Healing a Sacrifice Zone, Seaweed Harvester at Tocopilla, Chile, Pablo Schälchli

The aim of this project is the healing of a »Sacrifice Zone« in its holistic environmental conditions. With the innovation of an encompassing development model, not only architecture can be improved, but rather the whole ecological system, through the implementation of seaweed production that will act as phytoremediation.
The research project sustains that the European Union, with its ecological goals for electromobility, functions as a Benefit Zone. To achieve the goals in time, the speed of extraction has been greatly increased and exploited in areas in the Global South, especially here in Chile. Because of these violent extraction processes, the situation of Sacrifice Zones in Chile has deteriorated. One of them is Tocopilla, the city with the highest rate of respiratory diseases in Chile. It is also one of the most polluted marine waters in Chile.
The architectural approach is the transformation of the structures that for many years were used to exploit this territory. That is, the project responds transformatively to a paradigm shift that goes from extractivism to cultivism and from capitalism to commoning. The main strategy is to repurpose the extractivist infrastructure for this cultivation, from extraction and accumulation to cultivating and healing. This transformation project helps to guide the healing process that will not only restore the marine landscape and its ecosystem but also will improve the quality of life of the inhabitants of Tocopilla.