Hydroelectric Sculpture Gallery | Margot Krasojevic

The design uses renewable energy to redefine typologies in architecture and the built environment. The site is located in Sochi, a coastal city on the Black Sea in Russia, the building employs the oscillating water column principle to harness wave energy converting this mechanical energy to generate electricity, the building also accommodates a sculpture gallery. This symbiotic program merges a small power plant capable of producing up to 300kW with a sculpture gallery in the attempt to redefine typologies to accommodate for self-sufficiency by generating sustainable energy that is fed back into the grid, this project aims to run 200 households and businesses within its vicinity.

The Black sea is a contained body of water, an inland sea that has a surprisingly strong swell and coastal wave energy potential, effective enough for water turbine engineering. The building overhangs the coastline, projecting over the existing promenade it is cantilevered and partly submerged into the sea, angled at 45 degrees to the coastline for maximum wave exposure similar to the nearby jetties it increases wave generation as swell refracts around it to produce high-quality right-handers, the partly submerged projected element is designed to function similarly to an oscillating water column, increasing tidal strength on impact with the building and reducing land erosion. The angle of the coastline sculpture gallery matches the angle of the swell which in turn creates point break waves that do not lose their strength as they travel, the architecture influences the waves, it is not an obedient structure accommodating to its environment instead it stands apart from it making us reconsider our relationship to this environment and our immediate context. As wave energy converges against the projecting building element and sculpture gallery it activates the oscillating water column section.

The art gallery consists of two areas connected by walkways and ramps, it rises out of the promenade, it's primary steel structure sections rolling into each other like a wave. An array of turbines line the partly submerged power plants oscillating water column surface, as seawater flows into the submerged chamber airflow pressure increases forcing the five Wells turbines located at the top of the chamber to rotate as the seawater rises and falls, Wells turbines always rotate in the same direction regardless of airflow direction, this mechanical energy is converted into electricity with an average 70% efficiency rate. Generators are positioned on the promenade to the rear of the building revealing the very nature of the architecture and emphasising this hybrid typology. The small power plant feeds electrical energy back into the grid by supplying climate-friendly energy to approximates 200 homes and businesses within its vicinity.

The sculpture gallery is woven into the power plant structure, its roof rolls like a point break wave between both the energy plant and the sculpture gallery. The steel-clad layered ceiling mimics the waves by changing densities across its section from structural to cladding the self-supporting structure projects the turbine water column into the surf.
The gallery's open-plan space simulates breaking waves whilst underwater to create a calm backdrop for the exhibited mobiles and sculptures. The roof 's cross-section has a frequency of densities that relate to the turbines in scale, whereby movement is the dynamic criteria for both parts of the design be it mechanical or representational and sculptural. The waves which crash against the turbine surface are drawn up into the oscillating water column splashing seawater onto the art gallery roof adding to the dynamic nature of the immediate environment, program, and architecture.

This architecture employs new typologies for renewable energy to be a priority for its design criteria. The mobiles and sculptures which predominantly focus on Russian constructivism reflect the very nature of the changing environment, attempting to work with and in a manner choreograph nature's effects even when it is at its most hostile. This architecture does not solely blend in a submissive manner to the elements but defines the movements to produce clean energy. It is not a subtle design for a static environment but rather it engages with nature's force, this has always been the intention of renewable energy as the motivation behind design.
Russian constructivism was inspired by the industrial revolution, factories, reflecting the modern age by representing machine influenced designs, with the same intention this architecture brings together a new type of industrial typology, a synthesis between two very different programs working together like the crashing waves that sustain it.

An architecture that embraces the environment into which it is built by not being overly precious, it uses the characteristics of the environment to generate clean sustainable energy without affecting the quality and nature of the landscape, if this happened we would be building obsolete architecture which has a short term life as it changes the very qualities of its environment and in doing this renders it obsolete, I don't believe in architecture that takes over environments, landscapes or immediate contexts destroying the very criteria needed for its program but I also don't advocate an architecture that retains or suspends the environment treating it as an exhibition piece, preservation of the environment should embrace using it and working with it to sustain us and itself. This is a fine balance between intervention for a purpose and complete merging with the existing which I find rather empty architecturally. I don't believe we need to be precious with the environment by minimal design interventions we need to understand the environment and it can be hostile, build to exist with it not to be subservient to it or destroy its nature.