Design Research

Many Islands, One City

Many Islands, One city is an ongoing research project aimed at understanding the impacts of urban growth in island communities -specifically Orkney, how hydrogen power and decentralised energy production can be utilised for a more resilient infrastructure and then how the strategic implementation of mass infrastructure can be utilised to manage urban growth to preserve the natural landscape where these communities are found.

For Orkney, we proposed a single ‘loop’ of infrastructure, with different levels containing the ability to produce hydrogen, transport it to local hydrogen generators, public transport in the form of a tram and the uppermost layer is a pedestrian/social area containing walking and cycling infrastructure with varying levels of protection depending upon the location - i.e. fully enclosed when passing over water, semi enclosed in exposed areas of land and open in urban areas.

Further to this, an alternative marine layout is proposed, with a large commercial dock propped for Fotta, as opposed to the existing proposal between Scappa and Holm on the north side of Scappa Floe. This would both reduce marine traffic through the environmentally sensitive Floe as well as allow for the reuse of the existing oil terminal as a hydrogen fuel terminal for export of blue hydrogen, generated by the offshore wind turbines and tidal turbines found within the ‘loop’ itself. This further can be used to fuel a new generation of commercial shipping - technology proven by the hydrogen fuelled ferries around the archipelago- which becomes especially pertinent with the advent of the North-West and North-East passages opening up to allow for commercial shipping routes due to climate change. This would place Orkney back at the centre of the British marine world once again, further developing the development of the archipelago.

This project has been completed with Niall Pennman and Immanuel Lavery, and was originally written as part of the Part 2 architecture course at DJCAD, Dundee, and continues to be worked on as a personal project, where we are currently developing concrete designs for how the infrastructure would be implemented in both rural and urban settings.

The Existing publication can be found here

More information to come