OVERVIEW

OFFSHORE. Architecture Beyond Land

The ocean is no longer a vast void beyond the city, but a frontier shaped by environmental, economic, and political forces. Offshore explores how oceans have become urbanised hinterlands. This transformation reveals a tension between the fluid nature of ocean systems and the fixed logic of land-based design. Lacking permanent settlement, offshore spaces are typically organised around specialised functions such as energy production, logistics, and conservation, making them remote, mono-functional, and disconnected from everyday experience. Yet precisely because of its remoteness, the ocean has become a privileged realm for research and memory: a frontier for exploring future possibilities and a repository for preserving knowledge and collective records. The course investigates how architecture can engage these spaces beyond extractivism and control, reimagining the ocean as a site of design agency within planetary urbanism.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course will develop in the students a broad design ability to address coastal and port city topics, as well as environmental issues in an integrated matter with issues of public space through an urban/architectural proposal that can adapt to changing conditions.

The students will develop the ability to conceive and design infrastructures that support both research and memory, understanding the ocean as a space for scientific exploration, knowledge production, and the long-term preservation of data, records, and collective heritage.

The students will develop the ability to think and work logically and sequentially to develop a hierarchical strategy (from schematic to developed, from permanent structure to, eventually, ephemeral elements and over a range of time).

The students will develop the ability to work in a multicultural and interdisciplinary team to learn to communicate and collaborate within a design team, integrating the knowledge and viewpoints of others from other fields of expertise.

They will be able to build up an extensive body of literature and project references on the subject of coastal areas and port cities.

The language of instruction is English, so the improvement of communication skills in English and developing a disciplinary vocabulary will be stressed.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course "Offshore. Architecture Beyond Land" main goals are:

- dealing with urban/architectural design in an inhabited/developed coastal context;

- confronting the relationship between the built environment and the sea;

- addressing coastal environmental issues, as well as issues of adaptability over time;

- tackling climate change, aspects of temporariness, seasonality and impermanence of marine settlements and social/cultural living patterns.

Upon completion of the course, students will be able to:

- develop a decision-making design process based on forming options and making justifiable choices;

- develop design proposals that permit and encourage adaptation and transformation with contextual changes (human, climatic, etc.);

- develop different scenarios for completing the schematic architecture over short and long periods of time, with degrees of the permanent, temporary and ephemeral;

- build up an extensive body of literature and project references on the subject of coastal areas and port cities;

- learn new ways to work with modeling software and minimal rendering;

- communicate more effectively in spoken English.

PREREQUISITES

Students are required to have:

- mature knowledge or sense of architecture in an urban environment; 

- basic knowledge about the condition of coastal areas, port cities, seas and oceans;

- very good ability with modeling software (Sketchup);

- strong ability in Autocad or VectorWorks;

- strong ability with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Indesign;

- skill and interest in the realisation of physical models;

- previous understanding of design and environmental issues is useful;

- capacity to communicate and interest in improving presentation skills in spoken English.

TEACHING METHODS

The course will be based on three Exercises – “Drawing”, “Series”, “Design”.

Each student will select a specific offshore platform, located in a sea or ocean context, from a list of 25 offshore platforms. The selected offshore platform should be in a contemporary context (i.e., still present and in use, not in construction and not a vision).

Each student will develop a design investigation and reconversion proposal of the selected offshore platform, even though the platform is currently in use.

Precisely because of its alien character and extreme remoteness, the ocean has become a privileged domain for two fundamental human activities: research and memory. It operates simultaneously as a frontier for the exploration of future possibilities and as a repository for the preservation of past knowledge, hosting infrastructures dedicated both to scientific investigation and to the long-term storage of data, records, and collective memories. The underlying premise is that any architectural intervention in such environments inevitably engages with these two complementary impulses: the production of knowledge and the conservation of traces. Accordingly, proposals for the adaptive reuse of offshore platforms should focus on the establishment of either a Research Unit (RUs) or an Archive (Aes).

The lists of 25 offshore platforms and of RUs and Aes will be provided to students at the beginning of the semester.

Depending on the number of course participants, students will work individually or in groups and exercises will be accompanied by weekly collective screen and/or print reviews.

Lectures given by the professor or by guests of international standing and expert in the course topics will provide bibliographical and design support for the work of the students.

Each exercise is overall aimed to articulate a progressive knowledge and design process. Collectively, these exercises will construct a progressively deeper understanding of the selected offshore platform, moving from documentation and representation to interpretation and ultimately to architectural speculation.

Drawing | Representation of the selected offshore platform  by means of architectural drawings. Each student must draw up one A4-eighth in which the selected operative machine is shown in orthogonal projection with plan(s), elevation(s) and section(s).

Series | Construction of an iconographic series, a repertoire of images differing in scale, function and era that narrate an imagery of collective inspiration for the selected offshore platform. Inspired by the photographic work of the German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher and their series of photographic images, each student will have to draw up one A4-eighth by selecting a free number of images, according to a principle of analogical juxtaposition of shapes, volumes, proportions and colours in relation to the selected offshore platform.

Design | Elaboration of a physical model exemplifying an architectural design intervention on the selected offshore platform (scale TBD). The architectural project should perform a functional reconversion of the platform by transforming it in a Research Unit or in an Archive. Projects will either take the form of individual architectures or larger settlements, expressing the phenomena of differentiation, plurality and imbalance requirements of the land-sea border. A major goal will be to elaborate a distinct new architectural-infrastructural device. Particular attention will be devoted to the definition of development phases in which the designed architecture and its context evolve and are able to be transformed to meet the new conditions and uses.

The first two exercises will correspond to an A4-eighth – aka “ottavino” – (29,7 cm x 21 cm, when folded, vertically oriented), for a total of 2 A4-eighths. The third exercise will correspond to a physical model (scale TBD).

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Students who have a valid certification of physical or learning disabilities on file with the University and who wish to discuss possible accommodations or other circumstances regarding lectures, coursework and exams, should speak both with the teacher and with the Department Architecture and Design's disability referent (https://architettura.unige.it/commissioni_e_referenti_dipartimento).

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

What is architecture when the ground disappears?

Is it possible to unlearn architecture’s dependence on land, gravity, and stability?

How can we reimagine offshore zones as sites of care rather than conquest?

Can marine infrastructures be reused, reinhabited, or dismantled—architecturally?

How does offshore architecture shift our understanding of scale, time, and composition?

The course Architecture for Extreme Environments: the Coastal Realm challenges students to explore architecture beyond the traditional confines of land-based thinking.

In a world of rising sea levels, intensifying extractive economies, and expanding logistical infrastructures, the ocean is no longer a remote backdrop—it is a spatial frontier, an operational field, and a contested terrain. Offshore is a notion that investigates how architecture can engage this vast, fluid, and often invisible realm—not to colonize it, but to critically reinterpret its role in the built environment.

The studio examines offshore territories—ports, platforms, logistical zones, dredged landscapes, artificial islands, and marine infrastructures—as spaces of architectural potential. These environments are typically hyper-functional, inaccessible, and politically charged, yet they raise urgent questions about scale, sovereignty, inhabitation, and climate resilience. We will treat them not as neutral technical zones, but as cultural and spatial artifacts open to reinterpretation.

Key topics will include:

- Architecture at the edge of land and sea: thresholds, transitions, and new forms of urbanization;

- Offshore infrastructures as spaces of political, environmental, and spatial complexity;

- Marine spatial planning and the territorialization of the ocean;

- Architectural composition in post-terrestrial contexts;

- Adaptive reuse and disassembly as strategies in floating, amphibious, or coastal systems;

- New imaginaries of dwelling, repair, and non-extractive futures beyond land.

Through site-specific research, drawing, modelling, and speculative design, students will develop proposals that question dominant narratives of growth and production. The course Offshore. Architecture Beyond Land calls for new compositional strategies capable of navigating instability—of working not only with form, but also with movement, time, phenomena, and environmental forces. It invites architecture to venture where it rarely does: into spaces that are unsettled, fluid, and in need of new forms of care, governance, and imagination.

On a theoretical basis, the course will try to uphold the aspects that make the sea an extreme environment, together with the criticalities that this perspective implies for architectural design.  While at the same time, there is a persistent image of the sea as a wild and uninhabited space, the economic and political processes of the land progressively turned the marine environment into exceptional urbanized territories that are characterized by specific spatial features, as described recently by some scholars of urban studies. Rather than a space that is detached from the land, the sea figures as a place that hosts the excesses and the effects of terrestrial urbanism. From its status of spatial exceptionality, the seas could be considered extreme environments, since they witness unique forms of settlement and territorial morphologies. 

Besides its radical politics and programs, architectural design is strongly challenged by the sea’s morphological conditions, above all by the impossibility of affording the stability of the land. The remarkable engineering efforts for settling offshore infrastructure appear as attempts to solidify and crystallize the restless fluidity of water, thus making the process of design completely focused on the need to replicate the ground of the land onto the water surface.  Furthermore, this specific condition affects not only the aesthetics of architecture, but also the politics of the space. The relationships between public and private space; the role of technology in shaping the accessibility of space and the constant relationship with the land urbanism are some of the topics that interest architectural design within this spatial context.

Especially between the 19th and 20th centuries, ports underwent comparable phases of development, characterized by the impressive expansion of their territory and the gradual obsolescence and decommissioning of the oldest maritime centres. More recently, global phenomena (such as, the unification and automation of cargo, naval gigantism, intermodal traffic, the ports regionalization and the rise of port systems or clusters) have forced ports to provide themselves with the same equipment to meet operational needs such as loading and unloading ships, storage, handling and control of goods, distribution and, in some cases, processing of semi-finished products. This proliferation of recurrent forms and devices at the service of mechanization, standardization and, ultimately, of the rules of logistics is the origin of collective characteristics: a special morphology of landscapes and utilitarian architectures that recurs in ports even at very distant latitudes.

Sometimes inherent to the formal aspect of the architecture or, on the other hand, to the industrial function or the construction or material choices, the features of the port architectural typology have ancient roots that manifest themselves through analogies that distinguish them and, at the same time, unite them. Every port possesses a list of similar elements that, combined with the urban syntax, make it a place that is both peculiar and generic.

On a theoretical basis, the course aims to study, catalogue and intervene with the tools of architectural design on a selected sample of offshore architectures. The founding theoretical principle of the course is to recognize an architectural quality in artefacts designed and used mainly for infrastructural purposes. Oil and gas platforms, wind farms, wave and tidal energy installations, subsea pipelines and cables but also sea forts, radar and surveillance stations, anchorages and marine highways, offshore ports and deep-sea terminals, oceanographic research stations, underwater habitats, artificial reefs, floating wetlands, and amphibious housing prototypes or luxury houseboats and private islands, to name just a few, are all components that contribute to the shaping of sea and ocean spatiality and offer themselves as active constituents of the heritage and design of the contemporary marine landscape. They are extreme forms of settlement and territorial morphologies.

The remarkable engineering efforts for settling these offshore architectures appear as attempts to solidify and crystallize the restless fluidity of water, thus making the process of design completely focused on the need to replicate the ground of the land onto the water surface.  Furthermore, this fluid condition affects not only the aesthetics of their architecture, but also the politics of the space, as highlighted by concepts as viscosity and blankness, as extraterritoriality and illegality, as remoteness and drift. The relationships between public and private space; the role of technology in shaping the accessibility of space and the constant relationship with the land urbanism are some of the topics that interest architectural design within this spatial context. Not least, the offshore architecture of ports embodies a logic of typological excess and transgression: it belongs everywhere and nowhere, speaking the language of docks and cranes, of warehouses and distant platforms, of logistics and monumentality.

After the previous courses, since 2022 onward, the course Architecture for Extreme Environments takes as its case studies a selection of offshore architectures found in seas and oceans all over the world. The focus of the 2026/2027 academic year will be a selected catalogue of offshore platforms: namely, Fixed Platform, Gravity-Based Structure, Jack-Up Platform, Semi-Submersible, Ship-Shaped Platform, Tension Leg Platform, SPAR Platform, etc.

Even before tackling them with design action, the course aims to represent them as architectures and to catalogue them as components of a collective and comprehensive grammar. The course aims to elaborate on the idea that large operational marine infrastructures respond to spatial formation rules that differ from land-based artefacts and, at the same time, can be recognized not only as mere functional devices but as architectures capable of accommodating, including and triggering extreme and complex activities.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS/ESSAYS

Allen S., 1999, Infrastructural urbanism in Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, pp. 46-59.

Andriani C., 2020, Oltre. Metabolisms at the City/Port Border, in Moretti (2020: 14-19).

Andriani, C., Moretti, B., Servente, D., 2018, Patrimonio di confine tra Città e Porto. Il caso di Genova, in Paesaggio Urbano. Paesaggio Urbano, 3, 29-39.

Banham R., 1989, A Concrete Atlantis. U.S. Industrial Building and European Modern Architecture, The MIT Press.

Brenner N., Katsikis N., 2018, Operational landscapes: Hinterlands of the capitalocene, in AD Architectural Design, 90, 1: 22-31.

Brenner N., 2013, Implosions /Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization, Berlin, Boston: JOVIS Verlag GmbH.

Bruttomesso R., Alemany J., 2011, eds., The Port City of the XXIst Century: New Challenges in the Relationship between Port and City. Venezia: RETE Publisher.

Couling N., Hein C., 2020, (eds.), The Urbanisation of the Sea. From Concepts and Analysis to Design. nai010 publishers, Rotterdam.

Couling N. 2015, The Role of Ocean Space in Contemporary Urbanization (Doctoral Thesis), EPFL Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne.

De Carlo G., 1992, La Città e il Porto. Torino: Marietti.

Ducruet C., 2011, The Port City in Multidisciplinary Analysis, in Bruttomesso, Alemany (2011: 32-48).

Furbetta, I., Malchiodi, T. (2025). Blue uneven: A geography of the ocean at the time of planetary urbanization (Enter Anthropocene). Trento: ListLab.

Garcia, D. A. (2025). Extreme Environments: Architectural possibilities for a challenged world. Copenhagen: Danish Architectural Press.

Hein C., 2011, eds., Port Cities: Dynamic Landscapes and Global Networks. Abingdon-New York, NY: Routledge.

Hein C., 2020, Designing Thresholds in the Port Cityscapes, in Moretti (2020: 200-205).

Hein C., van Mi Y.l, Azman-Momirski L., 2023, Port City Atlas. Mapping European Port City Territories: From Understanding to Design, nai010 publishers, Rotterdam.

Hessler S., 2019, Prospecting Ocean, MIT Press.

Khosravi H., Bacchin T.K., LaFleur F. (2019), Aesthetics and Politics of Logistics. Humboldt Books, Venice and Rotterdam.

Moretti B., 2025, Landscapes of the Cluster. A Spatial Approach to Ports. Berlin: Jovis.

Moretti, B., 2022. Architetture della Città Portuale Contemporanea. Composizioni Ibride ed Eccezionali Contesti, in GUD, Composizioni / Compositions, n. 6, 24-33, Stefano Termanini Editore, Genova.

Moretti, B., 2021, La grammatica dei porti, una morfologia speciale di paesaggi analoghi. Il caso del Grain Elevator di Buffalo, in GUD, Analogia / Analogy, n. 3, 46-55.

Moretti B., 2020, Beyond the Port City. The Condition of Portuality and the Threshold Concept. Berlin: Jovis.

Moretti B., 2020, The FRAC of Dunkirk by Lacaton & Vassal: About Incommensurability, Duplication and Openness, in WA / World Architecture Magazine, 356, 114-119

Moretti, B., Komossa, S., Marzot, N., Andriani, C., 2019, States of co-existence and border projects in port cities: Genoa and Rotterdam compared, in Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Urban Design and Planning, 172(5), 191-202.

Nesbit J. S., 2024. Ground Control. A Design History of Technical Lands and NASA’s Space Complex. Routledge, New York.

Nesbit, J. S., 2025, (ed.). Constructing invisibility: Infrastructure, militarization, and the extreme environment. ORO Editions.

Nesbit J. S., Waldheim C., 2022, (eds.). Technical Lands: A Critical Primer, JOVIS Verlag GmbH, Berlin.

Palmesino, J., & Rönnskog, A.-S. (2020). When Above. e-flux Architecture. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/oceans/331872/when-above

Pavia R., Di Venosa M., 2012, Waterfront: Dal conflitto all’integrazione. Trento: LISt Lab.

Riga, E. (ed.)., 2023,. Office of Hydrocommons. ATOPOS acv.

Rosselli A., 2005, Il porto come struttura e significato, in Portus, 10: 4-9.

Unwin S., 2007, Doorway. Abingdon-New York, NY: Routledge.

Tschumi B., 1981, The Manhattan Transcripts. Academy Editions, London.

Vianello M. 2026, The Ocean as Ground: An Offshore Theory on Urbanisation. Berlin: Jovis.

Vianello M. 2022, Returns to Seaspace. Architectural and Urban Approaches to Marine Environments (Doctoral Thesis). Università IUAV di Venezia.

Young L., 2019, Machine Landscapes: Architectures of the Post-Anthropocene. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

WEBSITES

PULSE - Port-clUster LandScapE: Developing a Spatial and Design Approach to Port Clusters

EU Funded Project, Next Generation EU, NNRP, Young Researchers Public Notice 2022

https://pulse.unige.it

TRANSITIONAL TERRITORIES

https://transitionalterritories.org/

DELTA URBANISM

https://deltaurbanism.org/

PORTCITY FUTURES

Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities, NL

https://www.portcityfutures.nl/home

BORDERS&TERRITORIES, NL

https://www.borders-territories.space

PORTUS, the online magazine of RETE, Venice, IT

https://portusonline.org/

OSSERVATORIO DEI PAESAGGI COSTIERI ITALIANI

https://www.paesaggicostieri.org/

SEASCAPE. International Journal of Architecture, Urbanism and Geomorphology of Coastal Landscapes

https://seascape.it/

North Sea Wind Park, MVRDV, 2006

https://www.mvrdv.nl/projects/98/north-sea-wind-park

DELTA WORKS, NL

https://www.zeeuwseankers.nl/en/story/deltawerken-safety-and-recreation

OFFICE OF HYDROCOMMONS

https://officeofhydrocommons.com/

OCEAN SPACE

https://www.ocean-space.org/index.html

LIQUID TERRITORIES

https://liquidterritories.com/

ARCHITECTURE OF TERRITORY

https://topalovic.arch.ethz.ch/

DESIGN EARTH

https://design-earth.org/projects/

BORDERS & TERRITORIES

https://www.borders-territories.space/

TERRITORY WRITING

https://www.instagram.com/territorywriting/

BUREAU OF OPERATIONAL LANDSCAPES

https://operational.land/

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

LESSONS

LESSONS START

According to the Academic Calendar.

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

An Interim Review will take place following the submission of the two A4-eighth sheets (“ottavini”), see Teaching Methods for details.

A Final Review / Exam will take place at the end of the semester during which students will present and orally discuss their design rationale and justification for the work based on the course objectives. At the Final Review / Exam students will have to present the two A4-eighths (“ottavini”) and the physical model. In this occasion, each group will have a maximum of 7 minutes to present their project.

A digital pdf version of the two A4-eighths will also be submitted and discussed during the exam. A template of the layout, in Indesign format (.indd), will be provided for sixteenths processing.

An example of a scheme for paginating, printing and folding the eighths so that they form a book to be browsed through can be seen at this link: https://youtu.be/UWsyMVYCcL0?si=Ya678-1wEPc9AzEp

Aspects to be emphasized for the final evaluation are:

- research and references, case studies and use of information;

- interpretative approach developed for the study and design of the selected offshore platform typological and functional design action the architecture of permanence and change;

- reconversion strategy, insertion of the designed architecture into the context, design choices connected to the realization of the assigned Research Unit or of the Archive;

- environmental conditions and integrated architectural response;

- collaboration and communication within the group;

- visualization of the project and effective use of media;

- effectiveness of the work and final presentation.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

Assessment will take place at the end of each phase of work – after each of the two A4-eighths (“ottavini”) and after the realization of the physical model – , by both the professor and the group/class itself. 

An Interim Review will take place following the submission of the two A4-eighths. For this occasion, students will be divided into their project groups and engaged in a structured peer-review session. Each group will alternately assume the role of reviewer and reviewed, presenting their work to fellow students and receiving feedback in return. By temporarily taking on the role of reviewer, students will strengthen their understanding of the criteria used to assess architectural communication and develop a more conscious and reflective approach to their own representational practices.

During the Final Exam, at the end of the semester, the presence of external guests, as jury, will offer a direct and qualified confrontation in which the student will have to demonstrate the critical-theoretical and strategic-planning skills acquired during the course.

The final Exam will verify the level of learning of the primary notions of architectural design and the themes proposed by the course.

In percentage terms, the assessments will be weighted as follows:
- DRAWING assignment: 20%
- SERIES assignment: 20%
- DESIGN assignment: 40%
- Oral presentation during reviews and the final exam, group work and commitment throughout the semester: 20%