We have to prevent these massive ships from harvesting the last resources ! The idea of our project was really to show this is what could happen, this is a worst case scenario where everyone looks out for themselves and they compete with each other. So let us work together and find a solution together.
André Schmid and Jonathan Nestler Germany
The Guest Speakers
47
Age : 26, 27 Title : Architects, Snoozeplan.com
Jonathan Nester and André Schimd are architects and the founders of the project “Trawling City”. These young, impassioned German natives are students in architecture at the Technical University Braunschweig. Their joint project, the “Trawling city” is focused on urban planning and experimental design which proposes an entire city run from wind, sun and under-water rotors. Current warming trends are influencing the global ocean currents, as polar ice caps melt the salt water content is not high enough to allow the water to sink and flow southwards, hence potentially stopping the Gulf Stream and its warming influence. André spoke of this effect on future ocean currents and the possibility of disappearance of major coastal cities. This sparked their idea for a mega city that “is just floating around”, a city that is self sustaining with a solar roof, wind rotors, suction devices and drills to extract any resources it can find. The project was built with an extreme dystopian view, but the young architects still kept in mind its feasibility and classic urban planning. Due to the amount of limited resources today, André stated that the sea bottom was the next source for extraction, this led them to come up with the name of the “Trawling city”, drawing the analogy to fishing trawlers who harvest with large nets under the sea without considering their impacts on the environment. A desperate search for new resources in the future has already begun as with the North Pole where countries such as Russia, Norway, Denmark, USA and Canada are claiming that the polar regions are part of their land in order to extract potential resources there. Jonathan and André ended by clarifying that the “Trawling City” offers a “worst case scenario” to drive the urgency needed to work together to tackle the climate crisis and bring about much needed political will.