ORG @ Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa "Terra"

Lisbon Triennial Visionaries exhibition collection, curated by Anastassia Smirnova with SVESMI team at the Culturgest Cultural Centre for the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2022 selected ORGs Maritime systems campaign. The exhibition was a full room immersive experience called Artificial Terra.

Maritime systems design is a new discipline emerging from the need to intervene in our marine ecosystems to restore their natural assets, while allowing them to contribute to energy and climate transition. The work involves the creation of manufactured landscapes that cluster infrastructures to provide renewable energy and coastal resiliency whilst simultaneously increasing and enriching our marine ecosystems.

While marine infrastructures have been primarily the work of engineers, it is now necessary to transition from mono-functional extractive processes towards multifunctional circular production, and to do this a powerful merger of expertise is required. The vision for these infrastructure systems is therefore cross-disciplinary, mixing creative and combined energies among designers, scientists and builders who work with nature to create a thriving partnership for a sustainable transition.

The sea is not only a canvas for the projects of bold big ideas; nor just a collective inspiration. It is also a highly technocratic, risky place where many new critical functions for survival must be located using a co-creative process. ORG positions its Systems division as a working solution that carves out a new discipline and a navigable path through this great transition. The ambition is to instigate important projects and have transdisciplinary experts analyse strategy trade-offs to predict social, economic, political, and ecological effects of various decisions across domains and thereby achieve visionary designs for the public good.

The objects in this exhibition are speculative abstractions of real ongoing projects and investments, drawn from our cumulative project experience. They do not reflect any actual projects.

The exhibition includes detailed waterscape illustrations along the floor and four walls with a model in the center of the room. This exhibition examines four main areas of intervention:

Repurpose Existing Infrastructures
These structures offer opportunities for wildlife habitats while being refitted to supply multiple functions including renewable energy services.

Ports
These are important gateway infrastructures between the sea and land, covering sustainable and smart mobility, technical, operational, economic, environmental, and social aspects, relevant to shaping the green ports of the future and their integration with sustainable logistics.

Coastal Planning & Protection
Resiliency planning creates safer coastlines in the face of extreme climate events and sea level rise, while providing designs that support many activities for healthy living along the coast.

Manufactured Islands
These landscape infrastructures can provide habitats and serve as spaces for renewable energy research, ecotourism, aquaculture and other services.

ORG's work was selected because our designs represent a new discipline emerging from the need to intervene in the marine ecosystems in order to restore their natural riches, while allowing them to contribute to the energy and climate transition. The work involves the creation of manufactured landscapes that cluster infrastructures to provide renewable energy and coastal resiliency whilst simultaneously increasing and enriching our marine ecosystems.