SALGRA ARK : An ark or shelter principally made of salt, algae & graphene aims to provide an epitomic shelter solution for the south east coastal regions of India for the year 2122.
100 years from now the world will be subjected to lot of unprecedented changes: environmentally, economically, demographically, scientifically, socially & politically. there will be an increased activity of global warming, sea level raise, poor air quality, resource scarcity, epidemic outbreaks, high carbon foot print and added to all these is the dominance of artificial intelligence which will render most of the humans insignificant & make few of them super humans making room for not just a wider economic inequality, but also biological inequality. on the flip side, a lot of paradigm shifts in technology & human ingenuity will be responsible in enhancing of our lifestyle.
salt being an abundant resource can be locally sourced from the sea, with the shortage of arable land and to cater food for the ever-growing population, aquaculture or aqua farming will be a major means of producing food & hence algae could be sourced locally from it. graphene has been dubbed the material of the future for its unbelievable strength and the myriad of potential applications it offers, with lot of scientific break throughs happening around with this material & being 200 time stronger than steel, it could be a major material in construction industry. by employing then state of the art construction & manufacturing techniques, these materials can be easily built into a system and replicated with ease.
considering all these, our design solution is a combination of key strategies: urban flexibility: ability to be accommodated in any built configuration, spatial flexibility: reconfigurable spaces to suit the needs and enrich the psychological landscape of users. sustainability: locally driven resources, reuse & recycle, user interactive: responsive spaces to human needs & emotions, Resilience: responsive structure & smart bio-materials, microbial resistance, energy efficiency: self- reliance. these strategies combined will help to deliver a holistic design solution named: “salgra ark”.