Iceberg Autonomy: Oil Recovery

By:  | March - 7 - 2011

Honorable Mention
2011 Skyscraper Competition

Akram Fahmi
United Kingdom

The Iceberg Autonomy is an enclave, a seascraper of suspended oil collectors and separators – a new water-world in constant navigation. It is a drifting political territory of temporary autonomy occupied by a maritime mining and refining community that is searching and hunting for suspended oil plumes in the pelagic depths of our oceans – lost oil, forgotten and unclaimed through leakages, industrial run off, and devastating spillages.

The Icebergs hunt the North Pacific and North Atlantic gyres where the majority of oil spills have occurred. It is known that oil plumes of approximately 300 square kilometers and 10 kilometers deep exist in this area. These are blankets of poison, detrimental to all marine life that blocks the sunlight necessary for phytoplankton and other photosynthesizing marine flora. This phenomenon increases the amount of carbon dioxide and acidity levels that causes catastrophic coral reef bleaching, as well as the death of local marine ecosystems.

Another benefit of this proposal is that thick ice is collected and attached to the seascraper main structure during its visit to the Earth’s poles and slowly melts as the archipelago drifts into warmer waters while releasing minerals and nutrients into the ocean. Marine life is stimulated by its creviced and cavernous form, the nutrient rich waters occupy a busy and thriving water column suspended underneath and between the icebergs. Their long raking and tentacle-like hair hug the water line and feeds all types of aquatic life.


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