Sabina Blasiotti

The Bartlett Medal Winner. July 2021

sabispace.com

M.Arch 2021. The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. United Kingdom

The Village Inside the Nuclear Power Plant.

The design narrates the future of a decommissioned nuclear power plant and its surrounding village in Mihama, Japan. The narrative generates and is generated by an interminable dialogue between nuclear forms and heritage, and the traditional life of this Japanese coastal town. The dialectic is further reflected in the construction of a Shinto sanctuary, which integrates ceremonial and commercial activities such as fishing, rice farming and sake brewing.

This project proposes a recycling and recovery of nuclear waste, postulating and predicated on the progress in current experimental decontamination technologies.

The narrative draws upon the complex relationship between Japan and nuclear power, the latter depicted by post-war architects, such as Arata Isozaki, as part of a natural cycle of death and rebirth. Ultimately, the architecture aims to present radioactivity as a natural phenomenon that can and should be addressed, attempting to advance a response to the nuclear waste crisis, the heritage of nuclear power plants and the economy of the villages that depend on them for their own power needs.