Winners of New Concordia Island Contest Rethink Future of Wrecked Cruise Ship

The winning projects of the New Concordia Island Contest have been unveiled this past weekend. The international ideas competition aims to rethink the disaster of the wrecked cruise ship Costa Concordia as exceptional opportunity to imagine the future of the wreck and that of the Italian island of Giglio which has become the ship's new, permanent destination.

The contest is also a chance to wonder about needs for architecture to build new landscapes on traces and remains of a traumatic event. As required, many of the competing projects have been developed following the questions raised in the competition brief, such as "How can we rethink the future of these places? How to work with the shipwreck to build a form of memory? Is there any way to reconsider the Giglio island with this new outcropping rock that has changed the coastline?." As a result, different cultural views have been expressed through differing design concepts.

The jury has selected the projects that have responded in a more comprehensive way to the questions raised by the contest, interweaving visionaries contents to pragmatic and real solutions.

These are the four winning entries:

First Place: Alexander Laing & Francesco Matteo Belfiore, London, UK

The project deals with the themes of the transformation of the wreck by exploring the dichotomy between removal and storage. The main operation consists of the sectioning of the wreck along the line of water, keeping the immersed portion and removing the portion has emerged. The fragment immersed becomes the container of new activities and crossings of the ship among paths, tanks of water and surfaces planted. This new place of memory is directly connected to the island of Giglio through two routes suspended on the water.

Second Place (FARM Cultural Park prize): Vulmaro Zoffi, Milan, Italy

The project uses the tool of section to remove the part of the ship currently emerged and the practice of disassembly to generate new surfaces of artificial reef in contact with the seabed. The removal of wreck's vertical planes reconfigures the part of ship immersed in a sequence of metal blades for the colonization of marine species. The project is powered by a reflection on the new atmospheres generated by the remains of the wreck. With the cycles of the tides the metal lines emerge on surface from the water to remind the old shape of the costa concordia reinforced by birds and insects collected in a nebula to remember the tragic event.

Third Place (ex-aequo): Francesco Tonnarelli & Andrea Cippitelli, Macerata, Italy

The project deals with the most urgent issues in a clear and precise way. From the construction of a new line of connection between the harbor and the wreck, to the configuration of a new architecture that redials some fragments and parts of the ship in order to remember the image of the wreck and the tragedy. The project is formed mainly by three phases and establishes the time of the dockyard and the staging of the processes of transformation of the wreck as well as the place of memory with the construction of volumes and platforms that offer new opportunities for uses related to activities connected with the sea.

Third Place (ex-aequo): Wynn Chandra, London, UK

The proposal plans a cross between a machine and geology at the moment of the accident that is a form of first trasnsformation. The project deals with the configuration of a new geological structure in which the natural water environments are tied inside of a matrix to the rock strata of the Island of GIglio.

For the complete set of entries, click here.

The international jury was composed of:

• Cristina Díaz Moreno - Efrén García Grinda, AMID (cero9), Madrid
• Andrea Bartoli, FARM CULTURAL PARK, Favara
• Luca Emanueli, SEALINElab, Ferrara
• Eva Franch i Gilabert, STOREFRONT Director, New York
• Joseph Grima, DOMUS Director, Milan
• Kamiel Klaasse_NLarchitects_Amsterdam
• Geoff Manaugh, BLDGBLOG, Los Angeles
• Marco Navarra, NOWA, Caltagirone
• Lori Nix, New York
• François Roche, R&Sie(n), Paris
• Italo Rota, Milan
• Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Atelier Bow Wow, Tokyo

The jury has identified two macro-categories as guidelines for the selection of the group projects in which differences, degree of maturity as well as the depth of each project are being emerged through the method of comparison. These two macro-categories collect different kinds of solutions:

1. The Costa Concordia’s wreck is preserved in its entirety in the place of the accident to permanently fix the image of the trauma. The wreck becomes thus the container to rethink new activities and examples for the reuse. The evidence of the accident is canceled by leaving the wreck’s structure under the sea level.
2. The wreck’s structure is manipulated through complex operations of cutting, removal and engagement to obtain new visions of possible scenarios, and new relations between fragments of the wreck and the Island of Giglio.The memory of the accident is awakened through small development of meanings and objects.

All images courtesy of New Concordia Island Contest.