Fabien Cousteau’s Ocean Learning Center has announced a project to build an underwater version of the International Space Station. Called PROTEUS, it aims to be “the world’s most advanced underwater scientific research station and habitat to address humanity’s most critical concerns”.
Jaques Cousteau’s first grandson picked Yves Behar’s fuseproject to help with the design of Proteus, which - according to some preliminary renderings - will look like a slick and futuristic station on some far away planet.
The station will be built to remain permanently underwater, hosting oceanographic research teams (with maximum of 12 guests at a time) from all over the world, indeed like the ISS, or the shared international research basis in Antarctica.
Proteus, Yves Behar’s International Underwater Station
The Swiss designer's fuseproject studio has worked on a new underwater pressurized research station envisioned by Fabien Cousteau that aims to be “the ocean’s equivalent to the International Space Station”.
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- Andrea Nepori
- 12 August 2020
The goal of PROTEUS is to facilitate the discovery of new forms of marine life, creating a new opportunity to understand how climate change is currently affecting life in the Oceans. The station would also be a base to test new forms of eco-friendly power generation, aquaculture, and robotic exploration, meaning it could also attract the interest of researchers working on a set of technologies that could be repurposed in long-distance space travel.
If the project will go on as planned, PROTEUS will be placed near the island of Curaçao, in the Caribbean, 18 meters under the surface of the sea.
Photos courtesy of fuseproject and Ocean Learning Center.
Photos courtesy of fuseproject and Ocean Learning Center.
Photos courtesy of fuseproject and Ocean Learning Center.
Photos courtesy of fuseproject and Ocean Learning Center.