(Pics) Design Firm Draws Inspiration From Nature’s Fury

In response to an international design competition for a marine research center in Bali, Indonesia, Solus4, an architecture, interior, and planning design and research firm, drafted a design for a flowing marine research center that draws from the structure of tsunami waves.

The 2500 square-meter facility is expected to be both aesthetically imposing and seamlessly integrated into its aquatic natural environment, which in turn fosters an immediate and direct visual connection to the ocean.

More from the Solus4 concept proposal:

A 2,500 SM Marine Research Center Located 100 meters away, parallel to the shore of Kuta Beach, Bali, Indonesia. The program is composed of three main components: public, semipublic and private. The spaces vary from underwater labs, scientist bedrooms and aquatic garden to sea water pool, swimming pool terrace, bar and an auditorium. The spaces are located above and under water and allow the visitors and scientist to take full advantage of the amazing landscape that surrounds the project.

This project represents a new typology for stationary in-water based projects reached by boat, which in the past have been mostly relegated as merely work, non-destination platforms which do not take into account the design possibilities that the in-water sites present.

…Three major events generate tsunamis; meteors, landslides, and large earthquakes. Underwater earthquakes—the most common type in Indonesia—with epicenters close to coast lines, form the conceptual basis of the architectural proposal. It uses the initial elliptical pattern and cross section diagram of the tsunami wave, one of the main focus of the centre’s research and prevention efforts, as the morphology generators and guides of programmatic organization.