Gunkanjima Island
[Image: Gunkanjima Island (via)]."Off the westernmost coast of Japan, is an island called 'Gunkanjima' that is hardly known even to the Japanese. Long ago, the island was nothing more than a small reef. Then in 1810, [with] the chance discovery of coal ... people came to live here, and through coal mining the reef started to expand continuously. Befor [sic] long, the reef had grown into an artificial island of one kilometer (three quarters of a mile) in perimeter, with a population of 5300. Looming above the ocean, it appeared a concrete labyrinth of many-storied apartment houses and mining structures built closely together.
[Images: Gunkanjima Island (via)].Seen from the ocean, the silhouette of the island closely resembled a battleship – so, the island came to be called Gunkanjima, or Battleship Island."
[Image: Gunkanjima Island (via)].The idea of an entirely manmade island seems to lie somewhere between James Bond and Greek mythology. I've always wanted to write a short story about a mineral-rich island where a man similar to Conrad's Kurtz sets up a mining operation; in mining the mineral wealth of his new little island, the architecture and structural engineering – the gantries, vaults, platforms, roads, etc. – come to be built from the island itself. Eventually the island entirely disappears beneath the waterline, mined down to nothing – and yet a small stilt-city of mining platforms, engineering decks, control rooms, and cantilevered walkways still exists there, built from the island it all now replaces.
In The Scar by China Miéville, there's a floating city made from tightly lashed-together hulls of ships, built so densely that, for those deep within it, it appears simply to be a particularly over-built – albeit floating – island. The rudders and keels of old boats cut through the water at angles contrary to the direction that the ship-island floats in, and thousands of anchors secure the city in place when it needs to find harbor.
What seems to be missing, at least to my experience, from architectural history & design courses are things like – drum roll – offshore mining derricks. Once again, it seems the wrong people are teaching our design labs: instead of more M.Arch grads who've read too much – or not enough – Deleuze, we need to bring in junior executives from BP or Halliburton, geologists and NASA engineers, and put them into dialogue with Situationism – and, why not, with China Miéville. Science fiction writers. Get ideas out of the one side, practical engineering science out of the other, and shebang...
What could that produce...? is a legitimate question. A terrible example, but still marginally interesting I think, would be something like the Burning Man festival, thrown not in the desert but in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. A joint-venture between BP, Halliburton, and Peter Cook of Archigram. And the Mars Homestead Project. Seaborne utopias. Platform cities. Perhaps Atlantis was built by a battalion of rogue Roman engineers lost to history.
[Image: Gunkanjima Island (via)].It's not Damien Hirst, Daniel Libeskind, Matthew Barney, or Norman Foster we should be watching, neither artistically nor architecturally, I mean; it's the Chief Operating Officers of offshore oil-services firms. The architectural patrons of today are not avant-garde, middle class Connecticut home-owners but logistical managers in the US Department of Energy. New building types are not being discovered or invented in the design labs of American architectural offices, but in the flowcharts and budgetary projection worksheets of multinational petrochemical firms.
Fuck Spiral Jetty – we need a platform city built above the mid-Atlantic rift, an uninhabited, reinforced concrete archipelago ideal for untrained astronomical observation. The Reef Foundation – you win their residency grant and get to spend six months alone staring at the sun on a perfectly calibrated Quikrete lily pad.
We need the wastrel sons of hedge fund billionaires out there patronizing manmade archipelagos in the South China Sea.
We need more Gunkanjima Islands.
[Image: Gunkanjima Island (via)].from bldgblog
selon wiki
端岛（はしま）是日本长崎县长崎市附属的岛屿。被通称军舰岛（ぐんかんじま）。
地理 端岛位于长崎市中心西南方约19公里，从作为旧高岛町中心的高岛西南南约4.5公里的海上。因为为了开发所以端岛周围被填海造陆，海岸线呈现靠近直线的形状。面积约6.3公顷，海岸线全长约1,200米，东西的长度约160米，南北的长度约480米。
历史 于19世纪时，端岛发现有煤炭的存在。在明治时代初期由锅岛氏经営采煤的业务，至1890年由三菱财阀所拥有。在煤矿的周围，建有由钢筋混凝土建成的住宅群。同时，因为端岛的外型和日本战舰“土佐号”相似，所以给人们称作军舰岛。端岛于高峰时期曾一年出产41万吨煤炭。而人口最多的时期是在1960年，有5267人居住，人口密度是当时东京特别区的9倍。岛上除了有矿场施设外，还有住宅、学校、店舗、医院、寺院、电映院、理髪店等，备有一个小城市的机能。 在1960年以后，日本的主要能源消耗由煤炭转至石油，所以端岛的煤矿于1974年1月15日关闭。而所有的住民于同年4月20日离开，同一时间日本经济高速增长的时期也结束了。
集合住宅 1916年（大正5年）日本第一座钢筋混凝土高层大厦(30号栋，7层）于端岛落成。在端岛上高层大厦设于中心。各栋大厦的底层就作商业用途。
现况 属近代化遗产。由于所有的住民于1974年离开端岛，所以岛上任何设施已无人管理，岛上的建筑物随时有倒塌的危险。因此，现在这个岛是禁止进入的。 端岛是属于三菱原材料所有，于2002年三菱原材料向长崎县政府无条件归还端岛。在2006年8月，经济产业省已表明，会将端岛登录世界遗产作支援。
