Shipwreck Architecture

A Speculative Hauntography

Authors

  • Simon Weir The University of Sydney
  • Sara Rich Coastal Carolina University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59490/footprint.18.2.7114

Abstract

Shipwreck Architecture draws a connection between cosmotechnics, surrealism, and object-oriented ontology using an architectural design framework as a departure point. An academic introduction will connect the tragic aspects of Yuk Hui’s cosmotechnics, to the tragic pairings created by figurative surrealists Rene Magritte and Salvador Dalí, to the ontographic project of shipwreck hauntography. This trajectory of ideas is then projected into a creative project: a speculative history of shipwreck architecture where the cutting edge of biological research is projected into a technological future when the distant aims of today’s technology are ancient history: when the first generations of grown buildings are preserved as ruins, when giant decommissioned carbon-capture factories drift like ghost ships across lakes of their inky waste, when people remember when shipwrecks caused by the hazards of rising sea levels were later exposed by sinking sea levels and converted into hotels and theatres, and finally, when these theatrical memories provoke such nostalgia that shipwreck architecture would be replicated and fabricated.

Author Biographies

Simon Weir, The University of Sydney

Dr Simon Weir is an artist and Associate Dean (Student Life) and Senior Lecturer at the Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. Weir is a member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism, the editorial collective of the International Journal of Surrealism and has published on surrealism in Journal of Surrealism and the Americas , Dada/Surrealism and The Journal of Architecture . Weir’s research ambition is to update figurative surrealist theory in the light of contemporary research in technology, psychology and philosophy.

Sara Rich, Coastal Carolina University

Dr Sara Rich is Associate Professor of Theory and History of Art and Design at the Rhode Island School of Design. An enrolled member of the Waccamaw Indian People, she is a maritime archaeologist, art historian, artist, and author of speculative fiction. Her recent scholarship includes essays in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Heritage, and Contemporary Philosophy for Maritime Archaeology (which she also co-edited). Her most recent books include Mushroom (in the Bloomsbury series, Object Lessons) and Shipwreck Hauntography: Underwater Ruins and the Uncanny (in the Amsterdam University Press series Maritime Humanities, 1400–1800).

References

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Published

2025-02-10

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 2 (2024): Issue # 35 | Engaging Cosmotechnical Difference in Architecture and Urbanism: Cosmologies, Technologies, Worlds

Section

Article

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Copyright (c) 2025 Simon Weir, Sara

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