Fourth Year Design Studio
Carleton University, 2021
Tank Worlds Website
Students: Dana Adamus, Basi Bassey, Jessica Babe, Colton Chehowy, Jimmy Ear, Mary Hanna, Hailey McGuire, Isabel Serna Moll, Eilidh Sutherland, Brandon Todd
Hamilton harbour is a so-called ‘ecological dead-zone’ of floating coal-tar blobs, soils contaminated with heavy metals, and a skyline of active polluting smokestacks. In 1987, the harbour area adjacent to the Stelco steel mills was designated as one of Canada’s twelve Great Lakes ‘Areas of Concern’ by Canada’s Ministry of Environment. It is the largest site of freshwater sediment contamination in Canada and is currently undergoing a large-scale civil engineering dredging containment project intended to sequester and eventually cap contaminants.
Using tank-world models, mappings reliant on satellite imagery, and video, students designed an alternate, possible future for a portion of the Hamilton harbour. In the tanks, water represented both water and air; ground was constructed within and upon this shifting medium. Oil, dye, sand, and other particulates simulated airborne pollutants as well as contaminated soil and sediment. Architectural models / instruments/ infrastructures made of plexiglass, steel, plaster, and other materials were suspended within, rest upon, or sank into this fluid environment. Components dredged, contained, filtered, and sequestered contaminants, acting as instruments, infrastructures, and architectures of remediation, tending and caring for the site as it recovers over time. Completed online during the Winter 2021 semester, the studio foregrounded working materially to offset the digital monotony of online learning.