Diomede Archipelago | The Bering Strait Project

Bering Strait, Russia and U.S.A.

Category Landscape | Public Space | Infrastructure
Job type 1st Prize, International competition
Date 2009
Size 82 km
Client Foundation for Peace and Unification
Status Unbuilt

A Gateway to Global Unity

The desolate and horizontal landscape of the Bering Strait now carries the weight of human history. Famous for having existed as a land bridge, it enabled the communication of what once was a large land mass. This fragile rupture point is now the last resort that would allow the physical interconnection of most of the earth's nations allowing a step forward to peace and prosperity.

History Revisited

How do you connect or bring together the world? Recent history has demonstrated that the only limit for human invention is economical. Land reclamation is a Dutch tradition slowly turning into a global tradition. Mankind now has the ability to artificially create what was naturally formed. In a time of economical hardship the only available solution is: maximum effect with minimum means.

The vastness of the site presents itself hostile to any notion of design, of authorship. The challenge is to design a strategy in which the extreme weather conditions shape different and unexpected scenarios. The first priority is to preserve the natural landscape and affect it with a single gesture: an archipelago.

Connecting the Archipelago Through Infrastructure and Experience

The archipelago is composed of two intertwined land paths that meet in the Diomede Islands. One path, the infrastructure path, allows the traffic of vehicles, high speed trains and pipelines. The other path allows the traffic of people who are interested not only in passing through, but actually experiencing the Natural Park.

Infrastructure Bridge

Through dredging and land reclamation processes the infrastructure path is protected by the artificial land in order to guarantee its survival in this extreme climate and weather; at least during the construction process (4 months every year).

Weathered Connections

These paths would be greatly severed for decades by the harsh weather conditions transforming and eroding the land paths into a group of small islands. What was artificially created would be naturally deformed. The natural park would then become the Diomede Archipelago thus representing the union, interconnection and communication of the two continents. The Big Diomede and the Small Diomede resemble difference and distinction. The Diomede Archipelago speaks of only one, not several.

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Tension and Proximity

The Bering Strait physically embodies an enormous tension between two great land masses. The proximity between the two continents reminds us of the Sistine Chapel’s painting of the creation of Adam. When looked at closely, you notice that the two fingers aren’t actually touching; there is a great tension between the two. Trying to imagine the Bering Strait physically connecting the two continents would actually compromise its own existence, it wouldn’t be a strait anymore. Our proposal brings together two territories whilst maintaining the essence of the strait itself.

Multifaceted Impact

The chains of islands will manage to embrace a vast territory with a minimum amount of mass and enable the project to address every scale of society. The local scale, aside from making this landscape habitable, provides infrastructure and access to public services without disrupting the environment as well as plenty of food essential for marine life. The regional scale, by providing a natural dam that filters and reduces the salinity gradient and temperature in water currents coming from the Bering Sea thus helping slow down the accelerated melting of the arctic.

And the global scale, by achieving full connectivity and communication with the nations of the world, as well as contributing large amounts of oxygen to the atmosphere and by making the Diomede Archipelago a site of touristic interest and preservation, symbol of peace for the world.
The Bering Strait will once again be the quintessential representation of peace, interconnection and communication.

Sustainable Tourism

In a world hungry for exotic destinations, the Bering Strait’s Diomede Archipelago becomes the epitome of a touristic getaway.

Natural Parks provide the ideal conditions for sustainable tourism. They help support the local economy, they help establish and improve environment regulations, they support the conservation of local nature while at the same time involve and engage the local community. Planning, safety issues and administration would also ensure quality tourism for curious and respectful visitors.

The Peace Memorial

The memorial acts in contrast to the omnipresent horizontality of the landscape: a fissure in between the two Diomedes. A hollow structure built in the middle of the water, the only relation possible with the outside is upwards. You are standing in an a-temporal space, neither present nor future.

The peace memorial makes the limit a habitable space where different people from different cultures gather. The memorials experience relies on the diversity that inhabits it. We are all humans no matter how different.

The Unifying Rift of the Bering Strait

The Bering Strait is the rupture point, the Cartesian, temporal and spacial flaw denoted in an alleged east and west division which is only mental, it has never existed. In a sphere if you go west, you arrive to the east and vice versa, there is actually no difference between them. The Bering Strait’s territorial discontinuity should show and represent this fracture, the island of today and tomorrow. No matter where you come from this territory belongs to no one and everyone.