Inhabiting the Uninhabitable: an explorative regeneration of radioactively contaminated territories
The evergrowing energetic needs of humanity and the tighter sustainability agenda are generating an increase in the use of nuclear power. However, what happens in the event of an accident, and what are the consequences in the environment?
This study emphasizes the need for new design principles to be used in the renaturalization of contaminated ecosystems and the induction of self-sufficient practices on a daily basis, as a response to the mismanagement of the resources on our planet.
Regional
Spain
Although the project was devised to be prototyped in different uninhabitable hazardous territories (due to the presence of nuclear or heavy metal contaminants), this pioneering project's initial experimentation is located in the Comunidad Valenciana. Specifically in Cofrentes, a small village in which Spain's most powerful nuclear power plant creates an interesting clash in the social and economic practices of the area.
From a regional to a cross-border geographical scope intervention, the intention of the project is to use the knowledge and the radiation-management technologies explored in the Cofrentes settlement to multiplicate this self-sufficient lifestyle that continued the social practices of food and energy production of the area, in other hazardous lacerated territories, as a way of regenerating the contaminated ecosystem and creating a more sustainable approach to the use of the resources of our planet.
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
The anthropocentric manner in which humanity deals with the resources of our planet has led us to hazardous scenarios in which the equilibrium of the biosphere has been weakened and destroyed, for an unknown period of time. The goal of this project is not to force a position regarding the usage of nuclear energy, but to expose realities that accidents such as Chernobyl or Fukushima have proven possible. Realities that we might live to see again therefore, I question myself in this study how, from an architectural perspective, we can renaturalize and regenerate those contaminated territories.
This transdisciplinary intervention explores new design principles that can be used within the built environment to respond to the threats that radioactive inhospitable environments present. The project can be divided into three main phases: The first one is a research conducted through the methodology of experiment design, in which existing ways currently used to manage ionizing radiation are adapted into the architectural field. The second phase is the design, realized by adapting the obtained architectural strategies into a project that ensures a secure inhabitation of radioactively contaminated scenarios. To do so, I have chosen to locate the intervention in Cofrentes, a village in Spain located next to the most powerful nuclear power plant in the country. The design will have three main intentions: the first one is the solver of conflicts between the radioactive context and the villagers. The second one is the inducer of environmentally self-sufficient practices as a more sustainable approach to the use of the resources of our planet. And finally, the third intention is to give continuity to the communal systems existing in the area.
The last phase of the intervention consists of the replication of this first intervention in Cofrentes into other contaminated territories, adapting the architectural strategies to respond to the particular needs of the different locations.
Planet resources
Toxic waste
Regeneration of lacerated territories
Renaturalization
Environmental conciousness
Nowadays, with the planetary crisis in the overuse of resources, there is an increasing tendency in the use of nuclear energy to respond to the ever-growing societal energetic needs. Historically, humanity has seen the devastating consequences that a nuclear accident can bring. Therefore, there is an urgent demand of researching alternative architectural solutions that can provide a valuable response in case of a nuclear accident or even manage the radioactive debris originated from these activities since they have a direct impact on all living systems and the geophysical environment.
This architectural narrative focuses on the regeneration of contaminated lacerated territories, in which the presence of radioactive waste or heavy metals in air, water, and soil impedes any life form from developing in the area.
The project builds on an evolutionary process that grows organically answering the societal needs and resources available in the radioactive context, healing the ecosystem, and managing the toxic and hazardous materials. Following the example of how the disaster of Fukushima Daiichi was managed, the research focused on natural methods that can help us to manage the radioactivity problem: hyperaccumulating plants and radiotrophic fungi, that can absorb heavy metals and radiation from the environment and transform it into the chemical energy that they need to live, regenerating the ecosystem in which they are placed (Please refer to the additional documentation attachment, Research).
However, even if we work and explore solutions to this issue, it is crucial to arise and educate society to encourage a richer environmental consciousness. That is why the project emphasizes the induction of self-sufficient practices, as a less anthropocentric approach to the production of food and energy. (Please refer to the additional documentation attached, inducer of self-sufficient practices).
The intervention challenges the contemporary understanding of how the building environment works, from the aesthetics of what a building is supposed to be and the materiality used, to the inclusion of different daily practices that can have a positive impact on the environment and on the users( regarding our diet, our contact to nature, bringing back a more communal living and arising consciousness of our waste and the usage of the resources we need) considering cross-disciplinary disciplines, such as landscaping and environmental sciences and intertwining them with Architecture. (Please refer to visual representation attachments)
Another key objective of the intervention regarding the quality of the spatial experience of the users is the redefinition of the relationship established between the people and the design to properly experience the building. In this case, the building is devised not as a static permanent mole but as a living organism that highly depends on the atmospherical conditions of the territory for its correct functioning and requires involvement from the villagers to ensure a secure inhabitation of the area. This creates a co-dependency relationship between the users of the building (the living forms, including humans, animals, and plants) and the built environment itself. The project is constantly evolving as the radiation levels in the air, water, and soil are changing so the building needs constant care and maintenance to succeed in providing a safe habitat. And additionally, to achieve the objective of renaturalization of lacerated territories, the living forms need the built living organism to heal and treat the radioactive debris that could damage or impede any life from happening in the area.
After a demographic study of the territory of Cofrentes, I could observe a drastic duality in the social fabric of the area therefore, the main objective in terms of inclusion of the design intervention mainly tackles the following information: age, gender, education, and employment.
The project takes into account the age difference of the inhabitants in a rich architectural program: providing spaces for learning and playing for the younger population, and areas with a slower pace and adapted for users with reduced mobility and impaired senses. (Please refer to visual representation attachments)
It is based on principles of cooperation of different sets of heterogeneous people in terms of educational level, gender, and age as already existing in Cofrentes, contrary to the contemporary tendency to isolation, which proves to be detrimental to mental health. Elders teach farming ways and food production to youngsters and the workers of the power plant and on the other hand, the scientific nuclear community divulges energy production knowledge, creating an inclusive and successful symbiosis among the social fabric of the area within the spatial program of the intervention.
The project emphasizes inducing self-organization forms of societal systems, as a response to the contemporary mismanagement of resources on the planet. This is achieved by implementing a circle of self-sufficient practices within the community that dictates the production of food and energy, radiation management, and debris disposal. (Please refer to the additional documentation attached, self-sufficient practices).
As a non-anthropocentric intervention, it is worth mentioning as well, that the design focuses on the inclusion of environmental well-being. The landscaping intervention part of this project takes into consideration the inclusion of non-human life forms, giving them great importance in the development of this design to achieve the goal of renaturalization of contaminated territories.
To provide a holistic design, the involvement of the citizens of the village of Cofrentes and its surroundings has been crucial. To achieve that, a pre-study of the social fabric and economical practices existing in the area in different geographical scales has been conducted.
The concept has been carefully designed to equip the intervention with nuances that aimed to give continuity to the communal and territorial systems existing in the area. As a starting point, the project is inspired by the existing complexity in Cofrentes, where a curious duality is happening: The existence of the power plant caused an interesting clash in the social fabric of the village. While half of the inhabitants rely on traditional ways of living devoted to farming and activities in the primary sector, the other half is specialized in one of the most complex disciplines existing in our society, nuclear energy. The design will reflect that duality: it combines program related to farming activities with program destined for scientific development and investigation activities, like research on materials, hyperaccumulating plants, and self-sufficient food and energy practices. (Please refer to the research attachment)
Involving the citizens of Cofrentes in different scales within the design affects them positively and can even bring future cooperations between the existent clashing communal dualities: farming and research techniques can participate in similar projects, knowledge about the power plant and radiation can be shared among less qualified citizens, and the induction of self-sufficient practices can lead to a more environmental awareness among all neighbours.
From a local to an International level the first and most important stakeholders engaged in the design were the villagers of Cofrentes. Both farmers and employees of the nuclear power plant are carefully taken into consideration for the development of this architectural project. They added an understanding of the area and its functioning as a community, and what is to live next to this conflicting source of energy.
On a regional and national level, the main stakeholders are the private Spanish energy industries owning the power plant as well as the Technical Universities of Spain devoted to the investigation of Nuclear Energy, which shared knowledge about the basics of radiation and helped with the understanding on how the power plant worked.
On a European level, the main stakeholders invested in this project were my University supervisors at TU Delft, that helped with the development of this project from the research, to the design and the construction of it. Also, the Department of Radiation Science and Technology, devoted to researching ionizing radiation as a source of energy for the future, helped me shape and frame the intervention, by curating my methodology and technologies initially proposed.
This project is tackled with a cross-disciplinary perspective gathered in an architectural intervention. The first researched field of knowledge is related to nuclear physics, which allowed me to understand the basics and characteristics of ionizing radiation (as well as radioactively contaminated environments) and the effects that radiation has on living systems (taking into consideration plants, animals and humans) to identify which points of conflict need to be addressed through architecture.
While gaining knowledge in the field of nuclear physics, I started to closely relate it to environmental sciences and landscape architecture: the goal of the intervention is the regeneration of contaminated territories. Since radiation propagates in the geophysical environment throughout the channels of air, water, and soil, including a landscaping intervention in the design was crucial to achieving a more organic remediation and renaturalization of these areas.
It is worth mentioning as well, the weight that botanical studies have had during this project: I learned through historical references about the use of special plants and fungi to heal contaminated ecosystems (After the Nuclear Disaster of Fukushima Daiichi, the soil was decontaminated using fields of sunflowers, which thrive in radioactive areas), allowing me to adopt a more organic and natural approach to this experiment. (Please refer to the research attachment)
Concerning the usage of natural remedies and plants, I allude as well to the psychological and mental state of the users of the project. After a disaster, and especially when humanity is exposed to extreme and hazardous situations, it is crucial that through design and architecture, we carefully design spaces to be as soothing as possible, therefore in the architectural strategies I prioritize the inclusion of nature. (Please refer to visual representation attachments)
While architectural responses to nuclear hazards are existent (bunkers), I believe these are negative solutions: they accentuate the secrecy around the topic and they are presented as a selfish anthropocentric approach, leaving the geophysical environment out of their ‘‘protection bubble’’. This conceptual intervention has focused on the knowledge gap that exists currently in Architecture concerning radioactivity. The gap in exploring imaginative uses of technologies from different disciplines to provide and create a set of affirmative design responses that embrace the problem of radiation, instead of neglecting it.
Related to the previous steps of the architectural intervention, I believe that the methodology followed in the research proved to be innovative and successful: The fact that this investigation has mainly been carried out through a research-by-design methodology has been crucial for the successful transition from the research part of the project to the design phase since it curates different sources of information and promotes imagination and experimentation.
The last innovative aspect of this concept is related to a personal fascination: the role of the Architect within the intervention as a storyteller (inspired by Archigram and Superstudio), that has the power to inspire new sustainable ways of living for the future and denounce current issues attractively and positively.
When I look back to the beginning of this radioactive exploration project, I never expected to find a definitive solution to a problem that has been present in our lives for over one hundred years, raising fears and worries. I am not an expert on the topic of radiation and a lot of knowledge goes beyond my scope. However, I do believe in the power of architectural imagination and the impact that these types of projects can have on raising social awareness, in this case, related to the environment and our planet.
From the start, this project has been devised to be replicated in other contaminated territories. However, it is worth mentioning that the 'replicas' will have unique attributes that will make each intervention different even though they all originated from the same research and share a methodology and technology. The reason for this is that for the architectural projects to succeed in each scenario, they all need to answer to the geographical, and social context of the different areas.
The basics of the intervention of the built environment come from the research (Please refer to the additional documentation attachment, Research). This study is envisioned as a way of divulgating to the general public knowledge related to radiation and some architectural strategies on how to deal with it, resembling an open-source manual.
The idea of this divulgation is to create cross-disciplinary explorations by using the methodology research by experiment design, which could lead to creating and improving the strategies proposed in this concept study, adapting them to specific requirements that different contexts and situations might present. (Please refer to the additional documentation attachment, Research).
The last elements that can be transferred among interventions are the techniques and materiality of the design. Regarding the techniques applied to this project, it is worth mentioning that no overly specific machinery is required. The building methodology is thought to not require qualified human force, using approaches like scaffolding, sewing, and growing prefabricated structures in a mould to develop the project.
The materiality used is also found in every location where a power plant is located (most likely where a possible disaster can happen) like hazmat suits and special radiation management technologies plus the natural resources of this project (hyperaccumulating plants and fungi) can be easily obtained in natural surroundings of different places.
As a whole, this intervention explores a controversial recurrent topic within the global sustainability agenda from an architectural perspective with the intention of opening cross-disciplinary discussions regarding the impact of our ways of living and our relation to the usage of resources on our planet, two of the main challenges that humanity faces nowadays.
I would like to start explaining another challenge though: humankind's responsibility for the future. Radioactive debris can be a hazard for more than 10000 years, and definitely, neither you nor I will happen to be there to see that happening. We can have then two options: we can choose to be responsible and change our habits, having a positive impact on the future of the planet or, we can create an invented language of signs to communicate to forthcoming inhabitants that the area they are about to settle in, is extremely hazardous. As funny as it might seem, the second option is the one that humanity has opted to follow, a passive solution that hardly takes accountability for our impact on the environment. I believe we still have a long way to being accountable for our actions and this project, by portraying a possible reality where we are inhabiting contaminated scenarios, tries to expose that.
Interventions like this one can trigger those who see them to reconsider their everyday habits, cultivate social and environmental values, and raise awareness towards the usage of the resources of our planet, some of the most crucial contemporary global challenges as mentioned before.
In these challenges, education, and divulgation of knowledge play a crucial role: this project aims to add transparency to the invisible hazard of radiation which is, still, a topic of contention, and is carried with extreme secrecy, even in Academia so I would like to denounce the lack of information and the mystery around it, even when it is a hazard that has one of the biggest environmental consequences existing on Earth.
