Call 09 | Abyss

ABYSS

Aesthetics and Politics of the Ocean Depths

READ IN ITALIAN

At the height of the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union, President J.F. Kennedy, in a major speech, admitted that the ocean depths, unlike space, had not yet been thoroughly explored. Despite constituting the largest physiographic province on the planet, abyssal zones remain on the margins of human exploration, while simultaneously being the focus of enormous extractive and infrastructural processes.
“We have more accurate maps of the surface of Mars and the Moon than of the Earth’s ocean floor,” NASA oceanographer Gene Feldman recalled in a 2009 interview. Even today, approximately 85% of the seabed is mapped at a resolution of 5 km — which means that only elements of dimensions equal to or greater than this scale are effectively distinguishable — while the remaining 15% is mapped at a resolution of approximately 100 meters, a level of detail comparable to that of lunar maps. These data demonstrate not only the state of knowledge of a place but also the top-down modalities by which it is governed and managed from a geopolitical point of view.

The ninth issue of the scientific journal SEASCAPE aims to explore the interrelationships between design (architecture, urban, and landscape design) and the oceanic abyss through diverse lenses, from the ecological to the metaphorical and speculative. However, the abyss is not only an experience of the shipwrecked or oceanographers; it is above all a space lived from the surface to the bottom through a section that is complex and in constant transformation. Measuring oneself with the abyss, considering it as a territorial driver , imposes a radical change of perspective: from surface to volume, from staticity to dynamism, from the gaseous fluid to the liquid one.

The abyssal zones are today the stage for crucial contemporary challenges (a resource nexus). In the Gulf of Mexico, one of the most important offshore oil and gas extraction sites in the world, over 4,500 platforms constitute only the emerged portion of a vast submerged infrastructure made up of pipelines, circulation systems, depots, and technical equipment (subsea hardware). Many of these structures are now decommissioned or in a state of abandonment and could be converted into artificial reefs for new biological colonization and soft or ecological decommissioning activities (for example, through “Rigs-to-Reefs – RTR” practices).
Along the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCFZ), a vast abyssal plain of 4.5–6 million square kilometers in the Pacific Ocean, between Hawaii and Mexico, the seabed is extremely rich in polymetallic nodules containing cobalt, nickel, and manganese, essential elements for the contemporary electronics and energy transition industry. The seabed of this region, located at depths between 4,000 and 5,500 meters, was mapped only in 2014 for political control and management of extraction activities in the High Seas, in a regulatory framework initiated in 1994 with the establishment of the International Seabed Authority (ISA). Currently, 17 exploration licenses have been granted in the area, and the ISA is finalizing the drafting of regulations governing commercial extraction (exploitation code). Nevertheless, the CCFZ remains an area, still largely unexplored, that hosts unique biodiversity (high rate of endemism) where the design needs practices that go beyond control, prioritizing dynamics of coexistence and resource protection.
What new questions does the abyss pose today to architecture, urban, and landscape design? What tools are required of the spatial disciplines to face the abyssal world? What images represent the abyss today?

In synergy with the theme of the eighth issue of SEASCAPE, dedicated to the “roots” of a coastal territory in the form of settlement traditions, constructive knowledge, land use practices, and archaeological stratifications , issue nine invites researchers, designers, and scholars to present original contributions that articulate the critical reading of even deeper roots — the oceanic abyss — with reflections or proposals on their future project, according to three areas of research.
The three areas share a common objective: shifting the design from architecture as an object to the designing of complex systems — cartographic, ecological, and infrastructural — that operate in extreme and largely unexplored environments. Cartography, ecology, and infrastructure are thus three complementary tools through which the discipline can build new knowledge, imaginaries, and new design practices for the deep territories of the planet.

Topic 01 — CARTOGRAPHIES OF THE ABYSS
Stories of utopias and architectures under water, between representation, narrative and project

The cartographies of the abyss are not simple descriptive tools, but critical and planning devices through which to make visible, interpretable, and therefore transformable a space still largely unknown (terra incognita). 
In this context, representation becomes a field of applied research in which maps, bathymetric sections, three-dimensional models (Digital Terrain Models), atlases, narratives, and speculative projects contribute to building new images and protocols of the abyssal environment. Even the history of submarine utopias, submerged cities, and underwater architectures can be reread not as a visionary exercise, but as a laboratory of ideas to imagine new forms of settlement, infrastructure, and coexistence between the human and the extreme environment. Like navigation manuals for high depths, the cartographies of the abyss thus become an operational device that connects knowledge, imagination, and design, contributing to building a disciplinary imaginary capable of orienting transdisciplinary research (from oceanography, to geology, marine biology, and the law of the sea), as well as future design practices in deep environments.

Topic 02 — THE ABYSS AND THE “MORE THAN HUMAN” 
How abyssal ecology can make evident a new ontology between human
and non-human

The abyssal environment imposes overcoming an anthropocentric vision of design, placing at the center complex ecosystems, extremophilic organisms, biogeochemical cycles, and biological processes that operate on temporal and spatial scales different from those of terrestrial or surface architecture. 
In this context, the project becomes a negotiation between human and non-human, between technical infrastructures (technosphere) and biological habitats (biosphere), between production and conservation. Research can here develop approaches based on artificial ecologies, hybrid habitats, artificial reefs, monitoring devices, and underwater landscapes, redefining the role of the designer as an ecological mediator. The dimension of the “more than human” — result of the union between human and non-human — proposes overcoming consolidated hierarchical dualisms and reconsidering our world, even the most remote, through new interrelations. 
In this sense, oil platforms transformed into artificial reefs, ships intentionally sunk to create marine habitats (shipwreck-to-reef), concrete modules for biological colonization or fish repopulation, submerged structures for offshore aquaculture, and climate monitoring stations assume unprecedented potential in terms of experimental application. The abyss thus becomes an arena for rethinking relations between species, technologies, and environments, contributing to defining new forms of ecological design and new ontologies of contemporary space.

Topic 03 — iNFRASTRUCTURES OF DEPTH
Networks, systems, new energy processes and their implications for the project

The ocean floor is today crossed by a vast network of extractive, energy, and communication infrastructures: offshore platforms, pipelines, submarine cables, mineral extraction systems, and energy production and storage devices. These infrastructures constitute a new technical geography that redraws the relationships between land and sea, surface and depth, territory and resource. It also reveals a still tangible and material aspect of the contemporary planet, based on dematerialization of processes and virtual communications. The project questions the role of architecture in the transformation of these infrastructures: from the reconversion of decommissioned platforms to the design of energy landscapes in the High Seas, to the integration between technical infrastructures and marine ecosystems. 
Plants for energy production (hydrogen production, carbon capture and storage – CCS), decommissioned cables reused for ocean sensors or pipelines converted into systems for pumping or storing carbon dioxide, but also offshore data centers, permanent observatories on the seabed, polar bases studying glaciers and icebergs, underwater robots, even plants transformed into hotels or temporary residences, assume a strategic transformative role. The infrastructure thus becomes not just a technical device, but a new form of landscape and surveyed space, opening the field to projects that exploiting the submerged dimension of these installations and operate on a territorial, energy, and ecological scale.

Participation Guidelines

To take part in the Call for Abstracts, you must submit a proposal in either Italian or English (only one per applicant, and mandatory in English for non-Italian speakers) within the specified deadlines and following the required format (the format must be downloaded from the website):
Title (max 100 characters), Subtitle (max 150 characters),
Field of Research (01/02/03),
Abstract (max 2500 characters),
Up to 2 optional images with captions (images must be copyright-free or accompanied by publication permission from the authors).
The abstract must be sent via email to editorial.seascape@gmail.com with the subject line: “Abstract- Seascape 09-Surname”. Submissions via other methods will not be considered.

Fees

Selected articles will be published upon payment of a symbolic fee.
For more information on costs, please visit: https://seascape.it >> Publish with us

Timeline

– Saturday, June 6, 2026_ Abstract submission deadline
– Saturday, June 20, 2026_ Notification of acceptance (to begin drafting full papers
for double-blind peer review)
– Saturday, August 8, 2026_ Full paper submission deadline

For information

web site: http://www.seascape.it
editorial.seascape@gmail.com