeside villages. Lake Lovatnet is considered one of the most beautiful lakes in Norway. In the first decade of the 1900s and again in the...
In a 1971 special edition of Architectural Review devoted to the lagoon city author Jan Morris proposes to simply let the city sink. It's a polemical claim, but one that takes the ambivalences and dilemmata of historic heritage seriously. A different, longer version...
The 19. Century was not only the century of industrialization, the spark that "set human civilization aflame" (Andri Snaer Magnason). Between 1800 and 1815 half a dozen large volcanic eruptions all across the globe significantly changed the climate in China as well as...
Every year at Ascension Day (Ascensione di Cristo, or "Festa della Sensa" as the Venetians say, it is celebrated in May) the Republic of Venice celebrates itself but also it's intimate relationship to the sea. In the age of Renaissance the head of state, called the...
"Take the plunge and explore an abandoned and flooded city, an incredible 60 meters underwater. Experience Deep Dive Dubai – a world of exciting and unique scuba and freediving opportunities," reads the website of Deep Dive Dubai, a newly opened diving resort. The...
Cancho Roano is a Spanish archaeological site located in the Extremadura, about 150 kilometers north-west of Cordoba. The architectural structure dates from 550 BC and appears to be some kind of extended ceremonial site, but it's function and purpose remain unclear....
As this documentary from German TV from 2022 clearly shows, designing floating cities is one thing, wanting to live there is quite another. I guess instinctively we all prefer "stability over floating flexibility", as director Kristin Siebert says, land over sea,...
In the north of Portugal, sea lvel rise causes masssive land loss along the Atlantic coast. The building that has become the most emblematic for the situation along Portugal's coast are the Torres de Ofir, three towers set between the Cavado river and the ocean front...
There is a beautifully written passage on the submerged continent and city Atlantis to be found in Jules Verne's famous novel published in French in 1869/1870. The English translation of the chapter is available online. For simplicity reasons I simply copy the link to...
