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REVIVAL OF THE<br />
ARAL SEA:<br />
45°N 60°E<br />
186 REFUGIUM<br />
The Aral Sea used to be the fourth-largest<br />
inland water body in the world. In 1960s<br />
Soviet government introduced big irrigation<br />
projects that consisted of diverting the<br />
two rivers that fed the lake which caused its<br />
drastic shrinking.<br />
The fishing industry which in its heyday<br />
had employed some 40,000 and produced<br />
one-sixth of the Soviet Union’s entire fish<br />
catch, has been devastated, and former<br />
fishing towns along the original shores<br />
have become ship graveyards. This brought<br />
unemployment and economic hardship,<br />
making the inhabitants of the former sea<br />
into climatic refugees. The ecosystems of<br />
the Aral Sea and the river deltas feeding<br />
into it have been nearly destroyed and<br />
it has been known as one of the biggest<br />
environmental disasters.<br />
The idea behind this contextual point<br />
is based on contributing the efforts of<br />
reviving the sea and nurturing its weak<br />
ecosystem. It consists of elements for water<br />
extraction and treatment: the structure<br />
that extracts water from deep layers of the<br />
ground connecting with flows of rivers that<br />
used to fill the lake; desalination plant controlling<br />
the salinity, since high concentration<br />
of salts was one of the main obstacles<br />
for re-establishing healthy ecosystem.<br />
The structure is covered with fog catching<br />
mesh,also creating water.<br />
The Fish Nursery is introduced in order to<br />
protect recovering species from pollution<br />
and potential predators, uncovering the<br />
memory of the humans dependence on the<br />
sea and its resources. This reinvigoration of<br />
the natural systems will undoubtedly bring<br />
with it human life back to the shores ghost<br />
towns.
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