Unlike utopia, the definition of heterotopia describes real, physical places that exist within society but operate by different rules from everyday spaces. These spaces reflect or contest the norms, values, and structures of the society around them.

 

Heterotopias is a design-research project that explores the cruise ship as an architectural and socio-cultural “information bubble”. A heterotopic space that reflects society on land. Through fieldwork, interviews, archival research, and research-through-drawing, the project examines how cruise ships function simultaneously as spectacle, workplace, home, and memory machine.

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Working with maritime institutions in Rotterdam and in close collaboration with a retired seaman on board the ss Rotterdam, the research maps visible and invisible structures of life at sea. From hierarchies and labor below deck to ports, shipyards, and deconstruction sites on land. Using tools such as photogrammetry, LiDAR, scaled models, and speculative drawing, the project treats design itself as a method of inquiry, producing new ways of understanding and representing the ship.

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By translating data and lived experience into a new aesthetic paradigm, the project offers a social critique of the cruise liner as a floating world within worlds. Will the ship become the new sanctuary of the future or will it simply function to act as a haven for retired seamen, enabling what remains of the past to be cast back into the world?

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Togehter with Blise Orr

Pictures of the installation by Olly Geary

 

Thanks to: 

Fleur Groenendijk Foundation

CBK Rotterdam

ss Rotterdam