Warm Waters, Fresh Flavors

Instead of a regular industrial production, with large scale frozen products being distributed in various markets, here shrimps are harvested on demand. An online app allows consumers to connect directly with the producer, the freshest shrimp is delivered few hours after the click. The flavors of the sea can be tasted in the mountains.

The building is an anonymous shed, as many in Rheinfelden. The neighboring salt mines feature a more spectacular architecture, where large scale hangars are pierced by conveyor belts flying over train lines connect mysterious functions. The salt mine debits a large volume of warm water, too warm to be directly spilled off into the Rhein. Hence, instead of spending even more energy to cool down the wastewater, farming shrimps has become a useful outlet to apply the superfluous energy.

The shrimps are Equatorian, making that inside the shed, the water tanks and salinity, the light and air humidity, attempt to reproduce their original environment. For a Swiss visitor entering the room, the environment is a shock. Lenses get fogged, the breathing changes. But more important for the architecture, everything gets rusty in short time. Hence, from the bolts to the handrails, inox reigns. The structure is carefully painted against corrosion and most of the elements are built in fiber. The inner space is an array of tanks where the shrimps are nurtured and grow according to their lifecycle. It is an enclosed environment: nutrients are brought in to be transformed into exquisitely flavored proteins.

A similar process occurred in Frutigen when, tunneling the Lötschberg Base Tunnel through the Bernese Alps, it was encountered an unexpected water source. Debiting 100 liters per second at a temperature of 18ºC, the source threatened the balance of neighboring mountain ecosystems. What to do with so much warm water? To cool down the water before returning it to nature tanks to grow sturgeon were set up. It is known that in captivity female sturgeons are quicker reaching sexual maturity. Instead of the 10 to 15 years they need in the wild, the praised caviar eggs can be obtained after 6 to 7 years. And caviar is expensive. The prehistoric look of sturgeons is also attractive to visitors, and instead of the neutral look of an industrial shed, these farming facilities invested in a luxurious greenhouse and an educational program to present multiple ways to produce energy. The greenhouse is the most cherished attraction. But there is also a turbine taking advantage of the excess water from the neighboring village, a plant to use the biogas of compost, photovoltaic panels for solar power and, as its raison d’être, the geothermal flow from the water source uncovered in the underground. An economic logic was devised for the water source to generate activities, architectural forms followed.

On the Bernese Alps valley, the greenhouse inhabited by tropical creatures and luxurious vegetation is, at least, puzzling. Yet, the strongest architectural feature of the complex are the textile shades over the sturgeon rearing tanks. Usually inhabiting the bottom of rivers, sturgeon is sensitive to light. Hence the tanks are far too exposed and must be covered to provide living conditions. Other buildings enclose the complex, a visitor center to explain the sturgeon history is accompanied by a water cleansing station to filter the fish tanks output. The several shapes blend into the neighboring highway, the fire station, hardware shopping outlets, viaducts and other suburban constructions.

Both farming facilities are attempts to use energy surplus, growing shrimps and sturgeon to dissipate heat. Whereas the Rhein shed claims for anonymity and digital market fluxes, the Bernese constructions are extravagant devices to attract popular enthusiasm. In a landscape of permanent contradictions, warm water can produce fresh flavors.