Shipwreck Architecture: A Speculative Hauntography

Abstract

‘Shipwreck Architecture’ draws a connection between cosmotechnics, surrealism and object-oriented ontology, using an architectural design framework as a departure point. The introduction connects the tragic aspects of Yuk Hui’s cosmotechnics to the tragic pairings created by figurative surrealists René Magritte and Salvador Dalí, and to the object-oriented project of shipwreck hauntography. This trajectory of ideas is then projected onto a creative project: A speculative history of shipwreck architecture, where the cutting edge of biological research is extrapolated into a technological future when the distant aims of today’s technology are ancient history; when the first generations of grown buildings are preserved as ruins; when giant decommissioned carbon-capture factories drift like ghost ships across lakes of their inky waste, when people remember shipwrecks, caused by the hazards of rising sea levels, later exposed by sinking sea levels and converted into hotels and theatres; and finally, when these theatrical memories provoke such nostalgia that shipwreck architecture would be replicated and fabricated.