RESEARCH REEF
Second Semester | Fifth Year
Final Masters Project
The site for this project is the Heron Island Research Station, located on Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. This project questions the existing layout of the research facilities on Heron Island Research Station, which currently do not respond to their immediate site or broader context within the great barrier reef. This project aims to create built facilities that can adapt to and support marine research into the future by increasing opportunities for observing, innovating for and accessing the reef. The design of these new facilities aims to build a strong relationship between researchers and the reef by emulating reef structures; they act as infrastructure to a network of activity, they are attractors within a larger field and they are platforms created by and for their inhabitants. Over a 30-year period it is predicted that the reef will continue to suffer extreme bleaching events if not completely die. Scientists are already experimenting with hybrid corals and 3D printed coral, manually intervening with how coral and other animalia will adapt to the increased water temperature and acidity over time. This project is interested in the opportunities that the decay of the reef present to research and the human exchange with the reef, science trying to reverse effects of climate change.